I just play casually with my friends so it's usually kill 'em all. We tried gambit a couple of times when A&E first came out as we were trying to find ways to speed up our games but in those games where we tried it it hadn't really sped up the game. By the end of the hour or whatever time we had alloted it was always just when we were getting to the real meat of the game where blaster bolts would go flying, heads would go rollin' so we just ended up nixing the Gambit rules.

I'm sure in tournaments it works out fairly well as a format but thankfully, when I get together with my friends, no one wants to just camp in a room for too long. Someone might spend a few rounds charging up a character's Force Points or healing them after initial contact, but not to try and win the game by lock out or whatever...

I'm realy surprised at the amount of Kill'em all vs. DCI. To hear people talk I thought gambit would've been 85%.

I thought that too. It mite be though that a lot have not voted yet or mainly go to the WOTC site. For me Kill'em all is how the game was ment to be played.

OK, well, here's your problem then. If you play with Gambit consistently, and you know, that at the end of one hour, the game ENDS, then after playing this way for a while, your games will speed up. If you're playing slow enough that you barely get to the heavy fighting by the end of an hour, you really are playing pretty slow. Which, if you're just playing casually with your friends, is no problem at all.

If you want to try speeding up the games though, I suggest you impose a time limit, and whether you use Gambit or not, the game is over at the end of that time limit. After a week or two of not finishing any games in that amount of time, people should start to improve their playing speed.



Why?? The question asked was specifically what do you play when you're not using DCI rules. Sure, Gambit is a nice way to force engagement. But, if I'm playing a 'friendly/casual' game with somebody, and they decide they'd rather win by lock-out or camping, then I go find somebody else to play with. Hiding in a room or pulling cheap tactics is far from a 'friendly' game in my book.

Heck, half the time in our DCI competitions at the LGS if somebody pulls a lock-out (like, Overrides the opponents whole squad into the Rancor pen or something) then I usually give them a hard time and tell them to play the game out, instead of taking the cheap win. Of course, if that person would get slaughtered otherwise, then I'd probably just harass the other person for being stupid and letting themselves get beat by a lock-out, lol.

I play kill em all outside of tournaments.... and inside of them. At out LGS we have never had a tournament with gambit in it to my knowlege. Poor me with no gambit experience.