[SG2] Game size

Jaime T was curious about how big the average SG2 game is....

My biggest to date (Grey Day, for those of you who recall it, from which the
famous Ted quote arose "We stopped playing because the figures got
tired...."), was on a 19.5 x 8' (at the widest, tapering to 2') sort of
triangular board and probably featured about 100 KV plus 8 or so vehicles on
the one side plus ortillery versus about 140 or so humans plus about 5 or 6
vehicles on the other. That took 12 hours and could have probably run another
4 to finish.

That's not average though. Our last battle, that
ran about 6-7 hours with jawing and
meandering and humming and hawing was two platoons of NAC (about 32 each) and
two sections of auxilliaries (10 NSL Pathfinders and 7 Ghurkas) attacking a
platoon of ESU with some mines in a village at a crossroads.

Most of the Con events I've run have been either 8 hour slots with each side
consisting of
about two - three platoons (my platoons tend
to be 35-40 strong) versus about the same on
the other side (or if they are in defenses, maybe 2 platoons) or 4 hour slots
with each side having a platoon plus maybe an attached vehicle or two and a
specialist team
(sniper/EW).

One game I recall had an OUDF force (platoon in damaged APCs) fleeing from a
pursuing PAU platoon and a cutoff force (Platoon of FSE with
two jeeps and a hovertank). It took about 4-5
hours.

Another one was an NSL assault on a NAC PDC built under a temple ruin. The NAC
had about a platoon plus some heavy PA (Gears) and a couple of jeeps. The
attackers had about three
platoons of infantry. That took about 4-5 hours.

To get in under the 4 hour barrier, you need to keep the force sizes down. We
played one where one side was two 4 man elite SF units with "war criminals"
who were trying to escape across the board and through the DMZ at the far side
so the war criminals could be tried for "ethnic cleansing" crimes. The
pursuers were a 4 squad platoon of local troops. That only ran
about 3-4 hours.

That should give you some idea. I'm fortunate in that where we usually play,
we usually start setup around 10 am Saturday (on a 10x6 board) and end up
cleaning up sometime late in the evening or early in the morning after we've
went out for lunch, went out for dinner and some beer, etc. and played through
the interim periods. I tend to (as someone else on the list mentioned) view
the game as a key social vector and the socializing is as important as the
game (which means that we don't get
hung up on rules calls - we do what is the most
"realistic feeling" to us... have a brief
conversation and come to consensus - which
helps string the games out too sometimes...).

If you're trying to fit a game inside 4 hours, I find that avoiding hidden
units, EW, artillery, snipers, mines, and working on a smaller board all tend
to help. I also find that if you keep booting the players along gently (need
to do this at conventions... strangely many wargamers seem to make indecision
a mainstay....), that
tends to shave about 15%-25% off total game
time. When rec gaming, we never bother with this and sometimes a turn halts
for a 30 minute discussion of the correct use of a mixed minefield
(channelizing into kill zones versus blocking retreats, etc).....

Tomb.