Board Game Arena

Can someone help me understand how much time each player gets when I set a turn based game to the various settings? Let's say I setup a 4 player game and set it to 2 moves per day. How many hours will each player get per turn? It appears that the Game Speed Setting only determines how often a turn gets played and not how much time each player gets. I'm trying to figure out how to give each player 48 hours in a 4 player and a 3 player game. TIA.

TopWizard wrote: ↑14 January 2026, 00:20 Can someone help me understand how much time each player gets when I set a turn based game to the various settings? Let's say I setup a 4 player game and set it to 2 moves per day. How many hours will each player get per turn? It appears that the Game Speed Setting only determines how often a turn gets played and not how much time each player gets. I'm trying to figure out how to give each player 48 hours in a 4 player and a 3 player game. TIA.

In your example, the time setting for 2 moves per day is +12h00 per turn (maximum 36h00). Each person will begin the game with a time bank (I can't remember if it's the max of 36h or only 24h). When it's Player 1's turn, their clock runs down until they take their turn. Then the next person's clock runs, etc. When it comes back to the first player, 12 hours gets added on to whatever time they had remaining, up to a cap of 36 hours.

The "moves per day" just tells you how many turns will be played every day if everyone always used up the full increment of +12 hours. So Player 1 takes a full 12 hours to take a turn, then Player 2 takes a full 12 hours, then Player 3, etc. But in reality, sometimes Player 1 will only take 37 minutes to take their turn, then Player 2 might use 14.5 hours, then Player 3 takes 10 hours, then Player 4 takes 3 hours. But it's entirely possible to play even faster. For example, if you all happened to be online at the same time it would effectively be real-time, except without the 3 minute/move or whatever limit in a true real-time game. [Pro Tip: If you arrange to play with people you know, set the game to turn-based even if you plan on playing all at the same time live so that people can answer the door, get snacks, use the restroom, etc. without worrying about their clock, but the game will still be rated if you care about that.]

Don't think about turn-based in terms of how much time you get per turn. There are two problems with that. 1) You can always use your ENTIRE remaining clock for just one turn, i.e., up to 36 hours, so that time isn't fixed. 2) It leads some people to believe bizarrely that you may take at most one turn in a given period.

FYI, tournaments are different though and use fixed time. I'm assuming you don't mean that, but your use of "give each player 48 hours" makes me wonder just a bit. In a tournament, the creator sets the maximum table time and that is divided equally among the players. So for example, a 15 day tournament with 3 players at each game would give each player 5 days (total) to make their moves - no time is added per move as it is in regular play. Whether this is sufficient would depend on the game, but just clarifying in case you did mean (or wonder about) that.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑14 January 2026, 01:29 In your example, the time setting for 2 moves per day is +12h00 per turn (maximum 36h00). Each person will begin the game with a time bank (I can't remember if it's the max of 36h or only 24h). When it's Player 1's turn, their clock runs down until they take their turn. Then the next person's clock runs, etc. When it comes back to the first player, 12 hours gets added on to whatever time they had remaining, up to a cap of 36 hours.

Just wanted to add a few things here:
• The initial time and the maximum time bank are always the same.
• When you get to “fast” turn-based games (8 moves a day and up), they only have the clock running 12 hours a day, and the time is similarly divided in half. So 24 moves per day does not add an hour per turn; it adds 30 minutes.
• For “slow” turn-based games the maximum/initial time bank is usually 3x the incremental period (so once every two days gives a 6 day max, while 3 turns/day gives a 1 day max). The exception is 4 moves/day, which gives an initial/maximum of 1 day rather than 18 hours. For “fast” turn-based, the initial/maximum is always 12 hours.

Finally, most importantly, you don’t have to remember all of this. On the game’s page where it gives you the slider to set the speed and has a duration estimate under the slider, you can always hover over the duration (or tap it on mobile) to get this information. (This applies to realtime games as well.)

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑14 January 2026, 17:08 The exception is 4 moves/day, which gives an initial/maximum of 1 day rather than 18 hours.

Thanks. I knew there was a setting that didn't fit the 3x increment pattern, but I couldn't remember which one or whether it was more or less than 3x.