Attacks don’t help the discussion, nor do they help improve the gaming experience of Axis and Allies fans, whether online or face-to-face (FTF).
Full disclosure: I’m a friend of Greg (Smorey) and (Matilda) Mike, and I’ve been a regular attendee of Greg’s FTF Axis & Allies tourneys at Origins and GenCon since 2003. A long time ago I played by e-mail (PBEM) on the TripleA War Ladder, but now my only “online” A&A play is limited to PBEM using TripleA software to practice for the FTF Anniversary Edition (AA50) tourney at the two cons.
Greg’s AA50 Tourney Rules - OVERVIEW
- To address Scarapis’ question, these rules are not arbitrary, nor are they thrown in “for fun.”
- As Mike pointed out, the AA50 rulebook states, regarding both Phase 1: Research & Development (R&D) and National Objectives (NO), “Note: This is an optional rule–players should decide whether or not this phase [rule] will be included in their game.”
- So, strictly speaking, playing by the “rules, concept, or intention of the game” (quoting Gargantua) would require the two teams playing each game to decide on whether R&D and/or NO will be used. Some would agree “Yes” to one or both, some “No” to one or both, and others would disagree. In the latter case, in a tournament format, who decides–roll a die? This is unacceptable, or a tournament organizer would allow the very arbitrariness that Gargantua, Scarapis and others seem so stridently to oppose.
- Therefore it should be clear that a tournament organizer must decide which, if any, of the two optional AA50 rules will be used in ALL games of his event. Before I talk about R&D and NO, though, a bit about the other rules Greg has for his events.
Greg’s AA50 Tourney Rules - BID, TIME LIMITS, VICTORY CONDITIONS
- Bidding: simply put, two teams show up for a game, and there has to be a fair way of determining who plays which side. Rolling a die would be OK if the game were perfectly balanced, but it’s not. Bidding allows a team to pick the side they want to play. You may prefer bidding up or bidding down, but Greg’s way has worked for 19 years, so I see no need to change it.
- Time limits: unless you want to limit a convention tourney to 1 game a day, you need time limits. Greg’s limit of 5 hrs 45 min (+15 min as needed to complete a round [end of U.S. turn]) seems to me an excellent balance between allowing enough time for the game to reach some level of authentic development, while still allowing him enough time to fit in two rounds per day (and still get a bit of sleep each night!).
- Victory Conditions: default AA50 victory condition is “Surrender With Honor,” that is, one side controls 15 Victory Cities (VC) at the end of the U.S. player’s turn. In a 6-hour game this will hardly ever happen. So then, how do you determine a winner? There must be rules, and just because they are not in the rulebook or on WOTC’s website does not make them arbitrary. Currently, victory goes to the side controlling the most VC at the end of the time limit (i.e., at completion of a U.S. turn). Game starts 10-8 VC in the Allies favor, so Axis must do some legwork. In event of a 9-9 VC tie, the tiebreaker is most IPC points of controlled territories. This seems eminently logical to me. Game starts 93-78 in Allies favor, IPC-wise (Chinese territories not included, since they’re not part of Allied income). So, to win, Axis must net pick up a VC AND some IPC’s worth of territories. These conditions make sense to me and are black-and-white, so no need for adjudication, which is key to avoiding messy hassles.
Greg’s AA50 Tourney Rules - R&D and NO
- Gargantua, you are misperceiving Mike’s comments. They are most certainly NOT “the first stone…thrown from your court.”
- Some context: it’s spring 2009, AA50 just came out the previous winter, and Greg is charged with running an AA50 tourney at Origins and GenCon that year. So he had some homework: to determine what would be victory conditions and time limits and whether to use R&D and/or NO or not. Remember, those last two were OPTIONAL rules, the game had just come out, and he has to pick a uniform tourney format that has the best shot at being balanced and enjoyable.
- So Greg consulted with his fellow A&A fans, including Mike and me. R&D was a no-brainer: we’d already experienced the lopsided games that earlier versions of weapons technology create in previous versions of A&A, so we quickly ruled that out. Tourney players accept that there’s luck in the game, but they also bank on the idea that, over time and games, luck evens out, and the skill of the players, more often than not, will determine the winner. R&D throws that out the window, potentially allowing many more games to be won by less skilled players merely because they got a lucky R&D roll.
- As for NO, our decision not to use them had nothing to do with thinking ANY A&A players were incompetent or couldn’t think or strategize. Some more context: the longest tourney rounds Greg had had up to then were 3hr 45min for the Mega (Revised) tourney or 4hr 45min for that same format but in a Masters Invitational tourney. AA50 comes out with a 6th country, bigger board, more spaces, more units, more stuff to think about. We’re playtesting about 1-hour rounds. 3:45 is nowhere near enough time, and even 4:45 was thought to maybe only allow 4 rounds of play in a lot of games, especially with it being new to everyone. We felt strongly that a good game should be at least 6 rounds, and 5:45 was the time limit, but even then, we knew that newer and slower players might only get 5 rounds in. Bottom line, we perceived the effort to incorporate NO into tourney play to involve significantly more than 3 minutes over the entire game. We figured an extra 5-10 minutes PER ROUND that NO would cause. Realize that the game had just come out; some people would be playing for the first time that summer. People would not have NO memorized, so at end of each turn, not only the active player is checking for all 3 NO for his country, but the opposing player is also asking to see the card, and double-check him. Moreover, add in extra time each turn for a player to read his NO to make sure that his combat movement, etc., is in line to achieve one or more of them, etc. No, we didn’t think people were dumb! We thought people would be unfamiliar enough with the freshly published game that NO would cause games to be one round less in length, i.e. only 4 rounds in some cases. Context: per Greg’s end-of-time rules, in AA50 you cannot start a new round with less than 45 minutes left on the clock. This helps avoid situations where people are in the middle of a round, even after 15 minutes of extra time, and the game has to be called when it’s not the end of a U.S. turn.
Examples[given total time allowed = 345 min, and can’t start a new round with 301 minutes or more played]:
a) newbie/slow play = 70 min rounds; 4 rounds = 280 min, so they can get to 5 rounds
b) newbie/slow play+NO = 77.5 min rounds, 4 rounds = 310 min, so they CANNOT play 5
c) regular play = 60 min rounds; 5 rounds = 300 min, so they can get to 6 rounds
d) regular play+NO = 67.5 min rounds; 5 rounds = 330 min, cannot get to 6 rounds
So I think Greg made the right call. Now, it’s 3 years later, many people are very familiar with the game, and some games are getting to 7 rounds, including last year’s GenCon finals. So, could NO be added in now and still allow games to get to 6 rounds? Yes, probably. But now it’s a whole different question: do you want to change the tourney format that’s been in play now for the 4th year straight? Influence on that decision has to come from feedback from players who play in the tourney. On the one hand, maybe it adds some additional excitement, strategy and “newness” to the game. On the other hand, now 4 years of playtesting and moving up the “learning curve” might take some backward steps until this new balance (with NO) is understood and melded into one’s strategy.
In any case, Gargantua, whatever views you might hold, and strongly at that, there is a way to communicate them that is not belligerent, belittling and arrogant. Here are examples of phrases you used that I perceived to have one or more of those traits:
- “If you’re not competent enough to calculate NO’s…then you SHOULDN’T be playing Axis and Allies.”
- “…is a far more effective means of running the tournament…than perverting and changing the rules of the game on a whim.”
- “For the record, you have NEVER HELD an Axis and Allies Anniversary tournament, because you’re not even playing by the rules, concept, or intention of the game.”
- “The compelling reason to change your tournament format and play the game properly, is just that, to play it properly.”
- “The question that should be asked…it’s 'why did people feel compelled to strike sections of the rules, because they were too lazy or inadequate to understand them.” Hey, just my opinion, but this sounds like the kind of personal attack you were crying foul about.
- “Kudos to you for hosting…a large Axis and Allies Tournament…but don’t half-a$$ it.”
If you continue to use this language to make your points, then in my opinion, you don’t deserve to be taken seriously. And if this is the attitude you’d bring with you to GenCon or any other con, then I’d thank you to stay home and play your games online.
BushidoBlitz
