"Examples of Gameyness " Topic

Our wargaming group was sitting around planning what games to sign up for at the upcoming Historicon when the conversation somehow drifted to the topic of "gameyness"; examples we've seen or experienced or – shameful to say – practiced ourselves over the years of exploiting absurdities or logical inconsistencies found in some miniature wargaming rules to gain a playing advantage. A good example of what we mean by gameyness is the "Rockettes gambit" which has become legendary in our group.
Many years ago several of us were playing an ACW miniatures wargame presented by another group at a nearby convention. We were playing the Union. The game was going well when our opponents marched the Confederate "Stonewall brigade" forward to reinforce a bridge position we were
attacking. Formidable unit but we weren't too concerned. The Stonewall brigade was some distance down an impassable stream and would take at least two more turns to march to the bridge to dispute our crossing. We expected to have taken the bridge by then.

Instead, the Stonewall brigade marched up to the bank of the stream and then proceeded to sidestep all the way up the stream until it reached the bridge covering enough ground in the process to justify the belief that these Virginia boys were riding in Bradleys. Howls of indignation rose from our side as we disputed such a move. Our opponents calmly pointed out the section in the rules that said that a unit could freely move laterally to negotiate an obstacle. An impassible stream is certainly an obstacle and, since the rules said nothing about how long the lateral move could be, the move was legitimate.

Choked with rage, one of our players roared; "You've just turned one of the world's finest fighting forces into the Rockettes!" The picture of these Confederate soldiers linked arm and arm high kicking their way across the Virginia landscape like the Rockettes as they danced across the Radio City Music Hall stage – lead by Stonewall Jackson himself – reduced us all to fits of laughter. When we recovered we promptly acknowledged defeat and joined a 30 Years War miniature game just starting up nearby.

Does anyone else have a similar gamey story they'd like to share?

There are always ways to 'game'. But I'm not sure the example you have given is an example. Based on your description, wouldn't that just represent an order of "Right (or left) wheel. Quick march!" ?

The figures are fixed to the bases and can only face one way, but soldiers aren't. Of course, how quickly troops can move over various terrain and in what formation is an important part of any ruleset.

There was the time where my JagdPanzers were outflanked, and not permitted to fire, despite being in an ambush position to do so, since flank movement by the attackers was permitted down the edge of the game board. Pivoting in place is considered to be movement in these rules for Jagdpanzers and other assault guns, and despite the fact that they could pivot in place and fire into the flanks of the enemy, they weren't allowed to do so.

I could buy a hefty negative modifier, but that rule is just silly.

Due to the movement rates of the vehicles in relation to the gun firing ranges, my 88mm cannons could not fire at the rear of the rapidly advancing tanks which were running away from me. I had to continue to try to pursue in order to get into range to fire at the "advancing/fleeing" allied armor.

Seemed rather daft at the time, and still does to this day.

"Gameyness" is another term for what I call "playing the rules instead of playing the game". The term "Rules Lawyer" encompasses this behavior as well.

Old WRG WW2 rules, guys used to turn around and fire their bazzoka's to the rear, thereby killing the enemy with the back-blast

We had a player voluntarily rout a perfectly good cavalry unit 27" forward, through his opponent's lines, to sieze an objective when he rallied it at the start of the his turn.

In an earlier edition of WHFB, I once took a large mob of Hobgoblin Wulfboyz and changed their formation, deploying them into a single column that stretched out almost 4 feet from the point where one corner of the original formation was, and in the process of making this line, had it snake around behind a couple enemy formations that were being charged, cutting off their retreats. I'd have felt guilty but these were hobgoblins. I cheat when I play them too.

Worst case though was when playing FoW. We were having a discussion while setting up a game about how ludicrous their rules were for robot explosive devices. It was universally agreed that these were entirely overpowered and broken…and then one player had the s to secretly include several of them in his army list (and borrowed my miniatures to wipe out a Soviet Company with one). That was the last time I ever played a game with him.

I keenly remember a board game example from the game Supremacy. You are allowed to move freely from land transports and vice versa. This lead to one fellow setting up his transports to relay his troops all down one coast. Now this is nonsense. But the whole gaming group just accepted this and the game was played this way for ever on. They didn't consider it "gamey"

I can't have been alone in playing WRG 5th edition Ancients, having a light cavalry unit evade and my heavies to follow up, only to be hit in the flank by a unit placed at 90 degrees to the battle line?

"and despite the fact that they could pivot in place and fire into the flanks of the enemy, they weren't allowed to do so."

This sounds like the good old old Spearhead pivot rules. In these cases order changes and/or breakoffs are your friend, espeically for the mighty Germans who can change orders without penalty.

Anyway, gameyness, WRG 25-50 bazookas have already been mentioned.

Buttocks of Doom in DBA/HoTT? Although I regard these as good tactics, it does require millimetric placement of the participating units.

Attacking empty hexes in Third Reich to get 'free' armoured exploitation? Again, to my mind, good tactics but YMMV. My particular favourite was exploitation/abuse of the 'bridgehead' rules (funny how many 'bridgeheads' ended up on objectives) and the unbreakable defence of the Westwall involving stacking the four biggest panzer corps plus the German and Italian paras in fortified objective hexes with interlocking ZOCs. Couldn't be pushed out by attrition,could never be cut off, and tripled on defence were virtually impossible to attack, unless the allies really wanted to risk losing their entire airforce on a 1-1 attack.

Advance movement in Squad Leader. Hexes which were impossible to access by normal movement in one turn suddenly found units 'teleporting' in by the magic of the advance move.

In Fire and Fury. Brigade X facing Brigade Y within firing range. Brigade Y sidesteps to the right and around the Brigade X's flank so that two or three stands get the flank bonus during their firing phase.

Yes the Brigade X can fire, but the odds of disordering Y are very, very low. Essentially Y moves across the front of X. Wouldn't happen in the real world; and certainly in the real world Brigade X would refuse it's flank…

But, as the rules laywer argued. Brigade Y is allowed to side step, X can't refuse the flank, so I get to move unmolested onto your flank.

By the way…the side step is key here. This does NOT represent a brigade doing a right face, marching, and doing a left face. Under the rules this would expose his flank to Brigade X's firing, which would be double effect. By side-stepping, he remains facing Brigade X and avoids the flank penalty, while moving onto X's own flank.

Imagine your brigade standing still while a thousand enemy soldiers SIDESTEP around your flank.

GW's Epic 40K: I invented the Rhino rush. After the Space Marines jump out of their Rhino transports, the Rhinos are pretty much useless so I had about 10 of them charge a Titan. In close combat the defender fights against each attacker in turn, and each extra attacker gets an extra +1 to their roll so +1, +2, +3, etc. I also played the Chaos card of something like "Horrible Stench", which halved the defender's close combat bonus. I think I lost 8 of the Rhinos before they took the Titan down.
Absolutely slimeball tactics I will admit. It was worth it to see my long-time opponent have a fit of apoplexy over it though. ;>

"Old WRG WW2 rules, guys used to turn around and fire their bazzokas to the rear, thereby killing the enemy with the back-blast."

LOL on that one! Obviously a fault in the rules, but I have to blame the players more than the rules. A 'we don't do that' house rules seems to be the fix!

I'll set the scene, Normandy 1944, U.S mixed combat group V a German kampfgruppe. The Germans of which I was one, had managed to set up on favourable ground ahead of the advancing U.S forces. We(the german team) had deployed a couple of 75mm ATG's in good positions covering the expected lines of the U.S armoured advance.
Imagine our surprise when the U.S armour entered the table, with each tank being lead by a one man crewed truck positioned in front of each AFV acting as cover. ( these were promptly nicked named the 'Red Bull' Suicide Express.
When questioned the U.S player stated that the rules didn't say that he could'nt do it.

Pheasants – disgusting birds and as gamey as Hell.

I issued slings to my first edition WH40K space marines allowing them to chuck grenades 18" on the table. Cheap buy in the weapons list that alowed for an overly effective grenade barrage in the game. Rogue Trader rule book.

Also invented a gattling teleporter with a homing beacon. Don't remember all the specifics but it sucked to have your troops anywhere near the thing.

SURELY some sort of common sense has to come into play? If someone was THAT gamey I would just never play a game with them again, and explain on the spot why.

"In Fire and Fury. Brigade X facing Brigade Y within firing range. Brigade Y sidesteps to the right and around the Brigade X's flank so that two or three stands get the flank bonus during their firing phase.

Yes the Brigade X can fire, but the odds of disordering Y are very, very low. Essentially Y moves across the front of X. Wouldn't happen in the real world; and certainly in the real world Brigade X would refuse it's flank…

But, as the rules laywer argued. Brigade Y is allowed to side step, X can't refuse the flank, so I get to move unmolested onto your flank."

This is where people surely have to have some sort of common sense? It would also not say in the FoW rules that you can use a UFO.

Why do you play games with people who are such obvious manipulative, win at all costs morons?

"Imagine our surprise when the U.S armour entered the table, with each tank being lead by a one man crewed truck positioned in front of each AFV acting as cover. ( these were promptly nicked named the 'Red Bull' Suicide Express.
When questioned the U.S player stated that the rules didn't say that he could'nt do it."

In Warmaster, it never specifically says anywhere (that we could find) that when you did your moves, you couldn't also move your opponent's troops. None of us ever tried using this but it might have been a fun one to pull at a tournament just to watch your opponent explode.

"Imagine our surprise when the U.S armour entered the table, with each tank being lead by a one man crewed truck positioned in front of each AFV acting as cover. ( these were promptly nicked named the 'Red Bull' Suicide Express."

Standard tactic in lots of WW2 games, use trucks for recce and forming blocking positions. This started with Panzerblitz.

Fixes include things like making trucks worth loads of VPs, using proper OBs, restricting their comms ability, 'Im not obeying that order, sir' etc.

You'll always get some plonker who puts a truck up the road as an ersatz recce unit though. That is why you cover your AT gun screen with infantry outposts.

There was a guy who would deploy his cav fairly close--but not to close--to you and he would have the cav facing away from you. It was for Naps or SYW (been too many yaers ago). He derived some kind of benefit from this and is a good example of playing the rules and not the game because what he did was not tactically sound, nor did it conform to the tactics of the period.

Throughthegap…you are correct. Unfortunately this was during a F&F tournament, too. I played in a few F&F tournaments and then gave up on tournaments entirely…way too many rules lawyers looking for gimicks like this.

A WWII set – might have been Operation Warboard – any troops who also carried a side arm would dump their automatic werapons because there was a – side arms always hit rule at close range.

So, put down the BREN gun, pull out the Webley….

"In Warmaster, it never specifically says anywhere (that we could find) that when you did your moves, you couldn't also move your opponent's troops. None of us ever tried using this but it might have been a fun one to pull at a tournament just to watch your opponent explode.

I have yet to find ANY set of rules where it specifically states that you can't move your opponents troops. I think that's pretty much understood by anybody with half a brain. Glad you guys never tried it!

I think the worst thing I ever did in this regard was during a game of the old SPI board game "A Mighty Fortress" (30 Years War). The rules only allowed troops to be embarked on ships at a port, but they could be disembarked on any coastal hex. I had made an alliance with another player to transport his armies in my ships to attack a third player. Once I had his armies on my ships, I disembarked them on Corsica, which had no port, thus marooning them. The game limited your total forces to the counters available, so he couldn't build any new armies, the rules didn't allow him to voluntarily destroy his old armies, so he was out of luck. My armies marched into his undefended capital and won the game. I still feel a little guilty about that one :)

If everyone who either ran into this situation with someone in a wargame (or admitted that he had done it himeself) responded, this could be the longest thread ever!! Every wargame ruleset has real,or perceived, or manipulated glitches. Every wargame has players that are prone to, or at least tempted to take advantage of them sometimes! It is universal, and is either handled well or badly by local customs!

ummm 20thMaine, that is good tactics, small easy to manouver weapon against big automatic weapon that takes a while to manouvre. Unless the enemy is charging down the barrel it is a good rule.

Operation Warboard was also where I met my favourite rule for the first time.

No Passing, if an enemy unit moves from cover, to cover in his turn, and you have a weapon covering the gap between the two points of cover, you may fire at them.

Stopped you neing invulnerable just because it was your turn in a igo-ugo system.

Gameyness – Warhammer…

A WWII set – might have been Operation Warboard – any troops who also carried a side arm would dump their automatic werapons because there was a – side arms always hit rule at close range

How close was this "close range"?

Griefbringer

Under DBM you could use war waggons as bridges. As the war waggon had such a deep base all you had to do was place it straddling the river. As other troops could interpenetrate war waggons from front to back any element that's move took its edge onto to the war waggon base even if by just a mm or two would be instantly transported to the other side and no penalty for crossing a river.

Interstingly, in his very first game of BKC a Noob I was teaching dropped his towed Pak 40's where he wanted them and sent the trucks off on a suicide charge.

I suspect the Trucks as fighting troops thing is a newb issue – we see them for what they are, a noob sees them as playing pieces.

Pat

A WWII set – might have been Operation Warboard – any troops who also carried a side arm would dump their automatic werapons because there was a – side arms always hit rule at close range

How close was this "close range"?

Griefbringer

I'm going to have to check – it wasn't hand to hand. I think it was also useful when clearing bunkers because whilst your automatic weapon would fail to hit the guys in the bunker the magic pistol could (if you got close enough)

I'm going to have to check – it wasn't hand to hand. I think it was also useful when clearing bunkers because whilst your automatic weapon would fail to hit the guys in the bunker the magic pistol could (if you got close enough)

Dear old Operation Warboard

p98; rule 14 Pistols: maximum 5cm, and always hit in open or inside building; always miss if cover involved. No die to be thrown"

Snipers are pretty handy too.

On the topic of noob moves, a friend of mine decided, during his first ACW game, to charge a Rebel corps with the Iron Brigade – "because I can hit them in the flank" – which was over about half a mile of open field in full view of the aforesaid corps

Didn't go very well for the Iron Brigaders

For many years now I have had a simple solution to opponents who are gamey: refuse to play with them again.

In any wargaming group/club the natural result of this is that the rules lawyers end up only playing each other and the regular gamers can enjoy their hobby in peace.

Silly gameyness from Warhammer fantasy. Theres a tomb king item (casket of souls) which potentially damages everything with a line of sight to it. Fast cavalry are formed but can shoot 360 degrees. So, get close to casket and turn your back to it. You dont have a line of sight so no damage from spell, but you can still shoot at it.

And from WAB. For some armies putting a priest in gives them the hatred rule, making them all but unbreakable. However, the priests are generally pretty easy to kill. So, form your unit in 2 ranks (and therefore very wide), and turn your back on the enemy. He cant get to the priest to kill him until he's killed an awful lot of your troops. You can thus block up to 1/3 of the board with one unit.

Never seem either of these used in a real game, just discussed in a lighthearted way as a rules exploit.

I've got 2 examples of gamesmanship for your records. I use In The Grand Manner for my Napoleonic games and a Russian player used a technique similar to that used in the first item. Russian Batteries have 6 gun models each on a 2" wide base so the whole battery has a 12" frontage. The battery can move 6" and requires half a move to unlimber. The player in question would unlimber the battery and deploy to the left in one move and then limber up on the left hand gun and unlimber to the left again thus moving 12" each move!
Another incident involved a refight of Waterloo. The Allied rear right flank had various fields placed on the table. These were fairly far apart so as to allow figures to move between them. Overnight an Allied player had moved them closer together to prevent French cavalry squadrons(8 figures wide) to pass between while allowing British (6 figures wide) to move freely! Very naughty. I'm still scarred by it 20 years on.

Johnny Reb One a bunch of years ago. I was Union attacking up Missionary Ridge in Tennessee. The Confederate plalyer pushed his unlimbered artillery pieces off the ridge and wanted me to take a "fear of charge" morale check. I offered to take a laughter check.

The DFWIrregulars have a house rule.

It's called the "Stupid Check".

Try it out next time!

My old club used to regularly suffer from elite killer suicide trucks being used to screen the armor. We just put a lot of VPs onto them or made losing trucks cause morale checks.

Of course one guy hated morale checks- he didn't like his playing pieces doing something other than what he wanted.

But he's the same guy who wanted to crash a perfectly good helicopter gunship into a bridge because it had used up it's ammo and was going to retire off board.

There was a version of DBM where you Normans could walk up off their horses, then when within range, go impetuous, automatically mount up and charge on horseback.

There are quite a few gems from DBM but I think that takes the cake.

I remember a recent Check your 6 game where a japanese player was getting a beating at his Bettys, one of them received a result of engine damage which reduced its speed by half.

The rules said the damage would happen before the next "move" phase he argued because it was after the "move planning" phase he could plan a complete move and make it effective because the planned move would use the previous speed thus the reduced speed would be implementeted by him after the move phase. This was important as if he made a complete move the plane would escape the combat area and then get to bomb.

After a heated discussion he agreed when even the other players in his side agreed it would be gamey and he should reduce the movement for that next phase, and the plane got downed, btw.

Another game of Battleground WWII, an american squad goes fanatic so the rules say they should charge the closest enemy. A corporal jumps into an empty Halftrack and then uses it as a bulldozer to roll over and crush all germans in sight. We changed the use of Halftracks and smashing over infantry after that game.

You learn a lot about people's character in a rules argument.

In defense of gamey play, those of us that play in the spirit of the rules and try to play for realistic results should not fancy ourselves as entirely normal.

If you were playing Monopoly with your kids and got into an argument about how unreasonable it is to go to jail simply because of a bad roll or how the rates on St James place are unrealistic given the location of the utilities and railroads nearby that should drive down land values, you'd be considered a loon.

For some players, there is nothing evil about their approach to gaming. They honestly believe that the measure of a gameplayer is how good he is at exploiting the rules to his advantage. To them, that is how one plays in the spirit of the game.

I was in a game of Mein Panzer at last Fall-In. Cold War battle, I had Germans and Brits vs. Soviets. Centurions and Leopard I's vs. T-62 and T-72's. My opponent was one of those players who take an inordinate time moving their units, you know, they take so long you go over to observe what's going on at the adjacent table, so my patience was already at low ebb. He would place the his 3 tanks in each platoon side-by-side-by-side, and basically move them as one 3-tank unit. Which I had no problem with, until they come around my flank. I have several shots at the sides of them, until he points out that other units block line-of sight. Meaning I could easily kill the closest of the three, but the others were blocked by the intervening unit – giving the other two tanks in each platoon impenetrable ablative armor.
At which point I lost any patience with the man. The first time in 20 years of game conventions that I yelled at an opponent. I finished the game – just sacrificing my units to get it over with. I was really interested in the rules, until this guy – which losing my cool contributed to -put such a bad taste about them. ODGW had just lost a sale…

"Our opponents calmly pointed out the section in the rules that said that a unit could freely move laterally to negotiate an obstacle. An impassible stream is certainly an obstacle and, since the rules said nothing about how long the lateral move could be, the move was legitimate."

While the distance traveled might have been excessive, the real world order given would have been "right (or left) face. Forward. March." It literally takes 30 seconds at most for a unit to go from a battle line marching forward to a column going sideways. As far as the distance, this is why I always game master house rules versions of any rule set. The GM decides how far they can go, not a poorly written static rule.

For some players, there is nothing evil about their approach to gaming. They honestly believe that the measure of a gameplayer is how good he is at exploiting the rules to his advantage. To them, that is how one plays in the spirit of the game.

And many of them grow up to be politicians!

Yeah: I've played against people who have actually read the rules and then, damn their eye's, played a game against someone so they have even practiced! I hear the Australians do this in Cricket and the New Zealanders do it in Rugby. Ought to be banned!

I've had a sequence of two "crapola" sets. In the first in a 7YW scenerio, I was commanding the right flank of an attack (there was one third of the board unused to my right) and the oppoent almost ran off the board when I pushed forward. Dah, after two moves of this, I pulled back, refused my right flank to a hillside with clear terrain to the front, sent out light horse in that direction and <<surprise>> a big flank attack came in over the (scale) 2 miles to my right. Somehow this was ruled a "surprise" and artillery couldn't fire on it, nor infantry fire on it until contact. They got blown away anyway and new rules were generated to try to salvage the attack.

Case#2 was a 2-5 outnumbered Union attack on a line of hills. There was a solid intrenchment at the base of the hills and clearly units on top of the hills. I struck at a gap in the hills (the way the orders and forces were set up, I was going to get creamed but hey sxxx happens). Opps, suddenly a line of Johhnies showed up in clear sight in the gap. ((starting scenerio said they could have hidden setup behind the "line of hills"-- but not behind the line of the hills)). After getting that settled (you should be able to see troops in clear sight), I got another heartburn. The oppoent marched troops from behind the hills, then "adjusted" their formation into a line, and then brough another unit out, moved the first unit sideways to mae room for them them etc. etc. It finally wound up with the same result as the original "deployment". Units wound up moving 3-5 times their road march bonus movement to get into the gap. (Sxxxx there was no way the Union wasn't going to get clobbered without any such help)!!!

Sad to say, I just decided to pick up my pieces and go home. Didn't play with that set of axhwholes every again.

Hope we don't have such people around too much to kill the hobby.

"upstate" new yourk

"While the distance traveled might have been excessive, the real world order given would have been "right (or left) face. Forward. March." It literally takes 30 seconds at most for a unit to go from a battle line marching forward to a column going sideways"

As I recall, the Stonewall Brigade did not change facing. If it had, it couldn't have used the free lateral move which didn't allow a facing change. The brigade remained facing the stream and side-stepped the several miles upstream to the bridge area. Thus the Rockettes chorus line comment.