Ho Chi Minh Trail 4

Aug 20 2022

Tags

Today is a rough one, was a busy, productive week, and I'm "hungover" from work. I do have a game day tomorrow, but I still wanted to get something played today as well, so I decided to do what's looking like a monthly update on my Ho Chi Minh Trail game.

The idea for the game is to create a (very) rough simulation of the challenges and constraints faced by North Vietnam during the construction of the Trail, specifically during the build up to Tet. After Tet, the situation got more complex, with the Laotians starting to conduct raids as well, distractions which required punitive responses from NVN.

The rules are Verion 1.0.0, as listed in a previous article, and in the source code for conducting a game turn. The trials logged the final supply count which was logged to a file then analyzed in R. Here are some stats from R:

  > supplies <- read.csv("log.csv", header=FALSE)$V2
  > mean(supplies)
  [1] 89.689
  > median(supplies, na.rm = FALSE)
  [1] 89
  > sd(supplies)
  [1] 26.3644
  >

Here's a histogram from 1000 trials using randomized actions and randomized responses.

Histogram of scores for 1000
plays

What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

Have a solo game ready to play.
Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
Referee a game in progress.