"Longest Game You Ever Played In?" Topic

I can't recall a multiple-day game, but back in the day, maybe?

Played a marathon game of 40K 2nd edition in my youth. That stretched out over a full weekend. My longest game sitting at one table with really no interruptions was about 8 hours playing a Midway game at a con a few years ago.

Massive Napoleonic battles that we ran during the school holidays many, many years ago

I'm finding it hard to believe the distribution. 14 hours--two straight days after the usual greetings--is the minimum category?

You get a bias in the distribution for long games, and you get a bias in a poll based on who answered. There's usually some peer pressure (not intentional bullying) effect – after a few posts, people with lower numbers may be more reticent to post. There's actually some logic in it for this poll. If your longest game is shorter than the shortest one so far, why bother.

To your point, it will be interesting to see how many people vote 14 or less, but didn't post in the pre-poll.

I've never kept the stats but I would guess 4-4.5 hours and that would have been over 2 gaming sessions.

15 hour 40k game in college. Space marines and IG versus a huge swarm of 'Nids.

Board game? 36 hours of the full Axis & Allies (europe and Pacific boxes). I want to do that again.

Years ago when I was stationed in Germany we did a Battle of the Bulge game on a gym floor. over 40 players and we played for three days. We were using micro armor and had almost all units represented. That was back around 1980.

Miniatures? 4 hours or less, typically at a con.
RPG, in a single sitting, about 10 hours. (The adventures and the campaign might last longer, broken across multiple weekends.)

We just never got into the marathon game.

When I was in college (and for a year or two afterwards) our wargaming club at Penn State would have have massive Napoleonics battles which we'd set up on Friday nights and then play all day Saturday and Sunday. 16 or 18 hours of gaming.

Well below 14. 6 maybe?

I think answers confuse hours and days. I'll believe three days, but 72 hours? Six 12-hour gaming sessions or nine 8-hour ones?

I played in an 18-hour Napoleonic's game with 8 players over 2 days. The longest though was a weekend campaign which took about 22 hours of playing over a Friday-Sunday. There were 3 large battles on Friday, 4 bigger battles on Saturday and 2 huge battles on Sunday. My friend and I ducked out a bit early (so only 20 hours) to tour Monmouth battlefield before the rain started but then had to drive back another 4 hours in said rain.

So, 1 battle 18 hours.
A non-stop campaign where everyone stayed at the facility 22 hours of fighting and moving troops with about 30 hours of negotiations and other stuff included.

This is like a poll for "most underrated".
🤷

Multi day ACW game, very big battle, took about 14 hours over three days

I play Empire 3 solo, besides the maybe 8 to 10 hours setting up a historic game board, I can play 3 weekends and the 2 weeks between. So say 4-6 minimum on the weekend days and 1-3 during the week, so guessing 48 total.

54mm Army Men game, two days, roughly 8 hours each day, eating meals while playing: beach landing, up the hill, attacking the city. We started with five players (me ref'ing) on Saturday, but all but two were done by the first evening, while the remaining diehards slugged it out on Sunday, with me ref'ing. I wrote/self-published the rules we used, back in 1998 -- the game was played out around five years ago. We played on a 12-foot by 30-foot table setup. It was a fantastic game. Hoping to set up a similar game for the same group of players: this one will be a city battle, street by street, so Tanks and Artillery will have little impact -- it will be an Infantry meat grinder. Cheers!

nine 8-hour ones?

Not minis, but we did play a nine-day RPG campaign (Gamma World) Saturday to Sunday the next week over Christmas break. I don't know how many hours per day we played, but a lot.

To quote myself from the pre-thread:

Technically, a Gettysburg game that played over three days (funny, innit?), but I only participated for a small part of that.

The total playing time must have been in the neighborhood of 24 hours; my own participation was more like 2-3 hours.

The longest game I've participated during the whole of might be something like 5-6 hours. Anything over 4 hours is unusual for me.

I went back to the "pre-poll discussion" and can't find anyone above 40 hours of actual miniatures. I still think the guys checking "72 hours" just mean they played a three-day game.

A couple of two day miniatures games when I could keep the table set up, but the usual was two to six hours. Like some others I played some board "monster" wargames, which could take months. You could do that with a board game, but not with miniatures, it seemed. Miniatures rules seem to provide a finish much more quickly.

Back in the 80's a friend and I spent a 3 day weekend playing a Star Fleet Battles game with all the mini's I had. 30 plus ships. I figure it averaged about 8 hours a day till my wife(ex) called it because we were at each other's throat over the rules.

If I replayed the game now, I would use A Call To Arms: Star Fleet and finish in maybe 6 hours or less.

A 15mm WW2 Eastern Front game, using Spearhead. Urban combat, about 80% of the table was covered in "town sectors". Probably totaled about 12-14 hours over two days back in 2009 or so.

Robert, it's 14 hours or less. I'm definitely on the "less" end of that.

More than 5 hours and I am going to leave the game.
If the game is scheduled to last many hours then players may find it difficult to put that much time aside?

martin

We still do some long Napoleonic gaming weekends and at times will try and play out all or part of a large battle. Starting around 3pm on a Friday and playing until 1am or 2am, and then starting Saturday morning around 9am and playing until 11pm or 12pm. Breaks for sleep and meals. So easily 22-25 hours.

I have also played in 3-day sessions. Our gaming weekends are usually 20-24 hours over 2 days (usually playing 2+ games).

I am counting actual playing hours, can be 6-8 on weekend days, 1-3 daily, for 3 weekends and 2 weeks between.

3 day Empire game in the 70's, ah believe. All the armies were there in 15.