Free Warhammer / wargame match-length predictor. Enter game system, total points, player experience, and scenario complexity; outputs estimated duration, per-turn pacing budget, and a recommended schedule.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Changes and corrections
Use before scheduling a game night. Knowing whether a 2,000-pt match fits in your weeknight window prevents abandoned matches.
Community-survey averages exist in scattered forum threads. This tool consolidates them into a single estimator.
Aim for 15 minutes per player turn to stay on schedule.
Match length = points × minutes-per-point × familiarity × scenario, scaled by player count.
Rates are set so a standard-size casual game lands near two to two and a half hours: 40k 0.075 min/pt (2,000 pts ≈ 150 min), Age of Sigmar 0.07, Star Wars: Legion 0.15 and Bolt Action 0.12 (both usually played at about 1,000 pts).
Per-turn budget = total ÷ (rounds × players). Aim for that average to stay on schedule.
They are set so a standard-size game between casual players takes about two to two and a half hours, in line with Games Workshop's guidance of up to three hours for a 2,000-point 40k game. Use them as a starting point and adjust from your own club's games. Tournament play is faster than the "casual" preset.
Multi-objective board games take ~25% longer than straight deathmatch due to objective-checking bookkeeping.
More points usually mean more models on the table, and each unit must move, shoot, and resolve combat individually. The relationship is roughly linear, so doubling the army size tends to roughly double the time per turn.
Pre-measure unit stats, agree a turn time budget in advance, and roll attacks in batches rather than one die at a time. Experienced players who know their army's rules cut decision time the most.
Input
Warhammer 40k, 2,000 points, 2 casual players, deathmatch.
Output
~2h 30m total. Aim for 15 min per player turn.
0.075 min/pt × 2,000 pts × 1.0 (casual) × 1.0 (deathmatch) × 1 (two players) = 150 min. Split over 5 rounds × 2 players, that is 15 min per player turn.
Game length scales with model count and with the number of decisions per turn rather than with points value, which is why two nominally equal-sized armies can take very different times to play. A horde list with eighty models generates far more dice rolls, movement and unit activations than an elite list of fifteen at the same points.
Turn count is the other multiplier and is usually fixed by the scenario, so a slow turn compounds across the whole game.
The reason to estimate at all is that most games are played against a deadline — a club night, a tournament round, a venue closing. A game that overruns is not merely inconvenient: it usually ends mid-turn, and an unfinished game frequently scores differently from a finished one.
The practical use is deciding scale before deploying. If the estimate exceeds the slot, the fix is a smaller game or a shorter scenario, chosen at the start rather than discovered in turn four.
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