Also open to doing some play testing

I think it's worth trying.

Also, now you have a at least a few people on board. Do we bring this to a vote or something?

It is officially on the list for the balance committee to consider

I would be for it...for the same reasons Timmer put up.
Getting to the points total first shouldn't be the objective. Defeating the opponent was the original intent of the game and I think this helps get back to that...in the most logical way.
May not affect many games, but the ones it will affect are the ones it needs to affect.

Actually, in this game, originally skirmish battles were designed for that specific outcome. Competitive play was designed to defeat the opponents team. There were also separate objective style skirmishes designed for the other types of play: where you stall your opponent, have to acquire an item, defeat one specific character, etc. Those were not intended for standard competition play.


Part of playing the game. Either you hunt them down while the main battle is going on, or you hunt them down later. You want the full points, defeat the points...or a decent player will concede.
Keep in mind the 5 round rule...that should end those types of games very quickly. I'm sure the judge would award a full win.
And totally agree with the last part of that. A good player will know when to commit even the commanders into the fray. If they are left out of the skirmish until it's too late, then...well...it's too late.


Reserve squads are gimmicky but part of the game and a tactic to use...that's what it was designed for anyway. Just like everything else, you have to play around it. The idea of the rules is not to nerf every ability that goes against the "norm" in competitive play.


If the underdog squad can do that, then it deserves to win. If you are outmatched by a squad and you win, then either the dice went bad for your opponent or you just proved to be the better player. Not sure gambit will have a huge effect on that outcome...or at least it shouldn't if the other player is playing to win.


Boy can we all say that one!
Or...just blame it on the dice...

No way should the game be played on as long as pieces are on the table. Time limits are there for a reason. If someone is a slow player, the game could go on and on and on. It's bad enough to have to stand around for 15 minutes watching a slow table play their last round that they hurried to roll initiative for just prior to the end of time. If we played it on and on we'd be standing around for lots longer than the 15 minutes or so that we on occasion do so now.

60 minute time limits are fine, I could go for 10 minutes longer, that said, I think a bigger issue is slow play. If you are playing 4 rounds or even 5 depending on squad sizes in the 60 minute time limit that is a problem. More rounds mean a better opportunity to get a satisfactory outcome to the game.

This is not at all what we are talking about. Don't muddy the waters.

If this is really a concern, there is an easy fix. You must reach 200 kill points. You don't add gambit points in until after the game is over.

Easy.

The point of all of this is that gambit points shouldn't end games early.

Let me start off by saying that, yes, I do think that Tim raises a legitimate concern: I acknowledge that with our current gambit scoring system it is possible to reach 200pts while your opponent still has significant attackers on the board. And I agree that is not a preferable outcome. [Personally, I've found that in most cases the one who reached 200pts that way was probably going to win anyway, but still, I think that Tim's concern remains.]

However, I think the real question is, what is the BEST way to solve this situation? Tim's solution would address the problem, but I'm afraid it would inadvertently foster problems of its own:

--Gambit becomes irrelevant unless the match goes to time. This encourages slow play (or slowER play) on the part of the player who has more gambit points than his opponent, since the player with the extra gambit points has more to gain by going to time than his opponent does.

--It encourages kiting and non-engagement. Currently, if I'm in gambit then I don't care if my opponent wants to take 3-4 rounds dancing around outside of gambit, because I'm just going to win on pts if he doesn't engage. However, with the suggested rule change I don't have a way of forcing the issue if my opponent wants to play keep-away.

The suggested rule change would certainly prevent games from finishing (by reaching 200pts) before the outcome of combat has truly been decided. However, I think it would inadvertently create other problems, the chief of which is the encouragement of non-engagement strategies.


However, I think Randy made some very good points in his post, and either of them would be much better answers to the situation we're trying to address:

I like both of these ideas. They're both variations on the same theme.

If you think about it, gambit should only matter if 1 player is engaging (ie, in gambit) while the other player is not. The whole purpose of gambit is to force engagement, but if both players are already engaging, then gambit's goal has been achieved and so it doesn't need to be applied. [Think of gambit like a referee in a sporting competition: a referee should only need to interfere if the rules are infringed upon, and not otherwise.]

Therefore, here is my suggestion:

A player only scores gambit points at the end of a Round if he has a qualifying piece in gambit and his opponent does not. Neither player scores gambit points at the end of a Round if (1) neither player has a qualifying piece in gambit, or (2) both players have a qualifying piece in gambit.

Under this rule, the non-engaging player had better have something up his sleeve, because he's falling behind on points each round that he chooses not to engage. But as long as both players are in gambit at the end of each round, then the game CAN NOT finish before one player has defeated the attackers of his opponent, and that's simply because there aren't enough gambit points to fill the difference between the build total and the points already killed.


Imagine a hypothetical scenario, where 2 players are actively engaging in combat. Player 1 was able to get to gambit in Round 1, but Player 2 joined him the next round. Both players have remained in gambit the whole time.

--Using our current ruleset (both players score 10pts at the end of each round that they're in gambit)...after 6 rounds of play each player has a lot of gambit points (60 and 50), which allows one of the players to reach 200pts while his opponent almost certainly still has at least a couple of significant attackers left.

--However, under the ruleset I've suggested in this post...then Player 1 has only 10pts of gambit over his opponent, which means that if either player reaches 200pts it was because that player has eliminated all of his opponent's main attackers. If at some point Player 2 defeats all of his opponent's pieces in gambit, then Player 2 would start gaining 10pts of gambit each round until Player 1 was able to re-engage.


BOOM! This solves the concern that Tim has raised. And it also still encourages active engagement (rather than non-engagement).