Handicapping games for balance

[Sandman]

I almost always play Heroscape with my 8 year old son. We play advanced rules. He's really good and surprises me with good strategic moves every now and then. However, I've been wargaming since age 15 (I'm 32 now), and I want to play fair and hard with my son without "letting him win". So what I've usually done is take a 25% reduction in starting points. That usually puts me at enough of a disadvantage that I have to play hard and really use the unit's powers to full advantage. Even with that, the beautiful thing about Heroscape is that he still wins by a lucky roll or by a Glyph advantage.

Anyway, then the thought occured to me, what are some other ways to handicap games? I'm sure some of you have some creative ideas. I thought of this when setting up to play the new Castle Set mission where you have to get your divided army safely into the castle. I was the team trying to get INTO the castle and after I took my 25% point reduction I had trouble buying a group that had at least 3 heroes that would stand any chance of making it to the castle alive.

Some handicap ideas I had were:

1. Total point handicap (the % handicap determined by player's skill levels)

2. Give the weaker player an extra movement token every turn. For example, let his "X" token be a number "4". This advantage could be in effect every turn or every other turn, or even every third turn.

3. Only the weaker player can get certain Glyphs. You would have to predetermine which glyphs would be off-limits to the stronger player. The only problem here is that each game the Glyphs may change, so this may not be the best idea...

4. Starting position advantage. Again, this is board dependent and does not allow for great continuity between games and players...

I'm open to any and all suggestions. The key thing is that I want to come up with a way for people who play together frequently and who know their relative skill levels to even the playing field and have a challenging game anyway.

--Sandman

[Hendal]

Hey Sandman, welcome to the boards. I usually pick really crappy guys and see how I do with them against children. Pick Dunn, the snipers if not a castle battle, the zettin gaurds, guys you woulds never pick, and oh yea --don't get synergy and see how you do.
Just by what you pick you can handi-cap yourself. If you go no range , all of a sudden you got a tough battle on your hands.

[minotaur35]

well, while not exactly an advantage the random draw option eliminates counter drafting and can stack one side. to give your sone the advantage in random draw let him draw maybe 200 points more than you I have a post under scenarios under anti camp rules that explians how random draw works. I actually got my daughter(7) a master set for christmas and have been thinking of how to balance it myself. if you come up with any other ideas let me know.But then again a monkey could beat me,you or anyone else at this game if he rolls hot rocks. Perfect example,(and I only mention this cause it just happened other night and Im overly pround) I took oput a 500 point army that had dendrick,mimring, kravies, the sentinel boss dude and healing chicky with syphalis(uh woops sylvanis) sweet dice there.

[Stealth Dodge]

The Snipers are great on ANY board just about. 7 range + 3 defense is awesome plus even with 1 skull not many people will commonly roll 2 shields

[K/H_Addict]

The Snipers are great on ANY board just about. 7 range + 3 defense is awesome plus even with 1 skull not many people will commonly roll 2 shields

IMO, the snipers suck unless they have attack boosters some sort. They never seem to hold out long enough to be any good for me...

[Sev_]

Agreed, I dont know why I draft em =/

[Su-Bak-Na]

Agreed, I dont know why I draft em =/

I've acually had amazing luck with theese guys with or without bonuses.

[toddrew]

Sandman, my son just turned nine, and we've had HS for 2 years now. We've used every handicapping method mentioned in some form or the other, the main one being more points. Although he's developed some pretty solid tactics and become adept at wreaking surprising (to me) destruction with some of his favorite units, he's still got a few years before my senility sets in for the natural handicap :) So lately the handicap has been equal points, starting positions, glyphs (which usually aren't present anyway), etc. but I choose an army and then he gets to choose his using the "intelligence gathered", so to speak.

I think that is a great way for him to use his noodle and give him an advantage while still having the battle seem fair (i.e. everything else equal, especially points as he's grown accustomed to that signifying a handicap). Of course, when he was six and seven, even though we'd been playing the master rules exclusively, that wouldn't have been much of an advantage. I would sometimes pick an army to play and then a good counter for that army for him to play to demonstrate that more points didn't necessarily mean a "better" army, as well as to show how to counterdraft, so he's gotten into that mindset of "how do I deal with my opponent's unit X?"

[Sandman]

Toddrew,

I like your idea of actively demonstrating how to counter-draft and develop strategy with your son. My boy tends to like to just pick favorite characters but he hasn't yet discovered real strategy. Granted, he's 8.5 years old! I guess what I'm getting at is that I still want to play hard core but still let him play any way he wants. It seems that the 25-33% point disadvantage seems to do the trick. However, I really like your idea about coaching a bit and teaching him to pay attention to what I'm doing.

The random army idea posted earlier seems interesting too. I've never tried that. I'll give it a try.

Good ideas so far. I appreciate the input.

Also, I wasn't just talking about strictly handicapping with kids, but also with friends (adults) who may be better/worse players. How do you handle that in your gaming groups? (i.e. What about ADULT handicapping?)

--Sandman

[markwars]

This is something I posted a few months back...it seems appropriate here since this thread is about playing with youngsters:

Let me start by saying that I am lucky enough to live in the DFW area, so I do get my chances to play other adults on orderly maps from time to time. But on a day to day basis my only HS partner is my seven year-old son. He loves this game. It has cool figures (which he likes regardless) and buildable terrain (which he also likes regardless of the game) so he's going to want to play with the pieces no matter what. Sure sometimes the terrain is hosting a Hotwheels gathering or Su-Bak-Na is off fighting Star Wars figure, but the important thing is that he likes this stuff.

As a dad my wish is that by the time he's 9 or 10 he'll be a competent player that can at the very least hold his own against other kids his age. And my dream is that he will love to play this game with me even when he's visiting me in the nursing home. So I have had to strategize about my day to day approach to Heroscape.

There are two things that I am really really trying to avoid. Number One is making my son hate this game because of the way I play it. Number Two is giving him a bad attitude about winning or losing. It's a double edged sword. On the one hand I can teach him by example and dust him game after game and tell him "that's life". On the other hand I can let him beat me to give him that carrot while foregoing any real life lessons thus indulging my desire to have someone to play. Neither of those seemed like much fun so I've taken a different approach. There are ways to show kids the nuances of the game while letting them feel in control. If building maps helps keep your son's interest then that is great. My son likes to help, but he's not quite ready to build large coherent maps yet.

Here are some of the ways we play with the express purpose of keeping his attention and interest...

Unit vs. Unit play - This way of playing came to me after participating in Kentak's awesome "last man standing" event last year. What we do is simply play one card vs one card. It's very useful when we get new figures to just try them out and see how they work in game play. It's also very quick and if my son loses there's twenty more matches within an hour. As long as he is occasionally winning and we keep switching up units his attention is locked on.

He Drafts All Armies- This way of playing has taught me more about the game than him. I always let him know that he better give me a crummy army because when we play this way I give no quarter. Typically he will select about 800 points worth of large figures and heroes and I'll be stuck with about 200 points worth of figures he doesn't particularly like. This method has taught me how to utilize figures I myself would never choose and how to capitalize on better figures' weaknesses. By letting your kids decide on your army they can also learn that perceived crappy figures can sometimes be really good and that the figures everyone likes have problems too. After about a year of this kind of play I know he is getting smarter because he's making better and better decisions about which figures to give me to ensure a win for himself. He may not be making macro-level strategy decisions yet, but having a good knowledge of what figures do what is paying off for him.

Scenario play rather than Match play - This is a way to play that both of us enjoy. We build a huge map, place all sorts of baddies on it, and then let him choose a force to achieve the objective with. The good things about this...it teaches him how to build good maps, it teaches him how draft an army based on his opponent, and it never puts me in the villain's seat. I'm merely the Dungeon Master (so to speak) and he's the only participant. If he loses he doesn't feel like Dad beat him, and if he needs advice along the way he feels like it's fair to ask me.

These are the three most effective ways I've found to keep his interest and ego intact. These types of play also serve my own selfish desire to train my son to be a Heroscape master.

Having said all that there are still times where I feel like it's appropriate to play my son straight up draft matches and either beat him or let him win. It's my job as a parent to know when the appropriate type of play is needed. Heck sometimes it's best to not even use the rules and instead chuck marbles at figures in his sandbox.

[Codeman]

Hey... I've played 7 year olds (don't underestimate them). If they get a break then I think anyone over 50 should get the same breaks. I want a senior discount.