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GeekNights Tuesday - How to Not Suck at Taking Your Turn
Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the finer points of taking one's turn in another installment of our long running series: How to Not Suck. It turns out there are ten simple things one must do to take one's turn in a timely fashion.
- Ask rules questions immediately
- Pay attention to the game
- Consider moves when it's not your turn
- Recognize when a decision is arbitrary
- Recognize when a decision is effectively arbitrary due to your own lack of processing ability
- Develop directional heuristics
- If in doubt, maximize the simplest available positional heuristic
- Use pattern recognition to develop heuristics
- Learn mechanical skills (e.g., shuffling cards)
- Develop a gaming lexicon
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Post edited by Rym on
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When I poop is determined almost 100% by what I ate and how long ago I ate it. I can calculate more or less when the poop is going to happen. I don't know how Rym can poop like clockwork.
That Street Fighter X Mega Man thing looks astounding! I cannot wait. The last Mega Man I played was 4 and I beat all of them up to that point. I am torn. I'd trade off that weird, arbitrary rule for all the other cool stuff that comes along with living in a European country.
The Star Crafts were, are, and shall remain adorable. Le Havre? Never played it so meh.
I have not watched Utena and I have no desire to but I did watch the first of the videos. The use of clips seems fairly heavy. Wouldn't cutting back on those reduce production time?
1. Ask rules questions immediately
I will, at times, act even when I'm unsure about the rules. If I'm wrong, I assume the table will correct me if I'm incorrect. Obviously this only applies to games I'm learning.
I'll also ask rules questions to, in effect, stall for time or throw them off my scent. "Can I do X?" when i have no intention of doing X.
2. Pay attention to the game
Derp.
3. Consider moves when it's not your turn
Yeah, this is really basic stuff. It's even more helpful even if you insist on thinking a lot. By helpful I mean it will make the rest of the players less likely to strangle you.
4. Recognize when a decision is arbitrary
Do you mean "effectively arbitrary"? In isolation, everything matters. It's kind of the point of having the rule/mechanic in place to begin with.
5. Recognize when a decision is effectively arbitrary due to your own lack of processing ability
I think most choices would boil down to this, if you're playing a game for the first time. Scott tangentially mentioned that you shouldn't try to cram so much learning into one game. This is also a great anti-strangulation technology.
I do always spend a great deal of time talking after a game and breaking down what went well and what didn't, obvious mistakes, etc. I really don't like it when people finish a game and just walk away but that's just me.
6. Develop directional heuristics
This would only apply to playing the same game over and over. It may be possible to boil down mechanics in this way, as well. An example of this would be deck thinning in card games. It's extremely powerful and you should pretty much always be doing it. No game I am aware of punishes you for having a thin deck.
7. If in doubt, maximize the simplest available positional heuristic
"Keep it simple, stupid."
8. Use pattern recognition to develop heuristics
Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're asking that people not only pay attention but also LEARN from doing so? But seriously, this should come naturally. If it doesn't, maybe other mediums are better entertainment for you.
9. Learn mechanical skills (e.g., shuffling cards)
Willful ignorance of something like this is annoying. I sometimes game with people who have physical handicaps and can't do certain things but in those cases, I have no problem helping that person out.
10. Develop a gaming lexicon
Familiarity will always help in a learning curve. If someone plays enough games and likes doing so, this is something that should come naturally as well.
Back in the "prime" of my Magic playing days, I'd attending the weekly Friday Night Magic and I'd bring tournament level decks. It got so that if I walked in, the players and organizers would try to bribe me into not playing or if I did enter, they'd basically hand me first place prizes.
So in response to that, I decided to make a deck based around Battle of Wits. I played it to a combined 18-1-1 record over about 6-7 weeks. The kid that forced the draw was so happy and the loss was to a land clump that was 7 cards deep.
It basically took the same deck composition proportions (22-24 land, rest non-land) and had every tutor, lots of card draw and really efficient removal for permanents. It was hella fun to play.
Picture a game of Ticket to Ride. If one guy is sitting at the end of the table with all of the cards, and people are asking him to pass cards down twice per turn, he's not going to be able to plot out his moves. The game will hit a speed bump when it comes to his turn.
Put those cards where everyone can reach them. Don't be a lazy ass and ask for help if lifting your butt a few inches would let you reach a piece you need to move. At worst, rotate so that you always ask the person to your right (who just went) to assist, not the guy who is about to go.
This is probably a rare case. The TtR example jumped out at me but now I can't think of another one. TtR turns can move blazingly fast, except when you really need to think something out (selecting new routes, deciding between two color choices that will set future strategy). If everyone else just takes two cards off the top of the deck, you get very little time in-between turns, so bookkeeping would definitely be a drag.
Which is similar to the Rym "I'm Soooo going to lose" strategy of trying to get everyone to kill Rubin and not keep screwing him because he has no chance, until he suddenly does and wins :-p
Sometimes the player is made to choose between equally effective options. Sometimes the player is presented with options that are not equal, but all the heuristics in the world will not be able to determine which one will be better than the other. In these cases, choose randomly. Part of being a good gamer is quickly recognizing these decisions so that you do not waste mental energy on them.
I move much faster than most of the people I play with and I win a good amount, but not ALL the time. IIRC, I am 4-0 vs. Scott Rubins in competitive games and I'm 5-1 with Ryms.
You are playing Stratego. Where do you put your flag? Do you put your strong units near the left, right, or middle channel? If you don't cheat, this is a rock/paper/scissors arbitrary decision.
Other arbitrary decisions exist when there are two random choices. You are playing Ent Decker there are many huts you can choose from. If you are the first to go for huts, and you have not yet been able to peek into any huts, which hut you go for is an arbitrary decision. It's like choosing whether or not to go in the left door or right door in a dungeon where you have no clues pertaining to what is behind the doors.
The third kind is the two equal options decision. Let's say you play a game of Settlers. You get to place the first settlement. You have no idea where other players will place their settlements. There are two spaces to choose from that have the same odds. Maybe one is 6,5,10 and the other is 8,9,4. The first one is brick/brick/wood and the other is rock/rock/wheat. If you pick the first, you are going to play a game with a brick/wood longest road strategy. If you pick the second you are going to play a city strategy. Either of these strategies give very good and perhaps equal chances of winning. It doesn't matter which one you go with, so just pick one quickly.
Perhaps you could analyze the entire board to find some reason that one spot is better than the other. Maybe one of them is one spot closer to a useful port. Maybe you know your friend likes wood, and this spot is better for blocking off his wood access. Maybe one spot is near the desert so other players are unlikely to block your road early in the game. These things might be true, but if you consider all of them, the other players will be very annoyed with you taking so long. The amount of time it will take you to decide is disproportionately long compared to the very small increase in your chance of winning, if any.
We've been playing Carcassonne, and I think we've pretty much gotten it down to as fast as we're going to be able to. There's a barrier in the fact that you can only plan so much when you have no idea what tile you're going to draw on your turn.
We're considering doing a thing where you draw your next tile as soon as you play one, so you can be coming up with your next move during the other peoples' turns. Dunno how that'll work out with the Expansions, but I don't think it'll negatively impact the base game too much.
Also this episode is one of the many reasons I don't like playing games with some of Jeremy's friends.
Don't get me started on people at the Blackjack table who think they are kings b/c they memorized the probability chart, and get belligerent when a newbie makes a dumb move, "tainting the deck" and causing everybody to get different cards than they "should have gotten."
Let me first say that the proposed change could just as easily add time and not shave it. Suppose you draw a tile and you have the perfect spot and the player before you takes or otherwise spoils that spot. Now you go back in to the tank and have to figure out a new spot.
Yes, I'm aware that if you play according to the maxims put forth in the "How to not suck taking your turn" episode, that's minimized. However, the fact that the episode had to be made is telling that not enough people do such things. There is something to be said for playing a game "as presented" in order to avoid having to explain such rituals and changes to those outside of your group.
In effect, by making such changes, your making the air hockey situation that much worse for yourself. That may or may not be a factor for you but you do run the risk of alienating or running off people for it.
I say this because I made a change to Lords of Waterdeep and now 4 people refuse to play with me because of it. That change? The half crescent is worth 4 and not 5. Nothing in that game costs 5 and everything is in increments of 2! Because I made a completely irrelevant change, I've scared away some people.
It wasn't specified if the pre-drawn tile is public or private but I'll assume private. To add so much public info would require another couple of paragraphs but I trust anyone here reading this already knows a hint of those implications. You also create a situation of trying to read reactions of people as they pre-draw their tile. It is potentially useful information that must be accounted for.
Sir Matt, the opportunity cost of having the mere chance of drawing "your" tile cannot be ignored. That also allows for your hated taking of "someone elses" tile. Don't think it's a keystone to my argument *twitches* but it is a real thing that does exist.
Forgive the lack of any follow through on this next point because I just rolled out of bed and am still waking up... On a general level, you're breaking information availability. Knowing what tile someone else cannot draw because you have makes your intellectual load easier in a spot where you really shouldn't have that luxury. Saving time, perhaps, but also changing the flow of information from the game to the player.
To sort of wrap up, it's an interesting change that I'd be willing to try if everyone at the table knew going in and was ok with it. Note I never said it was a "bad" idea, just that it was a signfigant enough change that I'd have to hurdle past before giving it a go.