Deep Thought: Know When to Fold Em…
Its a tough place we’ve all been. You’re army is in bloody tatters and you are still mid game. What’s the proper thing to do end the game with grace?
You’re best laid plans are in flames, you’re down to a handful of isolated squads, everywhere the enemy approaches – and your still on turn 2-3. What’s a player to do?
Its a sticky question, and you have to take a lot of factors into account.
1) Is it a casual game, or a tourney? In casual play, you have the ability to get in more games if you can close up poor ones early and “rack em up again” and get playing with a fresh battle. In a tourney, if you forfeit, you normally give up max points to you opponent, and can influence the path of both of you throughout the event.
2) Was it the dice, or the tactics? Oftentimes if the dice go south in a big way, even your opponent will feel bad and just want to call it a day early and start over. After all, who wants to win a game that way. If you are just being outplayed, I will often stick it out till the bitter end, to learn as much as I can from the defeat.
3) The issue of politeness. This one is the stickiest of them all. I have had bad games where my opponent got visibily angry when I played it out till the end, as he thought I was just wasting his time after he had secured victory by mid game. In other circumstances, I’ve had players feel insulted when I offered to concede early because they felt it robbed them of a full victory. Sometimes you just can’t win – even when you’ve just lost the game!
4) Can you turn it around? Is victory *really* impossible? This often can vary from gamesystem to system. In a game like Warhammer 40000 or Fantasy for example, you can often see that defeat is inevitable a couple of turns out, while systems such as Warmachine often offer that chance for an amazing turnabound combo that can grab victory from the jaws of defeat. Its hard, but really analyze if you have a shot of pulling out a win, versus just burning down the clock 20 more minutes.
~So what is your personal take on when to call a game? If you have awesome examples of last minute turnarounds, lets hear them.
