Thursday, 9 March 2023

State of Play: Battle Line; or, Down the Rabbit-Hole

 

So, on Monday night I had this thing - I'm the treasurer for a university-based History group; we organise half-a-dozen lectures each year about some fairly random subjects, under the aegis of the History of Science, Ideas and Technology. Monday was also our Annual General Meeting, and as treasurer, I had to give a short report on the state of the group's bank balance We're in the black). The talk was interesting with lots of questions afterwards, so when I managed to extract myself from the throng, i was a little late getting to T's for our scheduled second Undaunted: Normandy excursion. To add to this, T's wife's (and my wife's) aunt and uncle are over visiting from the UK for a week; lots of hellos and hugs all round and pictures of their new granddaughter, and another twenty minutes is lost. When we manage to extract ourselves from that throng, it's getting late and I'm not sure I have a game left in me.

T to the rescue. For his job job, T has to travel overseas sometimes, usually a couple of times a year. When he's in the States, I'll arrange for a couple of games to be shipped to his hotel, and he's happy to mule home for me. T's done this for years, so last time I bought his own copy of Reiner Knizia's Battle Line (GMT Games, 2000). Monday night, T pulls out this little gem, and we squeeze in two matches before I drag myself home to do the bookkeeping from the aforementioned AGM.


Now, I like to think of myself as someone who is present during a game. I think about what I'll be doing next while the other guy is taking his turn, and I try to not run out the clock with deliberation. If I'm playing Commands and Colors Anything, I know what card I'm going to play next as soon as I've picked up my next one, and have a pretty good idea of what I'll likely play after that. I try to maintain that kind of focus and discipline in whatever I play (wargames, I mean; I'm probably a little more cavalier with multi-player family games, and I have been known to reach for my phone in RPG sessions when someone else is hoarding the spotlight or um-ing and ah-ing about what spell they are going to cast next). 

I do this mostly because I assume my opponent is bringing their best game, and I owe them the same measure of respect. And I can usually do it. In nearly every game I play with any kind of regularity. Then there's Battle Line.

Don't get me wrong. I love Battle Line. I love the structured theme of the game, the mathematical underpinnings, the press-your-luck mechanics. It is on-the-fly strategy distilled into a game that can be over in twenty-five minutes. Except...

Battle Line is maybe my White Whale. I feel like I have a pretty firm handle on it, but I lose more games than I win. Something about Battle Line gets under my skin and makes me question every decision before I've even settled on it. I always suspected I had a play-issue with it, but it wasn't until Monday past that I realised how big an issue it was. Let me set the scene: T had already taken the first token, second in from my Left, and was in a strong position (setting up a Phalanx - three of a kind) on the second in. He'd also played a purple suit 3,4,5 Wedge (straight flush) on the third from Right. I was feeling strong in my Centre with a Yellow 7,8,9 Wedge on Centre-Left and and a Phalanx of 9s in the Centre, with enough 10s either already played or in my hand that I was sure it couldn't be assailed. I had the Blue 4 and 6 in my hand and as far as I could tell, the Blue 5 hadn't come out yet. I'd kept the Centre-Right position completely open because I really wanted to play that blue Phalanx when the 5 showed. But I had a Red 4 in the third from Left position and the blue 4 I 'd been hanging on to: I was pretty sure - but not certain - that T wouldn't be able to make a formation that could beat 4s, as he had a green five opposite and nearly all the fives were already out, and I had the green 6 in my hand.

I didn't realise until T asked if I'd done my turn, after he'd finished with a call from work, that I'd been stuck in a feedback loop, weighing up playing the whether to play the fours or hold out for the Blue 5 for a Phalanx play for NEARLY SEVEN MINUTES. I apologised, got on with the game, and proceeded to lose, of course. 

In my Wednesday group, we talk about analysis paralysis. I thought this was something somebody had come up with at the table, but it is actually drawn from psychology to refer to the overthinking of a problem that is driven by the fear of an unfavourable outcome. I don't think what I'm experiencing is fear-driven; it's a twenty-minute game, always between friends, and I'm simply not that invested in the outcome.

Driving home, I thought about my decision fugue (that's the name I've given it). As I thought about it, I started to recall other instances in adulthood where I'd got so deep into the circular reasoning of deciding my next play, that I'd lost my perception of time and opponent. Nearly every single time, it was during a game of Battle Line. I'm not saying it's endemic to my game - I'm sure I've played Battle Line through quite often without experiencing this, but I'm also sure it's the only game I've played often where it happens with a noticeable pattern of frequency. Seven minutes is a long time, probably the longest decision fugue I've experienced, but two to three minutes at a time would not be uncommon for me, and nearly every instance of this has been playing Battle Line (one time I can remember that wasn't was my introduction to New Angeles (Fantasy Flight Games, 2016), but I think that was driven more by the unfamiliarity of the situation and being a little bewildered by the options available on my first time out.

I think the decision fugue (in my case, at least) is driven more by the procedure of the decision-making than by apprehension over the outcomes the possible decisions. Decisions in Battle Line are initially based on very limited, explicit information - all you have to work with is what you can see in your hand. A couple of rounds in and presented with more explicit information - the cards that have already been played, as well as any new cards you've drawn for your hand - but the beginnings of a completely new tier of information, the information suggested by what cards your opponent has placed and where. Say they've put down a green 8; they could be holding another 8 or two, or they may also be holding a green 7, which would mean they're hunting for a green 6 or 9. They don't know that you're holding the green 9, but in two rounds they'll play the green 6 on a possible three of a kind with the red 6 that they placed as their opening move, so it's probably 8s they're hunting, which would explain why two of their last three pick-ups have been drawn from the Tactics deck; they're probably looking for the Companion Cavalry card which will give them the third 8 they need for a Phalanx, which in turn suggests they're already holding another 8, but they might be hoping to use that in another contest, maybe that lone yellow 7 sitting alone on your extreme right flank?

As more cards are revealed, the pools of explicit and implicit information grow steadily. But the chances of a specific card that hasn't yet appeared being held by your opponent. This is the only time a skill in card-counting could possibly be of some use in a game of Battle Line. Your opponent has just drawn another card from the Tactics deck; that's their fifth Tactics draw (incidentally giving them a reasonable chance of picking up that Companion Cavalry card), but they've only played two so far. That means four of the cards in their hand are troop cards. To keep things simple, let's say there are six cards left in the Troop deck. That means there is a 60% chance that orange 5 you're hoping for is still in the deck, with a 40% chance that it's in your opponent's hand already. Except you can't help but think if your opponent did hold it, they would have used it to make up that 2-3-4 orange Wedge on your Centre Left contest into a 3-4-5, just to be safe. Since that play, they've only picked up one troop card, so the odds are now (in all likelihood) closer to around 15%* of their holding that particular card. If you each pick up and play a Trop card the next round, those odds shift to about a 33% chance of the orange 5 being held by your opponent, if you haven't picked it up yourself in that round. 

It's a lot to think about. I don't think everyone goes into this much detail at the table with Battle Line or any other game that doesn't have money riding on it. I swear, it's only when playing Battle Line that my thinking turns so analytical over what I would still class as a pretty unserious game. 

That's it. I have a lot more to say about Battle Line, but I'm going to stop it there. I realise I've been talking about the game like everyone knows it well. I'll swing around again and look at how the game works and how it plays - a review, if you will - some time in the future, when I've cleared some of the backlog of games I've already flagged for review here. 


* Actually a little better than 14.2857%, if you want to get pernickety about it.  


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