You know how some people will take weeks to play 1 game of chess. Strat every turn 13 turns down; and some people play speed chess, 2 mins a move. Well we are the former. It takes us 3 hours just to play a 100pt game. That's with the squads pre-made squads and all.

Trying to hurry us up, I bought a Game Time, it's like a chess clock but you can set it for Warhammer or what not. I though if a player went overtime during a part of a turn, he'd get 1 damage that he could assign to one of his ships. A delay of game call, essentially.

My question is, with no frame of reference, how fast should we be going through the phases (say 3-4 ships per side):

(1) Planing:

(2) Activation:

Combat:

End:

with 3-4 ships a side you should reasonably be looking at a max of 10-15 minutes for a full turn ie 2-3 minutes for planning (max 5) 2-3 for activating (max 5) and only 2-3 for combat (again max 5) As you play more you'll find yourself getting faster.

I would suggest not rushing but definitely 3 hours for a 100 point game is way too long.

3 hours for a 100 point game is not "way too long" if you are both having fun.

It seems that you are not yet thinking of things instinctually. That will come with time and practice.

Maybe switch to smaller fleets for a while?

Three hours, "way too long" or not "way too long", is still a long game. Try checking the timing your phases to see where you are using the most time. If you're spending 15-20 minutes just in the planning phase, then you could be over thinking things somewhat. Try just going with a gut instinct and see where that lands you.

If you're spending even longer activating your ships, then you also need to analyse where the time is going. The Combat phase shouldn't take very long as nothing much is likely to be moving, so it's mostly dice rolling and referencing cards and checking for survival.

Analyse where your time is being used and try putting a clock on it with a time limit and then shorten the time limit each time you play until your games are down to around 90 minutes long, as that should be a reasonable game time, and will get you close to a tournament game time limit.

Something I do that may work for you is once I've finished activating a ship, I'm starting to think about the next turn's maneuver for it and it's usually dialled before the Planning phase starts, so that all I have to do is place the dials. There's not much that's going to change on the table between Activation phases.

You're going to make mistakes at some stage, but that's all part of the fun of it.

It may not really be an issue of how long each phase is taking you, more of how many rounds it takes to finish a game. You could be doing each round in 10 mins, but if you're only doing 1-2 damage a round you could easily be taking about 15 rounds or more.

Do you know about how many rounds it takes to finish one of your games?

If you find you're just not doing enough damage each round you can try these things (if you don't already):

-Focus your builds on damage output (don't neglect defense entirely, but this is a game about destroying ships)

-Fly in formation, and focus fire.

- Go for the kill! If you can take a range 1 shot on an undamaged ship, or a range 2 shot on a ship with 1 hull left, go for the kill, not the better shot at that moment.

It depends on what you need the time limit for.

If you are on a tight schedule and just want to squeeze in a game of X-wing,I would suggest playing a smaller game. Such as 60 points each on a 2x2 play area with no more than 2 obstacles per player.

If you want to increase your actions per minuet in preparation for say a tournament event which has time limit around an hour then sure you can get the clock and figure out how many turns you need to complete a game. Lets say 10 turns so 6 mins a turn.

The difficulty is how do you break up the 6 minuets a turn into each separate phase as often the time spent on planning phase is often different then the time spent in say the combat phase. It won't be exactly a 3 way split. Some times choices in the planning phase are easier then the choices you may face in the subsequent combat phase. So trying to split it into 2 minuets in planning 2 minuets in activation and 2 minuets in combat and any remaining in the end might not be the best method.

Now I am not a tournament player, you may want to try and ask someone from team covenant or board game geek on time suggestions for each phase. I think I have heard of a trick to speed up say time spent in the planning phase. Don't know of an actual name for this but lets just call it the "combat grab n plan".

1. During the combat phase where dials are more in the way and have already served their purpose for the turn pick up the dial from the ship you wish to activate for combat. (this also helps keep track of which ships have yet to fire)
2. As you are deciding on what target to engage plan out your next maneuver and place the dial on top of the corresponding pilot card outside of the play area.
3. Continue with the combat phase for that ship (measuring range rolling dice ect.) and repeat the step for each ship in the combat phase.
4. After the end phase and as the new planing phase begins look and see if there are any changes you want to make to the pre-positioned dials and have one last look before you set them down next to the ship inside the play area.

Hope this helps.

I was wondering about this too. In AtA combat, one is acting/reacting instantaneously. So does anybody considered using timed moves? This is not chess, and in a furball, one does not have time to agonize over moves.

I remember the old AH Airforce game where it was suggested to time moves; 30 seconds per aircraft or something.

Just a thought.