Board Game Arena

I was wondering about entering this tournament https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=359990 but am confused about how the time limits work. I would like to understand these beforehand so I don't time out during a game.

Time allotted to each player is set to 3 days - does that mean I begin the game with a 3 day timer, which runs down whenever it is my turn, never increases, and I have to get the whole game played before it runs down. Like a chess clock. If so, then this is different to the usual turn based clock which gains a little time after each turn is taken.

Game maximum duration is set to 15 days - what I don't understand here is that if each player only has 3 days maximum, the longest game would presumably be 6 days. What are the other 9 days for? This confused me and meant I wondered if I had misunderstood the first setting correctly.

Thank you for any guidance.

MatthewT123 wrote: ↑18 February 2025, 12:28 Time allotted to each player is set to 3 days - does that mean I begin the game with a 3 day timer, which runs down whenever it is my turn, never increases, and I have to get the whole game played before it runs down. Like a chess clock.

This, but with a twist: the tournament is set to have specific playing hours which are 13:00 → 1:00 (CET). This means the clock only runs during those hours, since it considers the rest of the day "free time" in which the players aren't supposed to be available to play. Hence the 15 days duration, because the player time is 3.75 days (or 3d 18hrs, rounded to 3d when displayed) but it actually runs just half of the time (12hrs a day) so 3.75*2*2=15
At the end of the 15d of maximum time, if a game is not over yet, the player with a positive clock wins.

Thank you for the very clear explanation.

MatthewT123 wrote: ↑18 February 2025, 15:07 Thank you for the very clear explanation.

To further clarify, you are allowed to make moves outside of the tournament's set playing hours window. The only difference is that outside of those hours the clock will not run when it is a player's turn.

You get a fixed amount of time at the start of the game. You do not get extra time as you make moves (not the way non-tournament turn-based games work). Whatever time you have at the start, that's all you get.

If a tournament has "active playing hours", your clock will only run down if it is during the playing hours AND it is your turn. However, the amount of time you get is adjusted to compensate. If you would get 3 days when 24h playing hours, you will get 1.5 days in a 12h playing hours tournament.

For this reason, I DON'T set playing hours in the turn-based tournaments I create. This way, people from every timezone can play AND you get more time.

You have to be careful that the amount of time per player is enough for the game. If a game lasts 100 moves like some worker placement games, then 30 days might not be enough. If a game lasts exactly 24 turns, then 7-15 days should be enough.

If someone runs out of time, any other player can "skip" them, which causes the game to be scored as a tie among all players who weren't skipped. In "multiplayer elimination" tournaments, account age is the tiebreaker for who to eliminate (I know, that's stupid.). For Swiss tournaments, you can lose ground in the standings because you're tied but someone else won their game outright and passed you.