Board Game Arena

I am very confused, I was excitied and ready to join my first tournment and I did a couple days ago. (Res Arcana). I keep my BGA tab open and refresh and take turns several times a day. Today I took my turn in the tournament around 10 AM, I noticed my time was ticking down and getting low. I refreshed several times and took turns throughout the day in my other games but not the tournament game as it was not my turn. Now I just logged on and I seen I have been eliminated. I am very confused, is the 24 hours real time? How could I have ran out of time in 1 day? Is this because my opponent was overseas and in a different time zone? I guess I should have researched this more before joining, as I assumed I could take 4-5 turns per day and still be in good shape for progress. Do all tournament typically need to be played as if the game was being played live? I am dissapointed but I want to make sure I understand for next time. Thanks

fullerbd wrote: ↑07 May 2025, 01:51 I am very confused, I was excitied and ready to join my first tournment and I did a couple days ago. (Res Arcana). I keep my BGA tab open and refresh and take turns several times a day. Today I took my turn in the tournament around 10 AM, I noticed my time was ticking down and getting low. I refreshed several times and took turns throughout the day in my other games but not the tournament game as it was not my turn. Now I just logged on and I seen I have been eliminated. I am very confused, is the 24 hours real time? How could I have ran out of time in 1 day? Is this because my opponent was overseas and in a different time zone? I guess I should have researched this more before joining, as I assumed I could take 4-5 turns per day and still be in good shape for progress. Do all tournament typically need to be played as if the game was being played live? I am dissapointed but I want to make sure I understand for next time. Thanks

It helps for people trying to answer your questions to be able to see specifics. So we need a link to the tournament and the game in question. Yes, we can get it from your history, but by not providing it you are asking everyone trying to help to do the work you should have. I can guess at what happened, but can't be sure without seeing what the tournament settings were.

So it looks like you are talking about this game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=668583587

The setting for this tournament was two days per round with no playing hours. This means you had a total of 24 hours on your clock (48 hours / 2 players) and the clock could run at all hours of the day when it was your turn because there were no playing hours set.

For one thing, are you aware that there is no increment in tournaments? Meaning unlike all other games on BGA you don't get time added back after every move. Your clock only ever decreases.

So I can see the game started at 5/4/2025 11:00:11 PM. That may have been converted to my time zone, but it's the relative elapsed time that matters. Your first move after the game started was at 5/5/2025 4:21:46 AM if I'm reading the log correctly. So you had already used up about 5 hours 21 minutes just for your first move. Your next move was at 5/5/2025 6:40 AM. So another 2 hours 19 minutes used. Almost a third of your time had already been consumed after two moves.

You said you were expecting to be able to make 4-5 turns per day. But the round only lasted two days, so unless this game can be completed in 10 turns, that was nowhere near the speed at which you needed to play. I don't think it's your fault given that how tournaments work is not well documented. And I also think having only 2 days for the entire game is pretty ridiculous. But as I've said before, there is no licensing exam for creating a tournament. Any Premium member can make one with horrible settings.

And no, not all tournaments are like this. But because some people creating them frankly have no clue what they're doing, you have to be particularly careful to check the important things like the amount of time per round and the playing hours if those are set. In this tournament in at least 3 out of the 4 Round 1 games that weren't a bye, one of the players ran out of time. I say at least because the fourth game actually concluded so you can't see what the clock was.

But I find it somewhat appropriate that the tournament organizer is currently at -21h on his clock and going to lose in 2 hours 35 minutes when the round ends. At least there's some poetic justice.

It's been a while since I've played Res Arcana but at 4-5 moves per day, I'd be thinking maybe 3-4 days per player to complete a game? It's a fairly moderate weight game from what I recall. So yes, 24 hours per player is a crazy speed to choose for a tournament. Of course, many creators are inexperienced and don't realise this (and from what Meeplelowda says about their own clock, this creator is probably in that category).

In any case, what happened to you happens to many on their first foray into tournaments. I chose a 7 Wonders game with 12 hours per player, thinking 12 hours per turn, or roughly 2 turns per day. My time was basically gone before I took my second move - but being that it's simultaneous play, so was the time of most of my opponents too. The thing is, you only lose 4 karma from being booted from a tournament game, and now that you're out of the tournament, it won't give you any more penalties, and you can choose more wisely next time. It won't take you long to recover the lost karma and nothing you can do on the site is impacted in the meantime, so don't worry too much about it.

Thanks for your help, this was the bit of info I missed and didn't understard completly.

The setting for this tournament was two days per round with no playing hours. This means you had a total of 24 hours on your clock (48 hours / 2 players) and the clock could run at all hours of the day when it was your turn because there were no playing hours set.

Sorry for making you dig in the history, I didn't even realize you were able to access the log and see all of that. I seems I thought tournaments were more "offical" than they are. Knowing that anyone can pick any settings changes my perspective quite a bit. I play a decent amount of games here, but I don't start games very often and I am still learning the ins and outs of that aspect of the site. Thanks again!