2016 Mastery Challenge

Dec 31 2015

Recapping 2016

The 5x5 was a disaster, and I won't be doing that again in 2017. What I will be doing is finding 5 games with at least some plays to get to the "Nickel" (5 play status). This is much more reasonable, and sets these games up for a future drive to "Dime" (10 play) status. Games with Dime status are H-index candidates.

Increasing Average Plays was my main focus in 2016, followed by increasing the H-index. Hence the 5x5 and Vietnam game missed goals. In the future, I'm going to work on maintaining Average Plays at 5, which is convenient for establishing Nickel status.

Vietnam games: I didn't do very well at all in knocking down my list of unplayed Vietnam games. I could do this much faster at the expense of H-index and Average Plays. Not sure what my goal for 2017 will be, possibly 5 new games, one of which ought to be one of the historical oddballs. We'll see.

For 2017, would like to promote a few games to Dime status: Silver Bayonet, Hapsburg Eclipse, France '40, Pandemic, and possibly Ukraine '43. The main focus of 2017, however, will be H-index to 12. (2018 I'm thinking will be a focus on playing as many new games as possible, which will drive down the average plays substantially, but will provide a large base from which to draw future Nickels and Dimes for provisioning the H-index. 2019 I think will be the year for a campaign game. 2020, play through all the COIN games. 2021, classics.)

Random observations

December 26, 2016: Turned out to be not a bad year after all, despite being very dry the first three month of 2016. I may do that again, spend the first three months of 2017 knocking out yearly chores (taxes, health care, etc.), and dig deep into work-related activities.

December 13, 2016: A lot has transpired since my last note in March. I have a new job as of December 2, 2016, and I was able to get at least some plays in after all. I'm 9 plays away from H-index 12, and it looks pretty unlikely I'll make the number by the end of 2016. But that's nothing to worry about, it means I'll hit it in 2017 no problem. I'll propose a tentative goal of H-index 13 in 2017, but I'm not worried about hitting it exactly.

March 27, 2016: Finished Tonkin, which had been set up since end of October, 2015. This was a bit of a blocker for me, I really wanted to finish this game before starting something else, and to do that, I had to finish learning the game as well. Playing the game all the way through the first time is the hardest. I'm hoping to start playing more often now that Tonkin is finished. The next games will be from the 5x5 or H-Index lists. No more new games for a while.

March 19, 2016: I haven't played a single game of anything at all this year. Work, career advancement supplementary to work, infrastructural concerns (e.g., taxes, etc.) and health maintenance issues have precluded time to play. So much for intentions.

Given the Death March we're kicking off on at work, I'd say there is little chance of me accomplishing anything remotely close to these objectives, but we'll see how it works out.

The challenge lists

Each of these lists represents a goal I believed I could achieve in 2016, from my state of mind at the end of 2015.

5 x 5

First up is 5 x 5, that is, play 5 different games 5 times each. Here's what I chose at the end of 2015:

Fire in the Lake: Game 9, Game 10.
Combat Commander: Fat Lipski solo.
Hoplite or Alexander
France '40: 1. Half map at Sedan and Dinant scenario development, 2. Quarter map at Sedan.
OCS - any title or scenario: 1. Tunisia II: Mareth Line, 2. Operation Compass from DAK2, 3. 2d Kharkov, Case Blue.

10 new Vietnam games

I hope to play 10 out of the following, preliminary list of candidate games:

Tonkin: Na San.
Forgotten Heroes Vietnam: The Village, Undeniable Courage, River of Perfume, Serious Firepower.
An Loc
Hearts and Minds
Silver Bayonet: Scenario #3: LZ Mary, Scenario #6A: Tea Time, Scenario #6B: Tea Time+, Scenarios #4 and #5, Scenarios #2 and #10.
Binh Dinh '69: Historical setup.
Green Beret (Train)
Green Beret (Harvey)
Downtown
Tet (Chadwick)
Victory in Vietnam (Schutze)
Operation Pegasus
Meatgrinder

Alternates would include one or more of the HFD games. They aren't my favorite, but some of them provide the only game coverage for certain battles. Other substitutions may occur according to opportunity to play with my regular Vietnam opponent.

H-Index 12

Given how 2016 started with me working on New Year's Day, and the following day, and the following day, which were on weekends, I'm not that optimistic about meeting all the goals discussed here. If there is one goal I think I would like to meet, it's upping my H-Index to 12.

This should not be hard to accomplish and still have fun. Trying for 13 would risk not having fun.

This is the overall H-Index, which started 2016 at, 8 but just a few games from 9. 10 should not be a problem, 11 will take some work, so 12 is definitely a challenge.

Limiting to wargames only, my H-Index started 2016 at 7. I should be able to get this to 9 without too much trouble. Wargames just take so much longer to play than most games, so I'm not going to sweat it overmuch.

Here's a list of the top candidates for getting to H-Index 12:

40/9 Hive: I've crushed the AI in the IoS version of this game. Supposedly, the game is more complex than chess. I don't think it's as hard as Go though. Would be really nice to find a good AI for it. I might have to install the online Java client to find online opponents.

I'm now playing this v2f2 on Board Game Arena, and getting thoroughly skunked by beginner players. What's interesting is that I seem to get on the defensive with 2 - 3 moves of opening, then play defense from a linear series of attacks. My usual f2f partner is more subtle.
34/33 Ogre: I'll probably play a fair bit of Ogre/GEV this year as we have a dedicated local group of enthusiasts.
27/27 PanzerBlitz: I'm just 6 games short of playing all scenarios solo, twice. I still need to solo 10 and 12, but I have played them ftf.
14/5 Cathedral: I don't actually own this game, but one of my regular wargame opponents likes it quite a bit, so we play it as a warm up on a regular basis. I usually lose. But I'm starting to get a bit more comfortable with it.
12/12 Soviet Dawn: probably won't play this in 2016, as I have Hapsburg Eclipse to work through.
12/3 Target Leningrad: This one will not be a problem to get many, many more plays in for the year. So far I've been playing solo, but I'm looking forward playing it ftf. Getting in 9 plays might be stretching it, but we'll see. At least a couple of plays can be solo writeups working out tactics. Those are always fun for a long afternoon.
12/10 Battle for Moscow: Should be easy to get 2 more plays of this in the next several months.
11/9 StarForce: 3 more plays of this should not be a problem.
10/8 Fire in the Lake: 4 plays should not be a problem at all. At least a couple of plays will result from further study of the examples in the playbook. (I count working through these in detail as plays because I spend many, many hours and write it all up.)

9th play of this bumps H-Index to 9.
10/9 Flash Point: I'd love to get a group together to go through the expansions, but it's not that popular among the small group of people I play non-wargames with. The 10th play of this put my H-Index at 10.
10/8 Vietnam Solitaire: This is an interesting and unique solitaire game which has proven really hard to beat. I think I've beaten once or twice, but at least one of those victories is tainted by an incorrect setup, too few NVA if I recall correctly. I still haven't quite cracked it in 8 plays.
10/5 Objective Kiev: Yet another Chadwick Eastern Front game modeled on the Battle for Moscow system. This one feels a bit more difficult than Battle for Moscow or Target Leningrad. It has a few more units, and the map a few more rows of hexes. As usual, very difficult for the Germans to win.

Game 7 (solo) saw a possible German win, possible because one of the Russian reinforcements "forgot" to enter on Turn 6. It may not have mattered though, the Germans were really stuck up into Russians, and had taken Kiev.

Game 8 (solo) clear German win, get to the east edge of the board as fast as possible.

Game 9, now I'm not sure how a good German player could possibly lose…
8/0 Silver Bayonet, a new game for the year with a mix of short and medium scenarios, as well as 3 campaign scenarios.
7/5 Pandemic: Beaten this once in 5 tries in solo play, would like to reliably beat the 4 Epidemic Basic game, then move to 6 Epidemics, then start adding the expansions in.
7/5 France '40: Future plays might see small scenario development of the crossing at Sedan, and Rommel's crossing at Dinant.
6/4 Hapsburg Eclipse: I "beat" this game once, except I'm pretty sure I was playing it wrong to get the win. After 4 plays, the game is starting to unfold.
5/5 Arab Israeli Wars: I want to like this game a lot more than I actually do, but the simple scenarios I've played seem to be severely unbalanced in favor of the Israelis. I'm still intending on playing much more of it, but it's going slower than I initially anticipated.

Due to the 5x5 Challenge, France '40 will get to 10, but it may not get to 12. That could be something for a future year.

The list is of course slanted towards games which play quickly, specifically filler games and the States of Siege games, and Chadwick's ETO series. This is not necessarily a bad thing, momentum is important, and while I like playing longer games, I don't like playing them all the time. Sometimes, it's really nice to put something back in the box sooner than later.

For the filler games, they really are just that: filler. None of the filler games are played solo, and we never meet with the intention of "let's play a bunch of short stupid games."

And more importantly, I just don't have time to play longer games right now, which is really a bummer.

Average plays for games owned

This statistic is a bit deceptive, as it divides the total number of games played regardless of ownership into the number of games I own. A better statistic would average plays of owned games. In any case, this number is hovering around 5.25, I'd like to keep this average above 5, but considering the 10 new and 5x5 challenges, that will be really hard. On the other hand, working on the H-Index will help, especially as France '40 and Fire in the Lake already have multiple plays, and at least some of the OCS games might be scenarios from games I've already listed as owned, such as Baltic Gap and Tunisia.

Dec. 31, 2016: 377 / 63 = 5.98
Dec. 28, 2016: 372 / 62 = 6.00
Dec. 26, 2016: 370 / 62 = 5.96
Dec. 25, 2016: 369 / 61 = 6.04
Dec. 24, 2016: 367 / 61 = 6.01
Dec. 23, 2016: 366 / 61 = 6.00
Dec. 18, 2016: 365 / 60 = 6.08
Dec. 14, 2016: 359 / 60 = 5.98
Dec. 03, 2016: 358 / 60 = 5.96
Nov. 29, 2016: 355 / 60 = 5.91
Nov. 28, 2016: 354 / 60 = 5.90
Nov. 27, 2016: 353 / 60 = 5.88
Nov. 26, 2016: 347 / 60 = 5.78
Nov. 25, 2016: 345 / 60 = 5.75
Oct. 30, 2016: 344 / 59 = 5.83
Oct. 23, 2016: 340 / 49 = 6.93
Oct. 17, 2016: 338 / 49 = 6.89
Oct. 11, 2016: 336 / 49 = 6.85
Oct. 08, 2016: 335 / 47 = 7.12
Oct. 07, 2016: 329 / 47 = 7.00
Oct. 01, 2016: 328 / 46 = 7.12
Sept 30, 2016: 327 / 46 = 7.10
Sept 26, 2016: 325 / 46 = 7.06
Sept 25, 2016: 324 / 46 = 7.04
Sept 24, 2016: 323 / 46 = 7.02
Sept 19, 2016: 321 / 46 = 6.97
Sept 18, 2016: 320 / 46 = 6.95
Sept 17, 2016: 316 / 46 = 6.86
Sept 11, 2016: 314 / 46 = 6.79
Sept 10, 2016: 309 / 46 = 6.71
Sept 06, 2016: 308 / 46 = 6.69
Sept 05, 2016: 307 / 46 = 6.67
Sept 04, 2016: 305 / 46 = 6.63
Sept 03, 2016: 304 / 46 = 6.60
Sept 02, 2016: 302 / 46 = 6.56
Aug 31, 2016: 301 / 46 = 6.54
Aug 30, 2016: 299 / 46 = 6.50
Aug 28, 2016: 298 / 46 = 6.47
Aug 21, 2016: 295 / 46 = 6.41
Aug 14, 2016: 292 / 46 = 6.34
Aug 13, 2016: 289 / 46 = 6.28
Aug 7, 2016: 288 / 46 = 6.26
July 31, 2016: 287 / 46 = 6.23
July 8, 2016: 286 / 46 = 6.21
July 2, 2016: 285 / 46 = 6.19
June 24, 2016: 284 / 46 = 6.17
June 24, 2016: 283 / 46 = 6.15
June 21, 2016: 282 / 46 = 6.13
June 19, 2016: 281 / 46 = 6.11
June 12, 2016: 276 / 46 = 6.00
June 05, 2016: 275 / 46 = 5.98
June 04, 2016: 268 / 46 = 5.83
June 03, 2016: 267 / 46 = 5.80
May 29, 2016: 266 / 46 = 5.78
May 27, 2016: 264 / 46 = 5.74
May 21, 2016: 263 / 46 = 5.72
May 21, 2016: 262 / 46 = 5.69
May 14, 2016: 260 / 46 = 5.65
May 8, 2016: 259 / 46 = 5.63
May 7, 2016: 258 / 46 = 5.61
May 1, 2016: 253 / 46 = 5.50
April 30, 2016: 252 / 46 = 5.48

I used to keep this number up around 8, but there is no chance it will ever get there again given how many games I have versus the time left to play them. At some point, I might decide to start playing through my whole backlog. Then I'll be lucky to even get an average play of 1.

Observations

This article was written over a period of several months, being updated as games got played. Looking back on the process, it would have been nice to keep track of where game counts started to compare to the count at the end of the year.

One thing which was a bit surprising to me was the number of non-wargames which crept up the list. This is mostly due to how limited my time was for playing longer games, and of course, many less opponents for longer games.

When does a play count?

For a point of reference, this is how I'm doing it:

Reading rules doesn't count for me.
Setting up doesn't count for me, even when it's a wargame and the setup takes several hours.
Playing even a 1/2 a turn solo may count, depending on the level of effort I put. For example, 1/2 turn in 10 minutes, no. 1/2 turn all day, probably provided I pack it up and put it away. If I keep it out and keep playing, see the next.
- 1 game play may be over several sessions, which may spread over several months. Latest example, EFS game started June 6, ended last weekend, 4 sessions, 1 play.
- Solo counts, for me, if meets above criteria.
- Digital counts if playing real, live human opponents. Digital against AI doesn't count. For me.

Stats are essentially meaningless without qualification. That said, I'm tracking my personal H-index across all board games. This is helping me stay motivated to get really good at games I like, or at least better at them. I'm also tracking average plays across the games I admit to owning. This is also helpful for getting better.

Wargames are problematic for me as a stats junkie. They take so long to play. For the future, I'm currently leaning towards playing each side at least once, keeping it if I like it, selling if I don't.