Longest Board Game You Ever Played

[Kobold Boots]

How did that one go? I actually own the thing but have never played. Did it hold up as entertaining for the entire length? What was the playtime in total?

First, sorry for missing this question for about a month.

The thing with TI3 is that the length of game completely depends on the players at the table and how much your group of people tends towards masochism (complexity) when you get together to play.

If you use the basic game, and keep the imperial card as is, regardless of the other rules you use, you're looking at a 4-5 hour game with 5 players that know what they're doing with the game and move in reasonable amounts of time.

If you've got new people at the table, add a half hour per new person to that time allotment. If you swap out the Imperial card with the one in the Shattered Empire expansion add two hours to that time frame.

The following will cause you the loss of a weekend to TI3.
1. Swap out the Imperial card.
2. Use all optional rules
3. Don't put your most anal retentive person in charge of the victory track and objective cards.

Of the three, the third one has proven in my experience to be the most important. If you have someone who knows what they are doing, watching the victory track, reminding players how to win the game regularly and actively advising of the victory point conditions during other players' turns, the game will go a lot faster.

I've had games go 4 hours, and I've had others go from 1pm to 11pm finishing only when a player folds due to getting ganged up on.

 

[EdPovi]

Longest game would be a 6 player game of Titan (AH version), I don't recall how long it actually went as I wasn't among the final 2. It was over 12 hrs. This game did get multiple plays, but it wasn't always this long.

Have also had long games of AA:50 and Advanced Civ. Most of my TI3 games were under 5 hrs, but everyone knew how to play.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Longest total game: SPI War in the Galaxy, took two entire days across a weekend.

Most unexpectedly long game: Warpwar - a microgame which is supposed to last for 30 minutes but a pal and I were so evenly matched we continued for 6hrs then called it a draw.

Recent longest game: Settlers of America (new Catan game). Started playing with my two daughters and we did 5 straight hours on Saturday afternoon and then an additional 2 hours on Sunday afternoon to finish the game off. My 6 year old held me to a draw via low cunning and strategy. I was so proud!

 

[Korgoth]

Avalon Hill's Civilization. Best boardgame ever.

 

[CarlZog]

Way back in the 70s I was briefly part of an SPI War in Europe - I was only in it for a weekend, commanding British forces in North Africa, but I don't know that the game ever actually ended, or was intended to.


I want to play the full game of SPI's Empires of the Middle Ages - I own it but haven't played it except solo.

I also want to run a convention-length Rise and Fall, with players coming in throughout the weekend as new barbarian tribes, playing through their transitions to kingdom empire and eventual collapse, and being swallowed up by new players entering.

You need to go to the ConsimWorld Expo's Monster Game Con. It's a convention of board wargame junkies, and one of the features is playing these massive old SPI games.

Terrible Swift Sword is the longest I've ever played.

Carl