Any advice for taking notes for efficient battlereports?

[wizuriel]

So just curious what do people do to take notes during a game to write efficient battlereports without slowing the game down too much?

I find when I try to notetake during the game it usually adds another hour or so to the play time and I find I'm more likely to make mistakes (as not paying as much attention to scheme and strats as I should) or I start to forget to take notes as I get pulled into the game.

 

Especially curious how people manage to write battle reports for tournament games. 

[Ludvig]

I don't take notes during the game but try to put down a few notes after it while everything is fresh.

[Argentbadger]

I take copious notes for my battle reports. 

The most important thing is to know your own crew well enough (and by habit be a fast player) such that you would comfortably finish any game within the time limit.  A few things that work for me:

• Try to take notes on when the other player is thinking, not when you are thinking, or either of you are supposed to be acting
• Take a picture each round that will jog your memory of the less legible notes
• If you do the same thing repeatedly (e.g. the old pre-errata Sonnia trick where Papa Loco does Hold This, moves up, pulls her with Hermanos De Armas, and is charged and Pine Boxed by a Death Marshal) then use some kind of short hand for it
• Don't note down inconsequential stuff like scheme runners moving about in the first turn
• Don't worry about getting precise action names; you can look that stuff up later

Critically, I always ask the other player if they mind me doing all this, and offer to stop upon their request if they think it's affecting the game.  So far, no-one has ever taken me up on this.

Good luck!

[James Dyson]

@Argentbadger recommends a lot of stuff that I do.  Generally, I ask opponents pregame if they mind me taking notes/pictures.  I use a spiral notebook, and heavy use of shorthand/ symbols that make sense in my mind.  Typically, I’ll scribble my notes during my opponents activations, both what they do and what I did previously.

I agree that pictures are best saved for between turns.  And less is more here- a few shots per turn is better than 15 in my opinion.

I try and note Soulstone usage and jokers when they pop up, but otherwise don’t pay as much attention to the cards flipped.  

Aside from that, good old fashioned practice will help speed you up.  It’ll come to you!  And if writings not your thing- maybe recording voice memos between turns?  I did that for 40k games back in the day.

Best of luck!  I look forward to reading your reports.

[Swiglitz]

We try to take photos between turns, usually when people are shuffling discard piles/drawing hands as not a lot happens on the table during that bit of the game. I'll usually try for three or four photos per turn, an overview of the table, one from each side, and a close up of anything cool that happened. I've found that pictures help my rather sieve-like memory a lot.

I don't take notes per se, but I do try to remember the cool things that happen. I've found if I can remember a rough narrative of the key points in a game (usually me getting killed/running away), I can couple that with the photos to get a decent picture of how the game went down.

We're a rather niche group though, with lots of discussion about the game going on at any given time so it seems easier to remember because we're talking about it as we play and we're about as far from a tournament atmosphere as you can get.

Also, remember your camera/phone. It's difficult to take those photos without it.

Ahem.

[Gnomezilla]

I never got over the loss of focus while writing down notes for every activation; if there was any improvement for me, it was after sitting down and reviewing five games’ worth of notes and maybe spotting where I should have cheated more aggressively. (Marking down cheating was the biggest time-sink, though. ;( )

I dropped back to noting major happenings of important activations maybe a few times a turn, and joker and soulstone use. That I could jot down and still mostly stay focused on scoring. Like this: bbs cast young, young2, guard* dies [black blood shaman cast 1dmg+attack buff on two different young nephilim: second splash killed my guardian (that was holding a VP)]. The young nephilim had activations, but they didn’t change the VP, so no notes.