VwQ cards

A board for questions and discussion relating to Clarence Harrison's ECW focused rules which are growing in popularity. Please post here for questions and discussion relating to VWQ
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18th Century Guy
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VwQ cards

Post by 18th Century Guy » Thu May 02, 2013 9:04 pm

Clarence,

I would like to recommend that if/when you alter the cards in your rule set have them be more like what Maurice has. I do not prefer a card driven system where I have to wait for my card to come up so I can move a unit. We have horror stories here of people who never got to move during an entire game because of that system.

Maurice doesn't lock you in that way so if you're going to make changes to your system I'd recommend looking at how Maurice does it for the 18th Century and see how you can do that for ECW.

My 2 cents.
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Re: VwQ cards

Post by EvilGinger » Fri May 03, 2013 2:56 pm

Card driven systems work well if properly designed & with a limited size of deck indeed all of my favourite rules systems these days, with the exception of BLB2 are card driven.

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Re: VwQ cards

Post by 18th Century Guy » Fri May 03, 2013 5:04 pm

What would you define as 'properly designed'?

Like I mentioned, we have people who've played commercially available rules that are card driven and they sat for hours with no actions available because their cards never came up. Their unit cards were never drawn before a new turn card was pulled. Then the deck gets reshuffled and again, none of their cards show up before the game ends.

Any thoughts?
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Re: VwQ cards

Post by EvilGinger » Fri May 03, 2013 10:56 pm

I can any card deck based game needs to have regard to the probability of any given card being drawn. So you want to limit the number of cards in the deck or place repeats of cards you believe should be more likely to be drawn in the deck, but at the same time you dont want to have a very small number of cards in the deck as this makes its own problems with shuffling & counters drawn from a bag are better for that. You also need to limit the options on any card turn to limit paralysis by the player over thinking their options. The ideal range is 20-40 cards & two end of turn cards both of which need to come out to end the turn if you have one.

I also quite understand the trauma Piquet survivors have experienced

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Re: VwQ cards

Post by quindia » Mon May 06, 2013 11:59 pm

Sorry, gents... Haven't check in a few days.

I've never read Maurice - when I'm writing I actively avoid other new rule sets - I have enough old ones rattling around in my brain. It is very easy to see something new and think 'hey that works with my game'. Depending on the bits you end up with, your rules may start to resemble the inspiration so closely that you might as well have not bothered writing your own rule. I guess my rambling point is that I don't know how cards work in Maurice!

The current variation of the rules that are publicly available are design for 5-10 units, with 2-3 brigadiers, and a C-in-C per side. Yes, it is possible that a unit is stuck for an entire game, but at this scale it is very unlikely, especially if you use your commanders properly... You are not going to go many turns without drawing a unit, their brigadier, or the C-in-C. Players are sometimes struck by the other extreme - you can activate one unit three times in a turn if you are lucky!

But what then? You likely have one enthusiastic unit far ahead of the rest of your line and possibly now out of command range (or the rest of the brigade is out of command range and, yes, you may be at the mercy of the unit cards).

As to the horror stories of a unit not moving for an entire game, that might be more realistic than our units gleefully marching into the enemy guns. For me part of the fun of card driven gamers is coming up with the story to explain the run of cards. Have a unit standing around for three or four turns? Maybe the colonel's true loyalties lie with the other side. Brigadier's card seem scarce? He's been at the bottle again. A horse regiment boldly surges forward and then muddles around in charge range while being shot to pieces? They became mired in a hidden bog! The after action reports of these kinds of encounters read far more like a battle than the precision maneuvers some rules allow.

The published version of the game will have rules for larger games with brigade cards in addition to unit cards, rules for retaining cards in a hand rather than playing them as the come up, and rules for ignoring the cards altogether! The published version of the game is still a ways down the schedule, but one of these days...
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Re: VwQ cards

Post by EvilGinger » Tue May 07, 2013 3:55 am

a very interesting post the sentiments of which I entirely concur with, adding friction to wargames does enhance the game but can take a bit of getting used to.

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Re: VwQ cards

Post by Redmist1122 » Fri May 10, 2013 4:12 am

Like any other card driven game with unit not coming up due to a "reshuffle" card, simple get rid of it or as mentioned, use it like Maurice. The reshuffle card isn't use in the first play through of the deck, then added for the second run, then removed when it comes up again for the third and final play through of the third deck.

Seem simple to me, but could be missing something.

What do you think?
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Re: VwQ cards

Post by 18th Century Guy » Sat May 11, 2013 3:12 pm

Greg,

That just might do the trick. The other system always has you put in a reshuffle card so handling it like Maurice does and not using one for the first round sounds good. Thanks.
Greg
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