Reply To: What do you like in a skirmish game?

[blinky465]

I love skirmish games. I love card based activation and resolution.
One Hour Skirmish Wargames by John Lambshead is brilliant. (https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/One_hour_Skirmish_Wargames/x4ivDwAAQBAJ)

Cards just feel more “strategy” to me. Like you just play the hand you’re given. Dice feel too “random-y” and “out of control”.
If things go right/wrong when you’ve played cards, it feels like you can take ownership of it – it’s because you’re a brilliant/rubbish strategist and you played just the right/wrong card at just the right/wrong moment. For me, dice just feel too much “in the lap of the gods”.

Yes, I know flipping cards is random too – but really well designed card-based games usually let you draw two or three cards, from which you decide which one to play; the fact that a deck of cards has “memory” means even a card that returns a “fail” result will have future impact – because the cards you returned/discarded will have an immediate effect on future draws.
I could probably bang on all day about why cards are infinitely better than dice for a strategy-based game but maybe we keep that for another discussion!

WYSIWYG weapons? Like it (though using proxy/alternative minis is sometimes nice too).
Weapon types determine dice (either shape or number) instead of complex look-up tables? Like it.
3′ x 3′ is ok. These days I love any game that can fit on 2×2. I think 3×3 is about my limit but it has to be a really well laid out board for it to feel worth it. Especially with such a relatively low mini count, there could be lots of open spaces on the board. I really, really hate large, blank open spaces.

If this were played on a 2 x 2 board, it sounds like exactly the kind of game I’d want to play!

• This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by blinky465.