Negating First Player Advantage

This way, players who go first will still have an advantage, but it may just offset the disadvantage they have put themselves at.

I can think of three ways of doing this in War Columns (all of them involving secret bidding rather than open):

1) Bid Supply. Pretty straightforward, as Supply is the primary resource of the game.
2) Bid cards from your hand. Each player would lay a card face down and the one with the higher supply cost card bid gets to go first (or even second, if he wants). I could even include a "blank" card that always stays in your hand, but has the same back as every other card. Thus, if you don't want to risk any of your cards, you could secretly lay down the blank card instead, but if you really want to go first you may have to sacrifice one of your best cards to try and guarantee it.
3) Seperate "bid" cards #'d 1-5 (or whatever). Each turn the players lay down one of their bid cards, with the higher # going first. You don't get your bid cards back until all have been played, so you'll have to play your '1' at some point.

These would work, I think. The only question (for all three) would be how to resolve ties. This idea goes high on my list, thanks. :)

Jeff K.

It's possible, but any action that results in the immediate removal of your opponent's card incurs significant costs for you, both in terms of supply (which you use to play cards, with stronger cards costing more supply) and in terms of your own Unit cards being "tired" or "exhausted", and thus unable to take any further actions for one or two more turns. The design of the game is such that you will not be able to throw down two very powerful cards in one turn, or even in two consecutive turns. You simply won't have the resources available to do so. Some cards have been shown to be too powerful in my playtesting (i.e. they make removing your opponent's Units too easy), and those have been either reduced in power or increased in cost (or both) to deal with that problem.

I'd prefer not to impose an artificial "immunity" on Units to save them. The main reason is that I want the game to have the feel of a battle in which no Unit is ever completely safe. If you want to protect a Unit (as much as you can, at least) you need to choose the time and its' position carefully. This actually reflect nicely the "Laws vs. Rules" thread found here:

http://bgdf.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4057

Rather than just saying "You can't remove that card because it was just played," I'd rather have the game system itself make it a difficult decision about wether or not you want to remove that card. In relation to my initial question in this thread, how can the system account for the natural advantage that the first player seems to have without imposing any "artificial" rules (such as "The first player cannot attack on his first turn").

Blind bidding of Supply and/or cards seems to be a good answer as it will incur a natural cost that a player may or may not wish to pay for that advantage.

Jeff K.

Actually, the game already has that rule. However, when the game starts each player lays down three cards (one in each of their three columns) to start. These do not start Tired (tapped). Another possibility would be for all of these cards to enter Tired and for the first player to skip their Refresh phase, which would effectively address the concern. It's not quite as "natural" as I would like, but definitely is worth considering.

Of course, I could also remove the rule where players lay down three Units before starting the game. That would certainly be a radical change, but not out of the question.

Jeff K.

I thought I'd give folks an update on this topic, since I considered the first player advantage to be the single biggest flaw in my game. I settled on two solutions, which seemed to work well in my last playtest:

1) Each player starts with 6 cards in play instead of 3 (i.e. 2 per column instead of 1 per column). This made it highly unlikely that the first player would be able to open a quick hole in his opponent's lines, which was the biggest problem with the old design (but not the only one).

2) Players now either get to move first or gain an advantage. There are "Turn Order" cards that are played every round (i.e. after each player goes once). The top half of the card says "Go first" and the bottom half states an advantage (i.e. +5 supply, +1/+1 Attack for all of your Units, Move a Unit, etc. etc.). In the current design, each player chooses from a hand of 5 Turn Order cards (both players have the same 5 cards). One of the two cards is chosen at random and then rotated face down until the top is facing one player and the bottom the other. The card is then flipped, and the player with "Goes first" closest to him goes first that round and the other player gets the stated advantage.

The other method I'm considering, using the same "Turn Order" cards, would be for one player to choose one of the 5 cards and the other player would then choose to either go first or get the advantage stated on the card. This strikes me as a bit more elegant, although we did find waiting to see which advantage was going to pop up, and who would get it, to be fun.

Thanks, I think it has real potential. The plan for the next test is to have whoever went 2nd in the last round pick the Turn Order card, and whoever went first will choose wether to go first or second. Thus they can either maintain their momentum or choose the advantage - also allowing the other player to go twice in a row. I think it should make for some interesting decisions.

Jeff K.