To Be or Not to Be

Sorry this one's so late! Guess I underestimated how much of my time school would take up. To stop this from happening again, I'm going to reduce my posting schedule to twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. That should be easier for me to stay on top of. Anyway, here's the article.

#8 - Battle Line:

Commitments are tough. We're all scared of them, in one way or another, whether the commitment is to a partner, a job, a pet or a wedding invitation. It's always risky to put your whole weight behind a decision. Committing too early or too strongly can be dangerous: you might break up or lose your job or end up living with a tiger rather than the tabby you thought you were getting. Games are especially good at reminding us of the dangers of commitment. Do I start down this strategic path or leave my options open? Do I make my big play now or stall to see what my opponent does? Decisions about commitment are some of most interesting ones to force on players because of how they can lock you into or out of a strategy.

Battle Line, my favourite game by the prolific Reiner Knizia, is a great example of how games can play with

issues of commitment. Its setting works particularly well for this: both players are generals, sending out troops, trying to win several battles that take place, predictably, in a line. This immediately makes

commitment a focal point for the game. We're all familiar with images of generals huddling over maps, deciding where, when and how they will deploy their troops. A wrong move – too many soldiers this way, a flank left open at the wrong time – can cost lives, battles and wars.

Battle Line lives up to this theme with simple, elegant mechanics. Like the general whose persona you embody, you've got a limited number of troops. These troops are represented by cards in six colours, number 1 through 10, which both players draw from a communal deck. You start with seven cards and each turn you play one – sending a troop out to one of the nine battles, represented by little red pawns – and then draw one, replenishing your supply. Like real soldiers, how you arrange your cards is extremely important. Each battle can only have three cards on each players' side and the strength of your cards is determined by their “formation.” These formations are essentially rummy hands and are ranked accordingly: straight flush is better than three of a kind, etc. Troops in bad formations are worse than useless: not only are they not winning the battle they're in, but they could have been put to better use elsewhere. Once a card is placed, it's not moving, so committing a solider to a battle determines which formations will be possible there. You have to plan ahead to make sure that you don't leave yourself too many weak points.

Formations are the first way in which Battle Line forces you to think about your commitments, but the method for determining the winner of a battle is deeper still. Once one player has three troops at a battle, you check to see if somebody has won. But imagine that you're a general in the field: you've sent out your best troops in a strong formation, but across from you is an empty plain – your opponent has yet to join the fight, instead lying in wait, noting the make-up of your force to fight you more effectively. So it goes with Battle Line. You can only claim victory in a battle if you can prove, using the cards that have already been played, that there is no card or combination of cards that your opponent can play to beat you. If I've got three 10s and my opponent's got the red 1 and 3 across from me, the battle is still in progress. However, once that red 2 comes out, we'll determine a winner. If the enemy plays it in her formation, she wins. But if I was lucky enough to draw it instead and play it somewhere else, I can prove that there's now nothing to add to her two cards that would beat my three 10s. Note that I actually have to play the card in order to claim victory; keeping it my hand won't do anything. If the red 2 would help one of my other formations, that's great. But often it won't and I'll have to ask myself whether this battle is important enough to justify losing another one. How much do I want to commit? Early commitments are especially dangerous, in that giving your opponent information about what formation your aiming for allows her to plan ahead and beat you by the minimum required amount, saving her strongest troops for other battles. Commit too early and give away information; too late and lose to a superior force. Timing exactly when to send out your forces becomes one of the games most important considerations.

Timing becomes even more important when the Tactics cards are taken into account. These cards, which can be drawn at the end of your turn instead of a Troop card, represent your military genius. They have powerful effects, acting as wild cards, allowing you to move troops around or drastically changing the conditions of a battle. To go along with their strength, they have a significant limitation: you can only ever have played one more Tactics card than your opponent has played. So at the beginning of the game, when neither player has used a Tactics card, each player has a banked use of one. But once I've played one of the cards, I can't play another until my opponent plays one. This means that you have to be very careful of when you use your Tactics cards: it had better be an essential play, because your opponent can lock you out of ever playing one again if he wants to. Over-commit with your Tactics cards and you'll be forced to hobble your way through the rest of the game, posing much less of a threat to the enemy.

I like to judge strategy game by how often I regret my moves. I'm much more interested in games that make me wish I'd done better than those that I can play perfectly. Battle Line is a great example of the former category. Between the limits on making formations, the importance of hiding my strength until the right moment and the all-or-nothing effects of the Tactics cards, it always leaves me feeling like I've made the wrong play. Maybe I stalled too long, forcing myself to create weak formations. Or I committed to a formation too early and couldn't find the card to complete it. Or I played a Tactics card when it would have been better to lose the battle and save my strength for later. In any case, my commitments are often embittered by regret. Luckily, unlike in real life, I get the opportunity to go back and correct my mistakes. Or at least try to, over and over again.

Last Time: #9 - Alien Frontiers
Next Time: #7 - Hanabi

All picture taken by me. Sorry, I'll try to improve.