Board Game Arena

Today I found out that it's now possible for Turn-based tournament creators to set the limit for a tournament round at 60 or 90 days, so far this limit was 30 days. The increase is not needed for most games because 30 days for a tournament round is enough, but for some long games this expansion of the time limit is very welcome! I'm thinking about Terraforming Mars, Heat (championships) and cards games like LLAMA (L.l.a.m.a.) and Wizard. Card and dice games without simultaneous turns will often play fast in Real Time due to quick decision-making, but when it's Turn Based tournament creators often underestimate the time required which is actually long due to the number of turns per day and different playing times around the world (due to sleeping and working hours).

Also it makes tournaments with more than 2 players better playable. For example Flip 7 is fun to play with a lot of players. In a Flip 7 tournament with 8 players and 60 days per round every player will have 7.5 day per game which is doable while with 30 days per round this would be less than 4 days per player and that resulted in a "kicking festival" many times before.

But on the other side: please don't use the extended timelimit for games that don't require many turns per player. For example Castle Combo only requires 9 turns per player per game, then 14 days with 3 players at a table is more than enough. Reminder: the tournament creator sets the limit for the entire round, BGA automatically calculates the time per player by deviding the time you set by the maximum number of players per table. When using 12 hour playing timeframes this outcome is devided by 2 to determine the timer per player. Example: in a tournament with 30 days time limit, 3 or 4 players per table and playing hours 12:00-00:00 each player will have 30/4/2 = 3.75 days (= 90 hours) on their timer and timers will only go down between 12:00 and 00:00.

I feel BGA should have posted a news item about this change, if staff reads this: feel free to use this message for a news item.

koningco wrote: ↑10 February 2026, 02:01 Also it makes tournaments with more than 2 players better playable. For example Flip 7 is fun to play with a lot of players. In a Flip 7 tournament with 8 players and 60 days per round every player will have 7.5 day per game which is doable while with 30 days per round this would be less than 4 days per player and that resulted in a "kicking festival" many times before.

There is already an option upon tournament creation to set kicking players only possible when all other players of the table agree to do so, or no kicking possible.

cheval_raye wrote: ↑10 February 2026, 09:16 There is already an option upon tournament creation to set kicking players only possible when all other players of the table agree to do so, or no kicking possible.

That's not a correct statement of the two options. See https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=180949

Oh thanks. I thought there were 3 possible options, it turns out there are only 2 (any player can kick or no player can kick)

koningco wrote: ↑10 February 2026, 02:01 Today I found out that it's now possible for Turn-based tournament creators to set the limit for a tournament round at 60 or 90 days, so far this limit was 30 days. The increase is not needed for most games because 30 days for a tournament round is enough, but for some long games this expansion of the time limit is very welcome!

Thanks BGA for this welcome improvement to tournament creation.

I hope this doesn't appear ungrateful of me, but in addition to the new 60 and 90 day options for game max duration, it would be very useful sometimes to have the option of 21 days or 45 days. Or else the option for the tournament creator to set a bespoke max-duration as proposed here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=55235

By the way, I created a Ticket to Ride tournament For Very Slow Players, just to test: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=526223

Yes 21 days or 45 days sounds great too, the difference between 15 and 30 days per round has always been pretty big but there are games where 15 days was just too short for many players.

For Ticket To Ride I don't think 22 days per player will work. The table will be at the bottom of players' game list for a long time and there is an increased risk that some of the players stop playing on BGA during the tournament. Some tables will be finished after 2 weeks and those users have to wait 11 weeks then before the next round starts if only one player is playing very slow (if they have more time then needed some will use it).

Why will BGA not just treat tournament organisers like grown ups and let us choose the length of each game. It should be easy, just set the number of days and hours per game. So stupid that it has to be 90 60 30 15 10 7 days with no option in between these.