Art De La Guerre

[KevinD]

Not a question but a suggestion. One step that often delays the game is choosing which order to dice for commands. You often need to make sure you move troops in command A before moving command B. For example, troops in A will cut a ZOC so troops in B can do something. Or you want to coordinate Command A hitting the enemy in the flank after those in B hit the other flank. Or you just want to know how changes and evades in a command B will work (will the enemy evade, roll long, etc.). Or command B has to charge enemy skirmishers first so Command A’s impetuous troops don’t have to spend 3 CPs to do anything other than charge. . (In addition to the historically absurdly close cooperation between units in different commands.) Working all of this out before rolling a single die just wastes time. Further it is often futile anyway because the situation changes by the time that command moves anyway and you just have to plot the hole thing over when you finally see the command roll. A rule where a player has to activate commands from right to left (going by the position of the general’s marker, closest to the enemy’s table edge if there’s a tie left to right) would get rid off all this need to plot out the turn before you roll a single die. When your turn starts you just the roll the die for your right most command.

(There is an issue with unreliable allies and flank marching or ambushing commands. I would allow the 2 CPs for a +1 to activate an unreliable to be applied to that leaders’ next roll, regardless of whether that’s this turn or next. Unrevealed ambushes and flank marchers who have not yet entered the table are rolled for first, then go right to left for those on table.)

(The reason to start on the right is because this was generally seen as the more prestigious flank and that’s a simple enough rationale.)

[madaxeman]

I suspect the type of player who agonises over the decision as to which command to roll for first long enough to create a meaningful delay in what is usually a 7ish turn game will also always find enough other decisions to agonise over to slow the game far more in other ways too ..

For the rest of us, it’s not anywhere near significant. 
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[Ramses II]

You could always try my alternative to dice using cards. Take three decks of identical cards, extract ace to 6 of all the cards, split those into red and black packs giving 36 cards per person.
Whenever a player would normally throw dice instead they draw a card from their deck. The resulting play is faster for various reasons but just try it. There are one or two drawbacks which are minor, but which have caused others to avoid this particular approach.

[lionelrus]

[Hazelbark]

This doesn't help.
I would say to the people who don't get 7-turns done, learn to speed up.

I would add, I have witnessed or as umpire put notoriously slow players on blitz, their game improves and they usually win.

The constant calculation of optimum moves creates analysis paralysis.

My favorite story i think this was a v3 comp. I had my opponent cold. Next move i had his camp which would break his army. He was spending a huge amount of time trying to figure out what to do. I exasperated squawked "You will break next turn the only thing you can do is try to take me with you. Just do ANYTHING!" So he charged along the line at sub optimal odds. The dice were with him and only his last roll failed and i ended one away from breaking. Had that move been done 2 turns earlier the odds were not nearly in my favor and less luck and i would have likely lost the game.

Two pieces of advice:

No Captain can fail in his duty by putting his ship alongside the enemy and exchanging fire.

The fault is not in the order of movement it is in ourselves. Just move.

[MarkK]

Or perhaps we could simply let people play the game they want to play and enjoy it, rather than trying to impose our own preferred way of playing on everyone else.

Sometimes, quite often in fact, a game presents you with several viable options, each requiring you to weigh up the risks and rewards before making a decision. That is surely part of what makes a wargame enjoyable. The last thing you need is someone sitting on the other side of the table tutting impatiently because you are taking the time to consider your options.

I’m sure we have all encountered opponents who, once they realise you have the better of them, suddenly discover an urgent need to take a ‘fag’ break, consult the rules for the hundredth time, or otherwise find ways of running down the clock. If we’re going to talk about sportsmanship and how people should play, perhaps that sort of behaviour is a better place to start than criticising someone for actually thinking about their moves.

[madaxeman]

[KevinD]

I think there is some semi-deliberate slow play for draws, but don’t think it’s a major cause for slow play. I think most slow play is caused by indecision and the desire to weigh options. Figuring out which command to activate first, which itself is contingent on figuring out what each command needs to do and then which other command’s moves have to be sequenced with that, seems to be a point where some of this indecision occurs. Getting rid of this delay would, IMO, speed up games a bit, but not put pressure on players to move at a tempo faster than they are comfortable with. That requiring commands to move in a predefined sequence might also increase the difficulty of coordinating actions between commands seems like a bonus to me as this is historically a place where coordination was difficult.

(Setting out terrain, plans, camps, ambushes and initial deployment is also a place where some players can waste a lot of time, but I’m not sure of any elegant solution to this.)

[madaxeman]

Or it would just replace one opportunity to dither with another… maybe even many more ?

My bet would be that the sort of players who are prone to excessive indecision (usually because they are attempting to control everything in a game that has a chunk of randomness and luck baked into it) could even end up wasting even more time in trying to over-think the end of each move… so as to set up their commands to be activated in the next sequence in a way which avoided units tripping over one another.

You already have all of your opponents turn to work out which of your 3 commands you want to move first, so that should surely be enough  - and it’s pretty rare to find it makes any difference anyway…

Adding more constraints in one area would just push decision points elsewhere in the game…
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[Mike Bennett]

[MarkK]

[Ramses II]

I play Shogi (Japanese chess).  In Japan they use an elegant timing system. Each player has a set time on a chess clock to make his moves. After this point a player must move every minute or lose the game.

Perhaps we could adopt a similar approach (after the set up process). We would use Chess clocks for the normal time limit, perhaps 1 hour each, after which players would have a (2 mins?) period in which to complete their movements (monitored by the opponent), followed by a further (2 mins?) period to complete all shooting, melee, routs etc.

Thoughts?

[MarkK]

I’d probably add that Kevin is right in his original post: the principle behind activating one corps at a time is fundamentally flawed. Players are effectively being asked to predict the outcome of one move before they can properly assess what they want to do with the rest of their army. I’ve never quite understood why you couldn’t simply roll the CPs for each general at the start of the turn and then make moves between commands until all of them have been completed. That would retain the uncertainty of command points while removing much of the artificial sequencing.

The problem, as always, is men + age × wargamer and  I suspect the practical answer is that a clique will naturally form, with players gravitating towards others who have a similar approach and attitude to the game. Within a competition, of course, that isn’t always possible, which is where the problem becomes more difficult. A chess-style clock has certainly been suggested before, although as far as I know it has never been adopted.

[madaxeman]

In casual, club or FLGS games with no time limit, none of this is an issue at all 

In competition games it is usual to see 80%+ of all games ending in a decisive result - so unless anyone feels that an 80%+ game completion rate is unacceptably low, this is also not an issue either. 

The idea of making one very small change to the rules to try to fix a problem that doesn’t actually exist, and which would in any case have almost no effect (and may in fact have the opposite effect) surely isn’t really worth the pixels that have been expended on it already..?
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