Speeding up Combat in 4e, another DMs point of view

There are a plethora of articles on the internet on how to speed up combat in 4th edition, i hope to add my list of suggestions to the pool. Our group uses lots of these and they seem to work for us, however our encounters are still around a hour long, and really that's fine, these tips just seem to make combat go smother and more effectively on all sides.

Planning

The DM needs to spend the same amount of time preparing the encounter as it takes to play the encounter. So if you want to finish an encounter in an hour, the DM should have to spend an hour working on it.

DM's should re-read all of the monsters in any given encounter shortly before game day to refresh themselves with how the encounter is going to operate part of planning is you should know your monsters. I have all my monsters per encounter separated in a plastic bag, each with a sticker on it identifying it by letter.

I'm also a huge fan of the the printableDM encounter manager I have one printed out in advance per encounter, often i use it for my combat notes, with pre-rolled initiative and reminders of ongoing effects. However sometimes i have to squish some monsters together in the same area, but it works for me. I also find it extremely useful to put THP & Bloodied value notes on here.

From Dave [Player] - know your damn powers
the waiting for us to figure out what attack we are doing slows us down a lot.

Splitting up initiative

Initiative should be broken up equally between the monsters and the party, What i mean by this is if you have 5 players you should have 5 monster initiatives. Dosen't mean you need to have 5 monsters, just means that if you have more consider making groups of minions and other similar monsters go on the same round.

Minions

Minions are a great way of speeding up the encounter, they don't use the DM's time because the players usually kill them off pretty quickly, this also gives the party a sense of achievement every time a monster drops on one of their turn.

From Dave [Player]
minions! minions! minions!... sure they are worth jack for EXP. but 1 hit kills mean we get to move on. don't load the encounters with just minions, but if you want to throw a bit more of a challenge our way, make the encounter as you want (for normal difficulty) and then throw a stack of minions at us as well. We might not finish the entire fight faster, but we feel good about whipping their butts. And really, with a min of 4 players we can whip 4 minions in 1 round easy.

Dealing with players

I hate the idea of putting a player on a egg timer, this is probably one of the single most common suggestions out there. It seems to me that DM's blame players for the slowdown of combat, when they don't realize that players are just playing the game. If you see someone getting bored or don't think they will be ready by their turn then have a minion attack them, tell them, "bob your turns coming up" but overall i find it unnecessary.

Rules

Dealing with rule questions are the toughest slowdowns your group can face, and the one you as a DM take the flack the most for. However 4th edition gives you room for forgiveness from players; when a question comes up about possibilities make a call an look it up later. If you find out you were wrong after the game, then give that player a action point they can spend any time during next game night. On the other side of that, if you don't think the rules allow for it, then let the player to spend an action point to cheat the system. After all, they are heroes are they not.

over all have fun with the game as well, spend your prep time properly and the encounter will go smoothly. These simple rules provide encounters that aren't going to be faster all the time, but more enjoyable.

Remember time is how we perceive it to be.