The Tao of Gaming

Anyone interested in Card Driven Wargames should read Chris Farrell's discussion on deck size. I've been thinking about this, but hadn't posted detailed thoughts. Well, now I have a reason...

Let's stick to multiplayer games. Chris's idea to trim the deck are good. In fact, I was thinking about the general problem — Some events will need to be country specific, but are unlikely to ever wind up in that countries hands. There are a few ways this has been solved:

• If you play an opponent's card you get the ops, they get the event. This is part of Twilight Struggle. Mandatory events do basically the same thing in Here I Stand. But in Twilight Struggle, you go through the deck three times, wheras in HiS, you see 1/3rd (or less) of the deck each turn, but reshuffle each turn. Even if the event appears, your opponent can confound it by timing the card right.

• Home Cards. Each country's special ability is theirs. But this removes the element of the unknown. I know that the Turks have Janissaries in their hand. This reduces fog of war.

• Each player has their own deck (Sword of Rome). Not bad, if done right.

• Diplomacy. If people could trade cards, that would help. Here I Stand allows for random draws, but only in one direction. I haven't played enough to know if I'd like straight trading better, but that would seem to be more elegant.

• Timed events. If they aren't played by Turn X, then they get played between turns. A kludge.

For two player games, individual decks, or a deck that adds cards as the game progresses (or both) provides a nice pull. Twilight Struggle got this right, even if they got the cards wrong. But for multiplayer ... let's think of other mechanics that can solve the problem.

Chris raises the point of putting special cases in rules, instead of cards. I'd personally rather have less rules and keep the special cases on the cards, but given the rules complexity of these games .... well, it's moot. So, other ideas:

Instead of specific cards, you have tracks. This is actually explored in the comments of Chris's post, and I think it's a good idea. Rather than have 5 Cards (A, B, C, D, E) that progress you along, you can have three cards that say "Progress along the ABCDE track". A good idea.

You must give player's their cards. After cards are dealt, everyone passes Player X any of 'his' cards. Anyone who has too many cards throws them into a pot, which is then dealt out to players who have too few. I think this idea could work well. It also gives players some limited intelligence, in that one player knows that the turks have Janissairies this turn. If you don't reshuffle, and deal out 1/3rd of the deck each turn, you'll eventually get your cards.

Each player has their own deck, but there's a neutral deck, too. I think this could work well. Very well. This allows for very different powers, more than can just be captured by home cards (or even Here I Stand style mats), but creates large fog of war. Done right, an elegant system here. Let's imagine Here I Stand in this way. Each player has (say) a 10 card of their own, and a fifty card deck of neutrals. You reshuffle the neutral deck each turn, because it's stuff that could have happened whenever, but you don't automatically reshuffle the 'home decks.' Suppose that each player draws 2 from their own deck each turn. Now each player will cycle their deck twice. Of course, you can tailor each player to draw more (or fewer) cards from their home deck, or allow the player to choose (within some limits).

England's deck has events related to the succession, the Papacy has counter-reformation cards, the turks get piracy and spiffy combat cards. Everyone may get a "hose your hated enemy" card or two. The neutral deck has the generally useful "Mercenaries run away," "Bad Weather," combat cards, and whatnot. If you want, it may have cards thad push towards the endgame, but not for any particular player.

I suspect the 'home decks + neutral deck' option strips pages away from the rulebook, puts players more in control of their destiny, and keep people from having a hand full of "opponent's events."

One other point, Chris talks about keeping the Op Balance of the deck the same. Obviously Op balance matters, and in thinking about it, I realized that the games have maybe missed the point.

In the original games, you had generals of 1, 2 or 3. You need a card of that number (or greater) to activate the general. So a 3 card could activate anyone, but if you kept using them for "Ops," sometimes you'd use that 3 card just to activate Washington (Hannibal, whoever your stud is). So a '3' card is better than a '1', but is it three times better? That depends ... were you planning on activating your stud, or did you need to activate that Red Headed Step child in the flanks? It depends on the situation. In Paths of Glory, it's how many spaces you can activate. A three is certainly better, but given trench warfare, it may be a touch less than three times as good. In Twilight Struggle, it's how much influence you can place. And, if you are placing influence, it is clearly three times as good. It may be more, since a '3' coup against a high stability country is much better than three '1' coups against the same country.

The point is thus — as the games evolve I think designers may lose lost sight of the numbers. If you are just using them for general activation, then 1, 2 and 3 are fine. But if you 'spend' them, then you want to restrict some of the wilder swings of card draw luck. In that case, perhaps you want the deck to be 2, 3, and 4. Or 3, 4 and 5. [One of Tom Lehmann's games, in fact, uses cards of value 4, 5 and 6. Two cards are always better than one]. I don't think that Twilight Struggle got this wrong, but it's something to watch out for in design. [And Here I Stand allows ops to be spent in numerous ways]. This presumably gets noticed (and tweaked) in playtesting, but it's a design issue I thought should be mentioned.

Update: Fixed some formatting issues.