by Keith
February 12th, 2013This is the first in a series of articles I'm going to attempt to write about Card Driven Games in wargaming. I want to avoid confusion that I mean card games like Deckbuilders or CCGs, or LCGs, or whatever other games may be out there that feature cards prominently that fall outside of the wargame genre of these titles.
The beginning ... for me ...
My first CDG was Twilight Struggle. I heard great things, thought the cold war setting was pretty cool, and enjoyed reading through the endless threads about whether it was a wargame or not. Most of all, I played and had a great time with the game.
I'll use it as a way to help explain the rest of this article. When a player first encounters a CDG they get exposed to a different way of thinking about the game they're playing. The time limits look different and players must learn to measure actions against the total number of actions available to them.
In Twilight Struggle, for example, has 10 turns during which you get 6 or 7 impulses. So, between two players there's 134 total possible actions throughout the game if it goes the full length. You're measuring each of your 67 actions against what it costs you to move the ball forward so to speak. It's a different way of thinking about a game because instead of measuring spaces on a map, or proximity to a location objective, you're measuring the play of cards as a function of time. It's your least malleable variable within a game.
This is generally true of other games like Paths of Glory, For the People, or Here I Stand. You're always looking at potential hands of cards versus what's in your current hand. You're not necessarily as laser focused on the stats and matchups of units, though CDGs like Empire of the Sun might be a bit different in that regard.
In addition to this new measuring stick for the evaluation of progress or success within a game, you're also buried underneath the events deck(s). In Paths of Glory, you have smaller force specific decks. In For The People, you're looking at a GIGANTIC deck from which you're drawing. You are simply not going to see every card, nor understanding their importance, value, or ideal play within your first plays.
What's more? You may have an evolving understanding of board position and relative card value that reverses over time! I've rarely been in front of a traditional hex and counter wargame where I didn't have at least something from a previous game to draw upon as a strategic guidepost for a given situation. In fact, it's one of the things I've come to cherish. There's almost a shorthand to specific settings and genres once you've played a variety of them. For example, using a fixing force and a flanking force in a game with ZOC can be a handy tactical shorthand you might fall back upon when encountering a new game.
The cards simply demand your attention and what's more? Those cards offer you a variety of optional ways to employ them. Typically this breaks down into an Ops or Event usage like Twilight Struggle or Washington's War. However, a game like Paths of Glory requires you understand much more about the cards because they feature more options for you to use them like reinforcement points and strategic redeployment.
Playing the cards often has the option to wholly consume them and remove them from the game or put them back into the draw pile for later consumption. This choice, and weighted value of each card, can only be learned through repeated play. Therein, lies the incredibly difficult part of the learning curve.
Card Driven Games are generally easy to learn the mechanics for play. Sure there are exceptions or difficult mechanics that take a little learning, but overall someone can teach you a CDG. The difficulty is in understanding the cards. That said ... I'll detail my thoughts about the Tiers of CDG players within the learning curve spectrum.
TIER 1 - The Newbie
This is someone who has purchased the game or been introduced to it with a handful of plays under their belt.
Newbies often struggle to remember the killer power cards in the game and don't have a handle on the relationships between he network of locations on the map.
The combination of lack of card knowledge and unfamiliarity with the board locations creates almost random play. There's a strategy that's being employed, but it may wander from being on the right track, to ignoring critical locations or strategies that must be employed for self preservation.
I think about this as the US player in For The People. The CSA can, and will, take Washington if you don't manage the mid-Atlantic well. Even if you do, it seems like the CSA is knocking on the door in the early game. Location knowledge, and card distribution help remedy this for many players and even out play a bit so it doesn't feature the wild swings in momentum and territory acquisition.
Newbie players struggle to understand why strategies fail and to see the subtle uses of cards. Often the splashy event is taken of a more conservative and appropriate redistribution of forces using that card's Ops value. I am often guilty of this one. I always assume that I'll never see that card again or that my opponent is going to sucker punch me with something like it so I should take the first swing. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case and setting the strategic position should be a priority and I fail to see it until I'm too disadvantaged to catch back up!
This can be really pronounced in a game like Washington's War where converting states and locations is the name of the game. If you start to get behind, things can begin to fall quickly for you. Thankfully Washington's War, at least in my limited experiences, isn't as punishing on mistakes as something like Paths of Glory.
TIER 2 - The Intermediate
This player has played the game and understands the board positions and scoring. The relationships between the locations are critical and knowing, for example, what river hexes in For the People are important to control compared to others only comes with repeated play.
This person probably has somewhere between 15-20 plays under their belt. They have likely memorized all the card, or are at least very familiar with the card distribution to the point where they can plan for and against specific plays or gambits within the game.
At this level, for example, a player is probably beginning to understand specific openings. From what I understand (because I'm a total newbie) Paths of Glory has some very specific and successful openings that you either see and react to, or you end up getting rolled. Likewise, Tier 2 players can sustain momentum throughout the mid-game. They're able to convert on territory gains and offer opportunities that trap their opponent or at least shake the opponent off their momentum.
The real weakness is consistency. A Tier 2 level player likely doesn't have the repetition of play to have seen the variety of combos that cards may emerge. They still may not understand the value of events vs. Ops in the way that a Tier 3 player may see them. I always think about a quote that Enrico mentioned on the Guns, Dice, & Butter podcast where he said that the top tier guys in Paths of Glory at WBC basically say that they're playing against someone who's taking 1 Ops they know they're going to win. Not only that ... but if a player takes a SINGLE 1 Op play they can defeat them.
That margin for error is incredibly small. It's my belief that games that have been around for the length of time that Paths of Glory and For the People have been around ... you're going to have folks who simply know those games better than the designers. They've lived inside the game's mechanics that they're merely replaying already won situations whether they've won it or someone else has won it against them.
TIER 3 - Top Level Players
I will say this. Top Level Players are not all sharks. Sharks are their own category and are not discussed herein. I want to differentiate right off the bat and say that the people who can win on the slimmest of errors by their opponents are sharks. I would consider James Pei a shark at FtP & TS for example.
A tier 3 player has somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 plays under their belt. Not 50 regular plays mind you. 50 plays against opponents who know how the game works, the deck is played, and the cards affect the board position in any given scenario.
I can't really say too much about these folks because ... in all honesty ... I've never met one. I've never played against one.
I can only speculate based on WBC results and suggest that their understanding of the game, at worst, is beyond what most scholars know of their subject matter. These are players who not only study the game, but also study other players and the strategies that are popular within any given year to understand how to counter it. Where a Tier 2 player may be able to replicate a popular opening or maneuver within a game ... a Tier 3 player can adapt on their feet quickly enough to either anticipate the move or creatively, and successfully, invent a solution that leaves them in no worse position in the long haul.
The learning curve is very steep, but for those with the interest and commitment to stick it out ... WBC awaits to continue the player's growth or to spank some humility into them!