Manoeuvre Toeurnament: Preview

As promised in my last post, I wanted to set-up and participate in a Manoeuvre tournament with my friends. There’s 4-5 of us that have played this quick playing, but very strategic wargame and several others that have tried it and liked it. So after some back-and-forth with friends about how to run it, here’s the preview of the tournament.

Manoeuvre Toeurnament 2011
Stage 0: Free Play (January ~ February)
This stage will be the learning stage. Anyone that is interested in playing but doesn’t know how to play will be taught the game. This will also give people an opportunity to brush up on their strategies and/or dice rolling abilities. People that try the game and decide it’s not for them can still back out at this point.

Stage 1: Group Stage (March ~ April)
All players will be randomly assigned to a group (think World Cup). In this group you will play all of the other group members once (possibly twice if numbers are low). Your final ranking within the group will be determined by your win/loss record. Each game you play will use the rules as printed for the 2010 version of this game. The only difference is that you choose your own armies but cannot play with the same army twice within this stage.

Stage 2: Elimination Rounds (May ~ June)
The top 2-3 players from each group will be seeded in a single elimination bracket. Strength of Armies used will break ties with the weaker armies used seeded higher. Rules will be the same as the group phase. You can’t use the same army twice, but the army options are reset for this phase. The winner will be crowned champion of Manoeuvre …at least for 2011.

The plan I had originally was much too complex and would probably turned off a lot of the more casual gamers. This is a simple system and should allow for ease of play by everyone. So far there are 7 people that have expressed interest and a few more I think that I can convert before March.

I’m also hoping the top players will be able to get together for a one day throw down in the elimination phases. And the championship game may be a best of 3 series. But we’ll see how it the initial stages go first.

2010 Personal Retrospective

I managed to keep a record of games played throughout all of 2009 and gave the breakdown in an earlier post, and after a bit of number crunching, now present my 2010 personal retrospective:

Games played: 143
Wins: 70 (49%, up 3% from 2009)
Losses: 72
Draws: 1

Average time between games: 2.5 days
Best game month: January with 31 games played (due to Guatemala service trip and lots of card games)
Worst game month: August and November with 2 games played apiece (August due to master’s thesis, November due to special events I’m in charge of at work)

Two player games: 52 (36% of all games played)
Two player wins: 36 (69%, a 13% increase from last year!)
Multiplayer games: 91 (64% of all games played)
Multiplayer wins: 31 (34%, a 7% drop from last year)

Most regular two player opponents
1. Rick (11 plays, 5 wins)
2A. Russ (9 plays, 8 wins)
2B. Wife Sara (9 plays, 6 wins)
3. Brother Mike (7 plays, 6 wins)
4. Dad Rob (5 plays, 4 wins)

Most popular games of the year
1. Cribbage (15 plays, 8 wins)
2A. Chrononauts (9 plays, 2 wins)
2B. Washington’s War (9 plays, 9 wins)
3A. Carcassonne (7 plays, 0 wins)
3B. Mafia/Werewolf (7 plays, 5 wins)
3C. Pacific Typhoon (7 plays, 3 wins)

Games played for the first time: 13 (9%)

Not a whole lot of surprises here, other than I actually didn’t play many more or fewer games than I did last year. Considering the hectic nature of this year (medical issues, completing graduate school, first child born), I’m pretty impressed with how many games I got in. The only thing that really surprised me is that…I can’t win a game of Carcassonne to save my life. Go figure.

Oh, and because it’s a new year of gaming, time to throw down the gauntlet. Rick, I’m gunning for you. And everybody else…you’d better be gunning for me.

Tell us about your gaming breakdown in 2010 in the comments.

Rick’s 2010 Gaming Summary

After seeing John’s post last year summarizing his year of gaming statistics I thought it would be fun to track my plays in 2010. Here are the results:

Games Played: 313
Games Won: 168
Winning Percentage: 58%
The numbers don’t quite add up because games I play with my daughter are only counted as plays and not wins or losses and there were a few ties.

Best Gaming Month: January with 39 plays. More on this later…
Worst Gaming Month: April with 13 plays.

Best Gaming Buddies:
1. My awesome wife, Jess (170 plays)
2. My brother, Russ (40 plays)
3. John (39 plays)
4. My sister, Terri (37 plays)
5. David V. (21 plays)

Most Popular Games of 2010:
1. Carcassonne (46 plays)
2. Tobago (27 plays)
3. Small World (22 plays)
4. Manoeuvre (20 plays)
5. Memoir ’44 (18 plays)

Game I’m The Best At: Blokus (10 plays, 10 wins)
Game I’m The Worst At: Ca$h n’ Gun$ (8 plays, I’ve never won, 3 times I’ve been killed and my average place is 4 out of 5.5)

After my 39 play January I thought I could easily hit a play a day this year. With 2 young children and waiting for number 3 to arrive we had a lot of time to get 2-3 plays in each night. I made it a goal to play 365 times this year. After the slow spring months I realized this was going to be difficult. About half way through the summer I realized I would sometimes want to play a game just so I could hit my goal instead of just to enjoy a good board game. I dropped my goals and focused on fun. I still recorded my plays and was surprised to see I only needed about 50 more plays to hit 365. But I’m glad I worried about having fun instead of anything else.

After looking at the numbers I was surprised to see a couple of things. My 4th “Best Gaming Buddies” was my sister who lives two states away and I only see her a few times a year. Apparently we get a lot of games in when we see each other! I didn’t realize I had gone undefeated at Blokus. My challenge is for someone to beat me this year! A happy surprise was my first win of Here I Stand.

I wasn’t surprised by the number of Carcassonne plays. My wife and I got on a kick where we played every night for a couple of weeks. It’s also a nice easy game to teach new players (which I did 4-5 times this year). My lack of ‘skill’ with a foam gun was also not a surprise. I thought my gaming buddies liked me, but now I realize they just want to put a foam bullet between my eyes. But maybe 2011 will be different since I gave Russ the expansion for Christmas. Perhaps I’m better with a foam sword.

I’ve decided that one year of tracking all of my plays was enough for me. I still want to track certain games but for statistical information on strength of sides and best scenarios in games like Manoeuvre. I plan on using that information to follow through on a gaming goal in 2011: set-up a Manoeuvre tournament.

How was your 2010? And what’s your goal for 2011?