"New method for card activation" Topic

Reading another thread, and read something I didn't fully take in, but the brain went off on one.

Card driven games, you draw a card, then activate that unit. People complain about the lack of control/planning.

Has anybody tried
Have a hand of 3 or 4 cards.
Draw one
Play the card of your choice?

You'd either have to have a pack each, and take turns, or turn the top card, whoever's card it was goes, but your opponent would know what you had in your hand.

Thoughts.

This is done in board wargaming (with variations) quite a bit.

Son pointed out this was Memoir 44 essentially, but I'm thinking IABSM.

Want to really get into it. Deal each player 5 cards – high card takes the trick and get to activate any unit.

In a game where this was the case, I would place may high cards in the following trick order 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 1. As in higest card second and lowest card first.

Has anybody tried
Have a hand of 3 or 4 cards.
Draw one
Play the card of your choice?

Most (all?) of the "Command & Colours" series of games use that mechanic.

I'm definitely going to try this the next time I play IABSM…can't believe I've never thought of this

Thanks for sharing the idea

I use a system for starship combat where red is one side and black the other. You turn over 8 cards laying them in sequence from right to left and activate ship based on the lay. I justify it as giving an estimate of enemy action for this turn. It is sort of like the simultaneous PIP rolls in DBA.

It is sort of like the simultaneous PIP rolls in DBA.

PIP rolls are not simultaneous in DBA.

A method I like is from Triumph & Tragedy, where every unit/character has a card. You decide before the turn what order you will activate them, and place the deck face down.

Then both players reveal their first card, and activate that unit. Then their second card, etc.

I am using such method since 1990'.

The old Napoleonic rules In the Name of Glory did just that – you had various cards and could play one or more, so card management nicely modeled C&C efforts to lead a coordinated attack. While you;re planning your master stroke, other parts of the battle go a little quiet…

Fireball Forward already has a similar mechanism. You draw cards until you hit one of the opposite color, then you stop. So if your first pull is black (spades, clubs) you keep going until you pull a red card (hearts, diamonds). Then you must declare in what order the units you are going to activate are going, Then you activate each in turn. Opponent can do op-fire at any elements he can see move unless he is suppressed by fire beforehand. Works perfectly.

The boardgame Combat Commander used a hand of cards as suggested with various different options to play on each card. It works really well.

There are a number of random card draw games I'd like to convert to such a system. I'm currently fiddling with a C3 system for Rank and File that uses a hand of cards per player. Years ago I half-wrote a couple WWII grand tactical games that used a hand of cards as a way of providing a feel of logistics without complicated supply rules. Still working on that one…

A caveat to keep in mind: some players will complain they're playing a card game instead of a miniatures game. The more complicated the card activation system is, the worse the complaints.

- Ix

Major B, Guess I will have to read the DBA rules. We have played with simultaneous rolls for so long I know no other method LOL.

Also, check out Up Front. Card-based man-to-man WWII, and available on Wargame Vault.

I think this totally works, but I've never enjoyed the narrative it creates. It becomes about hand management rather than looking at what's going on in the battle :/

That system (having a small hand) is used as an optional rule in Muskets & Tomahawks, but that card activation works a bit differently – a card activates all units on one side of a given type for a certain number of action (e.g. all British regulatrs get 2 actions on one card)

Card driven games, you draw a card, then activate that unit. People complain about the lack of control/planning.

Well yes indeed, that's exactly why you have to use a hand of cards.

Holding a hand of cards has been around for as long as I remember card-driven wargames. It is kind of trivial, no?

You can also vary the hand size to reflect command flexibility, or reflect loss of a CinC or something like that.

In our house rules, we have experimented quite a bit with meta-effects as well:
- force opponent to discard cards
- use cards to modify other cards
- use cards to gain modifiers on die rolls …
However, such effects have to be used with caution, otherwise you run the danger of turning the wargame into Magic the Gathering.

I've tried several card driven games and while entertaining as games I find them somewhat lacking as simulations. I think that my problem is with how the decks are build; to be more precise: what you can do with the decks. The cards in many games represent too many levels of command and control. Depending on your hand, you might act as a CinC, a brigade commander or a humble colonel in command of a single battalion. In some games -boardgames, mostly- it is more important to win that you know how to manage your deck of cards than the actual tactical situation in the game itself; counting cards is more relevant than tactics (Combat Commander it is one of the worst offenders, in my opinion).

I like cards to introduce the narrative of the unexpected in a game. For instance, you have a deck of cards representing certain events that are relatively common occurrences in war; then, at the beggining of the turn the players turn the top card and apply the event. It can be things like "sudden squall", "foggy terrain", "faulty ammunition", "berserk rage", ecc.

I like cards to introduce the narrative of the unexpected in a game. For instance, you have a deck of cards representing certain events that are relatively common occurrences in war; then, at the beginning of the turn the players turn the top card and apply the event. It can be things like "sudden squall", "foggy terrain", "faulty ammunition", "berserk rage", etc.

Chance Cards as you describe have been around since Featherstone's "Wargames" in 1962 and possibly even longer!

If using this system for IABSM you will need to figure out a way to handle the "special" cards like breakdown or low ammo since they work off of the previously drawn card or the next card to be drawn.

I've tinkered with the idea myself, using something like For the People's card system. Each card is numbered 0 to 4. Each leader can activate on any card less then or equal to his rating and a platoon can be activated on a 0 card, choose to activate who it is to be activated, and then draw the next card (before handling the activation proper) – if it is a special card it will affect the just activated unit.

I have used this mechanic in scenarios. You can combine this with "action points" to get hand of five-draw two-play two or somesuch.

Adjusting the hand size is a good way to integrate younger players into the same game with more experienced ones. It has broken for me down once in the later tween or early teen range where a player wanted to play under the same constraint as the "adults", but then got frustrated at the lack of options. He ended up too embarrassed to back down in a later game, so we stopped using that mechanic that way. Which was OK, because in a couple years, all the kids were all functioning adults, anyway. I may get another shot at it when grandkids roll through.

For H&M era (or other pre-radio games), you can also try starting with a larger hand to start the game, and selecting in advance what the first 3-5 cards (depending on how much delay you want) will be. Put them face down as a list of "orders" that have been sent. You play the first card in the line then add to the end after your turn. This leads to some situations where you have a great plan to do certain things with some units, but the situation can change by the time the "orders" get there 3-5 turns later. It works best when there are specific orders that go with the activations -- panic sets in as you see your planned cavalry charge is now going to head directly into three artillery batteries your opponent just moved up.

As a mechanism, it might well work. However, for something like IABSM where both sides activation cards are in the same deck and players might get several activations in a row, I'm not clear how it would work, or how the 'tea break' would take effect. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it would not be a simple thing to implement.

I've used cards assigned to specific troop types, each side gets a color, each troop type gets a particular card type; I throw in the Jokers, one black, one red, and these allow each side an extra activation for the unit of their choice, when drawn. All cards are shuffled together, and then turned over, one at a time.

The fact that units are activated randomly, re-creates the randomness of battle. Plans usually fall apart once combat is engaged. I don't see a problem with this. It creates challenges, where your plans can change with each card turn-over. It creates tension, and drama: sometimes you get just the card you need, other times, you don't… I like that. YMMV. Cheers!

I've used cards assigned to specific troop types, each side gets a color, each troop type gets a particular card type; I throw in the Jokers, one black, one red, and these allow each side an extra activation for the unit of their choice, when drawn. All cards are shuffled together, and then turned over, one at a time.

That is precisely the mechanic used by Muskets & Tomahawks!