hinterlands Hinterlands query: average game length

[Pelgrane]

Hi all. I'm planning on running a Hinterlands Campaign day in May, playing through all five of the scenarios in the pack. To help with planning the timings for the day, can anyone offer advice as to average game length for the various battleplans? I'll have played through each of them at least a couple of times before the event, although not enough to get a sense of how long each 'should' take to play.

Any advice/ thoughts greatly appreciated.

[Bostian]

I just ran a 5-round event last Saturday with 8 players in 5 hours. Some players finished rounds in under half an hour, but most lasted around 45 minutes which gave us time for breaks, etc.

 

Rounds took a bit longer at the end when players had built up their warbands with gold to purchase new recruits, etc.

 

But for 5 rounds I think 5 hours is enough time.

 

Also, some unsolicited advice: by round 3 I was handing out discretionary gold to some players that had lost every game. One guy rolled several "1"s when testing for post-battle injuries and lost both his general and the only 2nd level dude he had. By round 5 the leader had a Warband with an underdog value of 262 while the player at the bottom of the ranking didn't even have 100 points worth of models to deploy, and that was with the bonus 30 points I gave him after round 3.

 

But it was easy to match high valued warbands against each other, and the two players with warbands below 100 points were happy to play each other in round 5.

 

At the end I handed out 4 certificates as prizes:

 

1. Best General for highest victory count;

2. Storystinker for best Warband backstory and narrative;

3. Campaign Veteran for losing the most casualties;

4. Most Epic Warband for the best painted models on the tables.

 

 

 

[Bostian]

To answer your question directly: it took more than an hour to get the first round completed but mostly because setting up and explaining the campaign and battleplans took some time. But once things got rolling round 3 was done within 30 minutes. The. The final round, with two players each with 250 points of Warband each, took 45-minutes to resolve. We "started" at 11:30 am and I handed out awards at 4:30 with 8 players.


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[Pelgrane]

Thanks, that's really helpful! All advice welcome, unsolicited or othewise. I'd planned for an hour per round, and on using total warband value (inc unspent gold) as the score for each round. That should hopefully pick up any anomalies caused by dice, but you want that flavour as that's the whole point of narrative gaming, i feel.

I'm going to use similar award categories to yours. My narrative award is going to be based on the completion of a narrative checklist similar to that for the SCGT narrative hijack. Finally, I'm going to make some Sigmar-flavoured 'purity seals' for spot prizes. Hopefully, it'll be some fun!