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 -Loki- wrote:
Same. After 3 turns its not uncommon for both forces to be heavily brutalised.

This.

I played a 300 point game of YAMS last night, my Ariadna vs. a friend's Haqqislam, and 2 turns into it we were both pretty bloodied. 3 turns into it, we decided to call it as, for the most part, we only had cheerleaders remaining in our respective DZs and not enough orders to get across the table to do much.

I feel like the 4th turn in YAMS is there to make it so that you feel as though you aren't going to just up and run out of time. In practice though, at least in my group, we rarely ever feel obligated to use it.

Thing is, 4 or more turns is fine actually. The reason why both armies are so brutalized in 3 turns is you're forced to make some rather stupid decisions in order to meet the turn limit. Sometimes that really pays off.

It also means an over reliance on jump troops, with the line troops being more cheerleaders.

 Red Harvest wrote:
Infinity is very much an American Style game

Aren't all wargames, by definition?

If you are finishing a game in half the time you got to play. Is the answer really that hard, play again . Most of my game last about a hour and a half anyways even with/vs spam list. Infinity isn't a 3-4 hour a match game.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Red Harvest wrote:
Infinity is very much an American Style game

Aren't all wargames, by definition?

Yes. But sometimes one must state the obvious. This is the internet, a source of miscommunication since ~1995. People tend to make an exception for Historicals though, and classify them sui generis.

Yeah, after the table is set, 1.5 hours seems about right for a game ( 300 points, 3 turns, ~15 orders/side). This is my average game length with ITS. YAMs go a bit longer, because of the extra turn, and the fact you may end up with an interesting variety of objectives.

I suppose that it is possible to revise the ITS scenarios and structure to make it a fun thing. Perhaps design scenarios to fit categories like Basic, Advanced, Expert and Master, and play them in that order during a tournament? But that would require re-thinking the scenario design, which, let's face it, is not going to happen. Ah well. Looking forward to YAMS 2.0

What do you mean, in this case, by "American-style" game (and why would it be true "by definition")?

From boardgames, where Eurogames tend to involve lots of resource collection etc. and sometimes not much interaction between players (Settlers of Catan being the classic example) and American games which tend to involve direct confrontation and not being able to win without trashing the other players.

I'd definitely put Infinity at the Eurogame end of the tabletop wargaming spectrum...

There's a mixup between German boardgames and European boardgames here
The German ones are usually very good, BUT have very little confrontation. It's generally limited to "grab the sheep before the other player so he can't build his farm"

What we call Euro-Style games are really German-style games. Here's the Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogame with a nice write-up. Basically, no player v player, minimal randomness, and nobody is truly eliminated from winning until the game is over.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
What do you mean, in this case, by "American-style" game (and why would it be true "by definition")?

BoardgameGeek has a fairly extensive write-up, here https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Ameritrash

I presumed that when ChoasXOmega wrote Wargames he meant tabletop miniatures games and not the historical wargames.

 IJW wrote:
From boardgames, where Eurogames tend to involve lots of resource collection etc. and sometimes not much interaction between players (Settlers of Catan being the classic example) and American games which tend to involve direct confrontation and not being able to win without trashing the other players.

I'd definitely put Infinity at the Eurogame end of the tabletop wargaming spectrum...

Oh, I would put it squarely in the American Style. A quick check list. Infinity has...
-Highly developed theme? Yep
-Player to player confrontation? Yep
-Strongly differentiated factions/characters? Yep
-a fair amount of luck? Yep, well a moderate amount.
-Dramatic gameplay? Yep, but we say cinematic.

The ITS system is fairly Euro-style though. And some of the scenarios too. This is part of the problem, IMHO, with ITS. It needs refinement so that it plays nicely with the game itself. Right now, TAGs are not really viable at all in ITS, and they are a part of the game. Some of the scenarios require minimal player v player interaction, which is a bit jarring in a two person game where the players are supposed to oppose one another. There are other issues too. I hope that the ITS is still a work in progress.

Really though, these labels are just a shorthand way of describing how a game might play. It is by no means definitive. And personally, I like playing both styles of games.

I meant within the context of tabletop wargames, where all of those are near-universal points. Although it applies to SF&F rather than historical wargames.

This is part of the problem, IMHO, with ITS. It needs refinement so that it plays nicely with the game itself. Right now, TAGs are not really viable at all in ITS, and they are a part of the game. Some of the scenarios require minimal player v player interaction, which is a bit jarring in a two person game where the players are supposed to oppose one another. There are other issues too. I hope that the ITS is still a work in progress.

Infinity is a game about black operations that are trying to be undiscovered by the opposite force while completing their objectives. I'm fine with Infinity at the moment being different rather than striving for homogeneity that dominates the market. We have official and unofficial scenarios for people that prefer direct engagements while the bulk of the scenarios do capture the feeling of Infinity. I find the older game mindset to cause problems, not the ITS. Tohaa and USAriadna are fantastic new armies that have great flexibility in ITS and other formats.

 IJW wrote:
I meant within the context of tabletop wargames, where all of those are near-universal points. Although it applies to SF&F rather than historical wargames.

Are you referring to the resource management aspect of Infinity then, the Order Pool? That is definitely a Euro-style thing. Malifaux's 'Card deck instead of dice' is a similar mechanism. Personally, I would consider Malifaux more "euro" than Infinity. But opinions can differ. Things are more interesting when they do

 Knight wrote:

This is part of the problem, IMHO, with ITS. It needs refinement so that it plays nicely with the game itself. Right now, TAGs are not really viable at all in ITS, and they are a part of the game. Some of the scenarios require minimal player v player interaction, which is a bit jarring in a two person game where the players are supposed to oppose one another. There are other issues too. I hope that the ITS is still a work in progress.

Infinity is a game about black operations that are trying to be undiscovered by the opposite force while completing their objectives. I'm fine with Infinity at the moment being different rather than striving for homogeneity that dominates the market. We have official and unofficial scenarios for people that prefer direct engagements while the bulk of the scenarios do capture the feeling of Infinity. I find the older game mindset to cause problems, not the ITS. Tohaa and USAriadna are fantastic new armies that have great flexibility in ITS and other formats.

Nothing captures the feeling of black operations behind enemy lines like driving your remote off of a building so you can fix it, or running your guys into enemy fire so they get hit and you can heal them.

Ah, every game is going to have similar situations. Whack your own dude to trigger an effect, kill your own units for tech switch and so on.

40k? YAMS? I don't play too many that include self-destructive victory conditions. Some games may do this but I'd argue it's lazy / sloppy writing in the need to make Specialist A feel special.