"Pure point systems promote team games?" Topic

So, I played a giant 300 point team game of X-Wing last night, and it got me thinking about the way games, and I, have handled army building using points in respects to team games and balance.

What I learned from X-Wing, and perhaps a lot of the clix games too, is that a purely points based system has some very unique advantages.

This is opposed to systems that have points and some kind of force organization chart in an attempt to further restrict the strength of powerful units via arbitrarily enforced rarity.

Now I understand the need for force org charts, or other systems to enforce rarity, since it allows for interesting and fun power units to be created without upsetting the overall game balance.

However, pure points helps drastically for team play, where players can just drop into a game with whatever they have. There's less worry about teammates having doubled up on force org charts, getting extra numbers of those powerful units.

Of course, pure points also has its own problems.

I'm trying to think of a way to combine both methods to create a system where it's extremely easy, and thus common, for players to create balanced teams and play.

without upsetting the overall game balance.

to create balanced teams

What is this obsession with "balance"? What do you mean by "balance" anyway? I have played in many team games that didn't use points at all.

Please don't start that discussion about using points or not.

Balance is, to my game, being able to pre-make some army lists and head to a store blind to play pickup games with friends and acquaintances without worrying about being mismatched.

Doesn't matter if you like point systems or not, this discussion involves them.

If you want a light force structure system to supplement your point system, why not develop a light force structure system?

I'm guessing X-wing already has "sides" Republic/Separatist or Empire/Rebellion, likely. Could you break it up into "factions" within the sides? Rather than having a rigorous set of rules for combining units and unit/subunit composition, just say these 10-12 ships are Faction A, those 10-12 are Faction B, and so on. Only allow a small amount of overlap among factions. Of course, X-wing could likely do well with a "merc" faction … one ship each from all the other factions.

Then build to points within your faction.

A good host (and a good player who has lots of toys) should always a have a handful of ready to go teams so someone who comes in with the Just-Us League can play with what they have and the other players can shift among the options.

Dear Major B.

Ahhh… you're asking one of the most dangerous questions of all that goes to the very heart of the assumptions behind gaming.

I didn't think he was making the case based on balance as some sort of "fairness," but rather based on the ease with which new people can jump into a game, even strangers who hadn't planned on playing a game that night can show up and agree on a scenario and get playing in a few minutes.

To be fair, though, we're also talking about games that have very few figures on the table, so it's always going to be easier to do ad-hoc games.

If you had a pure-points system for something more time- and figure-intensive like Ancients or Horse-n-Musket, then you'd still need more time.

I like the idea of factions…we do that in an annual War of the Roses 'tournament' (OK, just a bunch of us get together and fight two or three rounds of battles, with the winners picking up the losers' forces until there is only one). He probably has about 15 factions to pick from, and you get your pick depending on when you get to the house.

All are equal in "points," but he provides a point system for those who want to build and bring their own force. This is one of the few times where we use points -- the others are the annual Epic Sci-Fi game where you bring 2000 or 2500 points and the annual Warrior game -- funny, the annual games use points while the others are just usually some sort of historical matchup without points.

Points provide at least a bit of a framework for balance, but for pick-up games, with our folks, as long as you're close, that's OK. Tournaments, that's a different story.