NickName wrote:
Grand Moff Boris wrote:
Honestly, Tanner, do you really think that Gambit as it exists today "forces the action?"
Over no gambit? Absolutely. It's a huge huge difference. Could be better though.
Here we agree. I just don't believe that Gambit as it is utilized today is the Gambit Rob intended. I talked about this some in one of the other threads, but let me expound on it some here, too.
At my LGS, I pushed Gambit once we started running sanctioned events. I kept up with point totals. I remember a few games from a couple of years ago where we'd be going along and suddenly the round would end and I would say, "I win," to the shock of my opponents. Playing to the build total was something they didn't understand. And I remember this happening at a few convention events as well, where suddenly I reached the build total and the game was over, even if I was losing based on the situation with combat. "Do you want to play it out?" was a question that was commonly asked.
It took about 6 months, but eventually the people I play with got used to the idea of Gambit, and one of two things began to happen:
1. Players started building squads that were designed to do nothing except score points.
2. Players became less inclined to engage early, instead opting to wait until time was about to run out and then rush to get a "come-from-behind" point victory. Sometimes this strategy worked and sometimes it didn't.
I adjusted my playstyle and squad building decisions accordingly. At my LGS, I tend toward Superstealth/Cloak/Tempo control options when I am playing a serious game. Even when I'm making a goofy build, I still try to include at least one of those elements. I may not go cutthroat but I'm not going to play something that gets steamrolled, either.
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If it did, we wouldn't be having this very heated discussion about how the point scoring system has slowed the game down.
Hm. I thought we were having a discussion about minor tweaks to improve the fun and fairness of the game in the DCI environment.
It started out that way - as a discussion to "improve the fun and fairness of the game" in DCI, but I don't think that is still the focus of it. Look at what people have had to say. (And I don't just mean my posts, either.)
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And I don't really think that the scoring system is the cause. As we've agreed before, it's a confluence of things that resulted in the current situation. I would say the more relevent items (within the realm of our control) are player decision-making speed and the difficulty in engaging highly mobile squads due to overly open maps. These things weaken, but don't eliminate, the value of gambit.
(I think there's a relevent argument in saying gambit could be changed in some way to overcome the map issue, but I think it will likely be more difficult to find a working solution, more complex, and harder to predict the full repercussions of the change than just limiting the maps.)
Here we agree. Gambit is still necessary IMO, but the sentiment expressed by some people who have posted is that scoring points is not the true spirit of the game. I just can't agree with that based on my understanding of the floor rules, watching how people play, and how new players have honed their skills at this game. I've personally seen the game go from a setting of - OMG what is Gambit and what did you mean you just won even though there are still figures on the board - to "What's your score now? And my score is (X). Okay I can win this round if I can just get to Gambit."
It's a fundamental shift in thinking that has taken place at the national level. I do agree that its in situations where games go to time that it is abused, but as someone else said, if Gambit is little more than a killbox from one side or the other, well then I'm not sure what the solution to that is. We can all toss out suggestions that try to retain the spirit of fairness, but at the end of the day, it's next to impossible to say for sure if any of these ideas are the "light-bulb" solution.