Game Theory: Nonreactive Planning

[Justin]

AHAHAAH! Dam, I never noticed that in the second book.

I guess I developed a stark habit from book one and most other gaming groups that folks usually always already had a crew ready to go, then flip the strategy.

This does indeed place more weight on "nonreactive" planning since you now have foreknowledge of what you're trying to achieve, hence you can develop a plan beyond simply exploiting game imbalances.

Ach-so, the OP carries a little more merit.

Nonetheless, a focused list is still nothing more than playing the averages, exploiting imbalances against current crews for the most part.

That was in the first printing of the first book.

[Ratty]

Nonetheless, a focused list is still nothing more than playing the averages, exploiting imbalances against current crews for the most part.

Not really. If you know the enemy has to come to you as there Strategy needs them to get into your half of the board, and you don't need to move forward a list like Rasputina suddenly becomes very viable. Rasputina is not considered imbalanced, but is amazingly good at this kind of battle. On the opposing side, a very fast melee list is going to be good, diluting with decent shooting models is going not going to help.

This is not exploiting imbalances against current crews as you don't know what the opponents crew is going to be, and every possible enemy crew is going to have different counters, that would be Reactive Planning. It's about taking the best tools for the job at hand. IE working with what you know, not guessing about what your opponent is going to do.

[Magno]

Indeed it is in the first book, but the first GenCon tourney, subsequent events and every pick up game I played for the first almost year (and even now) you already had a set crew before certain strategies were disclosed, but this is more a matter of community discipline.

.... and you don't need to move forward a list like Rasputina suddenly becomes very viable.

I still contend that miniature games don't have a massive amount of "nonreactive" planning in them and statements like that don't disagree with it.

A. Rapsutina is not a list, she's a model.

B. The game and its design have a "hidden hand" that almost forces you to play certain lists when deciding on a particular master.

C. Planning revolves mostly in the master in many cases.

<went out for a smoke and a walk to really think about this post>

But because of the force centric nature of the masters and all the wacky abilities the creates such highly asymetric balance, I'll admit, Malifaux probably has some of the higher necessity of "non-reactive" planning in the miniature world.