I haven't bought this game yet but I want to. My main hesitation is that it will take hours to play and I'll barely ever get to pull it out.

I'm thinking of getting a few sand timers and using them from the start to limit analysis paralysis.

Has anyone else tried this? What sections of each players turn and the game rounds in general are most likely to be drawn out? And have you found a certain amount of time for each decision point works well?

Practically speaking I need to decide what sort of timer(s) to buy, e.g. 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 minutes?

Encorporating this into the game also allows for variants where each player might have a power at certain times to pause or speed up a timer, giving themselves more time to think, or an opponent less (for better or worse), or even a system of 'rolling over' unused decision-making time for future turns.

For flavor's sake this could even be called a function of benefiting (or being harmed by) advice from one's Small Council.

Thoughts and experiences?

Thanks

In my opinion, time limit does not apply well in this game, because one major element of this game is making alliances with other players.

This means that you need to bargain with other players and this can take time.

DarkLoic said:

I agree wholeheartedly.

Yep, bad idea to use timers. Also a bad idea is to nag people about how long they're taking to make their decisions. If you feel that this game is taking too long and the other players share your concern you should maybe reduce the number of rounds (e.g. by playing the ADwD flavour). If you're the only one having this complaint, maybe this game is simply not for you, in which case you should find another game to play.