Wargaming activities were limited this past week due to a trip to Wellington, New Zealand, with the wife to catch up with our adult children and celebrate a birthday. While waiting at the airport and travelling on the flight I was thinking about the use of chance cards in my wargaming. I do enjoy using using chance cards in my wargames whenever possible as a means to easily add friction and uncertainly to my solo gaming. My go to approach for using chance cards is from "One-Hour Wargaming" by Neil Thomas, where a chance card is drawn during each player's turn. (As an aside the cards also help me track the game turns.)
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| A medieval game setup with the chance card decks for each player in the foreground. |
A chance card is drawn by each player at the start of their turn. The cards are divided into three categories:
- 5 neutral “no effect” cards that have no impact on the game.
- 5 negative cards that introduce unfavorable effects to a player.
- 5 positive cards that provide advantageous outcomes for a player.
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| A player’s chance cards |
- 5 x no effect on the game
- 2 x initiative cards that enable an addition action
- 2 x rally cards to reorganise an number units
- 1 x enemy panic card which causes hits to be applied to an enemy unit
- 2 x no ammunition cards that limit the number of units shooting
- 2 x confusion cards that limit the ability to move units
- 1 x panic card where a friendly unit must take additional hits
However, one of the challenges of using chance cards is as the game progresses one can soon determine the likelihood of good or bad events occurring, and what they may be, based on the cards that have already been drawn from the player’s chance card decks.
While waiting around doing nothing at the airport, I was thinking through some different ways to address the predictability of the cards as the game progresses, while keeping the balance between players. To help minimise the ability to predict cards I landed on this approach and tested it out this weekend.
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| Step 1 - Add additional positive and negative cards to the player’s chance card deck. |
Each player as 8 negative chance cards and 8 positive chance cards. Essentially I just added 3 extra cards one for each type of event described on the chance cards. Players shuffle their negative chance cards, then select 5 cards taking care not to see them. They then do likewise with their positive chance cards. These cards are then added to the 5 “no effect” cards and shuffled to create their chance deck. Repeat the above to create the other player’s chance card deck.
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| Step 2 - Shuffle the positive cards and discard 3 leaving 5 cards. Do the same with the negative cards. Then combine the 5 positive, 5 negative, and 5 no effect cards into one deck and shuffle. |
This approach provides both players with equal distribution of negative and positive changes, but they cannot be sure of the type of change. Having played a couple of games I am quite tempted to add a “no effect” card into each group of 8 positive and negative cards so there would be chance of only having 4 otitides or negative cards. This will create unbalanced chances for players, but nothing too drastic.
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| Another photo of the game to wrap up. |
This is a terrific solution to the Chance deck problem, especially if you want the distribution of Positive and Negative to remain in balance.
ReplyDeleteIt has worked out in the games played so far, and I will be continuing playing around with the cards a bit more in the coming weeks.
DeleteHi Peter, I got a little lost there :-) would it be worthwhile moving the cards to a dice run Random Events Chart, that way, random chance is reset every time a roll is made.
ReplyDeleteOn 2 x D6, I have 6,7,8 as no events and then I order events within the remaining numbers in an order of power / effect, so the most effective events are located as numbers 2 and 12, the weaker ones would be located as numbers 5 and 9 etc.
For example, event 11 might be a headquarters has come under fire and this turn all units of that HQ will be out of command - Roll D6, 1 - 3 this effects the German player, 4 - 6 the British player.
Or event 2 might be one commander on the field has been hit by sniper fire, randomly select which leader is hit by rolling a D10 for all commanders in play. Re-roll any drawn results.
I have a generic random event table for each period, but can tweak them to suit a particular battle, so for example on the first day of Gettysburg, Reynolds (Union) was hit by a sharpshooter. I could include that as a potential event or say, ‘a leader is hit by a sharpshooter, roll D6 on a 1-2 it is a randomly selected Confederate leader, on a 3 - 6 it is a randomly selected Union leader.
Anyway, didn’t mean to labour the point, rather just suggesting that dice systems auto re-set chance before every event roll.
I like your approach using 2D6, and particularly the way you adjust for specific scenarios. I am planning to use the chance cards for other events such as weather and reserves where I want the event to occur at some point during the game. I hope to post more about this in the next few posts/weeks.
DeleteOtitides? ;o)
ReplyDeleteNow you’ve got me thinking about event cards. Have you considered varying the effect of the cards by the progress of the battle? Count up lost units on each, only those that matter (e.g. ignore artillery etc. in ECW) and if there is a difference roll a d6. A side with more losses must beat the difference to use a +ve card and a side with fewer losses can ignore -ve cards if their die roll does not exceed the difference. This way the flow of battle affects the armies, those losing becoming more demoralised and those winning more encouraged - hopefully it’s not too overpowering an effect.
Another idea would be to add a third deck for the scenario containing historic events?
A few things to ponder. With historic events my initial thought would be to switch out one of the cards, or even a no event card, with the historic event for the side that either benefited or was to their detriment.
DeleteGreat idea.
ReplyDeleteThanks. So far the approach seems to work well in the games played.
DeleteClever adaptation of the mechanism Peter.
ReplyDeleteChris/Nundanket
Hi Chris, I do enjoy using chance cards and the different way you can apply them. Thanks, Peter
DeleteI think both approaches - the chance cards and the event table generated by a dice roll - have merit! Will be interested to see where your thinking takes you next Peter - and I hope you had another enjoyable visit to Wellington!
ReplyDeleteWellington was fun with lots of board games played with the family as a whole. Next up for the chance cards is incorporating external events such as rain of fog.
Deletei haven't played many games with chance cards, but they seem to work best when the players have no idea what's in the deck (or at least only a vague idea). Thats a nice idea though to help with the randomness of it (if I followed it completely). Time well spent at the airport. 😁
ReplyDeleteYes, the idea is to help with the randomness while keeping a balance between positive and negative events for a player.
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