What does everyone do when they run out of time for the game they are playing and have to leave it. Do you try and play in a place where it wont be disturbed and simply leafe it up? Or do you have some method to record the current status of the game so that you can setup the game at a later date in its current state (ie. in the 4th turn). I ended up spending about an hour recording everything in a short hand that worked all right but I was wondering what others did. (Or if they do it at all and simply chalk that game up as done).

This is what I used to use:

Vassal

It worked pretty well, but since then we have started the games early enough so we always finish, and if we can't start early enough we don't play. We know it takes us 6 hours to finish, so if we don't have 6 hours, we play something else.

But for probably a year, I put Vassal on my laptop and installed the TI3 Mod and that's how I kept track of our games. It takes about 20-30 minutes to save the game, but it makes it easy to set back up again.

On BoardGameGeek, I created a document that you could use to record the state of the game. I've never actually used it - I created it while I was waiting for the game to be shipped to me. I haven't updated it for Shattered Empire, either.

That being said, for the base game, while it would probably be tedious to record, it should accurately record the state fairly well.

Superglue .

We play in several sessions. Four of us are in San Diego and the other is in Spain. He uses Skype with a camera. I only mention this to point out the additional effort in the whole affair. Anyway, first we take several digital photos of the surface (iPhones, incidentally). Each player then place all the cards, tg's, counters, etc. from their respective races into an envelope, noting any necessay details (e.g., Strategy Allocation, vp's, etc.) on the front. We then put each of our Conrolled Systems and their units into individual ziplock baggies and bundle them with our Race Card and envelope of stuff. Next meeting, we refer to the photos and rely on our familiarity to make it go quickly. It sounds like a lot, but it's reliable, functional, and organized.

Almost every game I've ever played has been called on time. We just declare the game over when it gets too late and whoever is winning then, wins. If there were a convenient way to save the game it might be worth looking into, but mostly it seems they're all complicated.

Using Vassal isn't too bad, once you get the hang of it. Especially if you can keep the player "owned" stuff seperate.