Hi, I have been running local league of 14 players and we are approaching our final game of the league.
This will be a 2500 point game and because we have prizes/trophies to give out at the end I am going to restrict the time of the game.
I was thinking of 65minutes per player using timers.
Has anyone got any experience with this? And is 65minutes too short/long.
We will be starting the games at approx 19:30 and I want to be finished at approx 21:30.
Thoughts/Advice appreciated.
Oh one last thing to take into consideration I do want pressure on the players to make it a final chaotic/fun game thatâs why I want to time it.
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65 minutes each is plenty at that points level
Iâve played regularly at 2300 with 55 minutes on the clock and itâs been good
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I have run a lot of tournaments, and I have some very strong opinions about how to set the clocks.
If you have a 2 hour time window you need to plan for the event that both players use up practically all their time. Also you must assume that they are being polite to each other during the game, meaning they might pause the clock every now and then during rule questions, bathroom breaks and the odd phone call. The time they will inevitably use for these things must be subtracted from the clock time to make sure the time window isnât broken.
Also there is meet and greet, presentation of army and list, and setup of terrain.
Short answer (IMO): 50 minutes for each player when you want to keep a 2 hour time window for the round.
And you still need to make sure that 1. the clock has started no later than ten minutes into the round, and 2. they deploy while on the clock. 
When I run events using these rules I can relax, knowing it will work out.
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PS: I run events at 2000 points typically, and a 2 hour round / 50 min clock works very good for that.
I noticed you are playing 2500 points. I would increase the round time for that normally, but if you are set on the round time then the advice I gave will make a little pressure/time crunch on the players just you say you want during the final match.
So I would still use the advice I wrote in the previous post.
I would suppose some players will clock out though. Decide which rules you are using for timing out and make sure to tell the players beforehand.
I am not a fan of the hardline âdice down when the clock soundsâ because it promotes sloppy moves and dice rolling in the last moments of the match, IMO.
My latest timeout houserule came from my mate Vidar, and goes like this:
Timing out = if your clock runs out of time, immediately stop what you were doing. You are then allowed to play one last phase of your current game round in its entirety. Pick either the phase you were in, and finish it, or abandon any remaining actions which you had left in your current turn and pick one of the later phases instead.
(Hopefully this will put an end to sloppy last second movement, or sloppy last second dice rolling)
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Great job on the number of players, and I think that introducing a time limit regardless of the amount will put plenty of pressure on the players if theyâve been playing without. If I was told I had 75 or 85 minutes as opposed to prior no limit I would still be sweatingâŚ
Thank you for spelling out your ending rule, it was very clearly written, and if trackable by TOs I think it would be interesting to see what phase choices time-out players make.
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Depending on the points people have been playing (and to an extent the armies) higher point games can just end up with more tooled up units and elite stuff, rather than really having âmoreâ things to move around and roll dice for.
Have a âdice downâ end of game time and ensure that clock stoppages are minimalised in game and things can run pretty smoothly.
Note, some players will always seem to use all of their clock, regardless of how long you give them!
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Thanks sound advice 
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I just attended a 2600 point GT this last weekend, with 69 minute clocks Iâm guessing mostly to be cute. It was tight and I actually clocked out in the first two games, which I havenât done in a very long time. In the first game we both clocked, so only played to Turn 5, but in the second I ran out after my 5, so had to sit through both his 5 and 6 
Thankfully the TO declared that running out of time means dice down but youâre allowed to reform your units in following turns, which as a Trident Realm player was doubly helpful thanks to ensnare. He did rule that I couldnât also regen, as a) that involves dice and b) nothing is actually being activated, just reformed for posterity.
EDIT: So I guess Iâm saying that 65 is probably OK at 2500 but people will likely clock out more than usual.
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