Ten minutes a phase and you would probably take two days to finish the game.

With players who never played before? Better start with 20-30 minutes for the first year, and shorten them when questions about supports and convoys start to disappear.
FTF games I played usually started around 2 p.m and finished between 5 and 7 a.m .... so playing 2 days is definitely an alternative worth considering ;-)

Hah! Well, this is a good warning. I had been thinking it might take around 6-7 hours, so it's good to adjust my expectations.

Sev and Gobbledydook, did you have a turn cap, or play til the end?

I'm planning on not playing myself (just resolving the orders), so that there is a full table of newbies. Any advice for particular ways to explain the game, or gotchas when resolving orders? (Yes, I've read the rulebook)

For open-ended games, we use 20 mins for Spring 1901, then 15 mins through 1904. We drop to 12 mins through 1906, and then 10 mins thereafter. We allow 2 mins for order writing.

For games with a hard ending, we usually do 15 mins for the first turn and 10 mins for every turn after that. Again, 2 mins for order writing.

If you give new players too much time, they won't know what to do with it and the game likely will seem too long. Keep it moving, and some of them may want to play again.

Also if you pm me your email address, I'll send you our 5-minute teaching guide and the house rules we use for new players.

That is a great offer, thanks! Done.

The games I played had no turn cap, yet we never played till the end. Usually there was one of the players who said "latest option for me to leave is at ... a.m. because I have to do ... tomorrow at ... (time)"
Then we played until said time and declared the one with the most SCs winner

I've done a number of face to face games, usually with at least two to three new players each time. It's definitely best to set aside at least 6/7 hours and only get people who are really interested in playing (not just casually interested and who will throw the game after two-three hours because they get bored). Also it would be best to try to somewhat limit conversation outside of the game . . . I played once with one guy who kept talking nonstop about non game related matters and it was very distracting . . . we weren't using a hard and fast time limit at first so he was taking almost 30-40 minutes at one point in private conversations with various players for a few turns and it wasn't until several of us talked that we found out most of his conversations had nothing to do with the game. We finally had to get the timer out on our phone and call out time while he was talking privately with players to keep him on track. Nonmedicated ADHD players and Diplomacy don't mix too well lol

Jim the grey and his buddies run a good game. I was fortunate to play with them, as it was my first time playing f2f in 25+ years. It was a lot of fun, but now that I'm used to the computer and the drop down menus that are offered, small little nuances of the game get over looked when playing f2f. Ie: when making retreats f2f sometimes things are overlooked, but on the computer the drop down menu has all that is offered. The time we played was 15 minute talks in year one, and then 10 minute after that, with two minutes to write orders in each phase. With everyone there NOT new to the game this was plenty of time

The rules say no discussion during retreats and builds as well and there is no official cap to game years.

At the WebDip Boston FtF tournament, we did 20 minutes per phase and set a game limit at the end of 1908. However, we also had the retreats/builds happen (without talking) inside of the next phase, eating up the first couple of minutes of each phase. Thus, each year took exactly 40 minutes (synchronized across all boards) and no game went past 320 minutes.

There is no year cap in the game rules, but often it's done for practical reasons if you have external time constraints to deal with.