Matrix Games Forums

I was wondering how many board games of WiF have been 'ruined' over the years due to mistakes people made in understanding the rules, making critical errors that could not be 'fixed', etc. I would suspect that are quite a few. maybe even a lot.

I know some people are pretty upset about the current state of MWiF but is it not better to have MWIF in its current state to help keep all the little 'gotchas' that ruined the board games in check? I feel that this is a huge benefit of MWiF. Plus not having to have a ballroom to set the thing up in [:)]

Anyway I just thought I would see if the bugs that are left to be fixed in MWiF comes even close to the number of 'bugs' that occur when the board game is played. Since I never played the board version, I thought I would post this to see if any that played the board game would share any experiences of those games that had to be abandoned due to 'player error'.

Here is a few benefits for the computer game over the board game:

1. Not only do you not need to live in Versailles to be able to play the board game (as mentioned above), you don't need to leave it set up for a year while you play (hoping the cat doesn't flick chits, or a vacuum finds a chit...etc...).
2. Setup just saved you about 8 hours of your life. Just sorting through the ship units prior to setup would require me to take a Valium!
3. The saving of previous setups is just glorious. You don't have to remember all the tidbits that you forget in between sessions. But, you also can save the dastardly complex UK Conv system--all 80 conv's used in just the right places....

I don't think there is any WiF player who didn't make mistakes with the rules one time or another...

I've had two games with the same players where it was forgotten that a country needs to be active or it can't align with a minor that was DoW'd by the other side. One was a Japan DoW on Persia which aligned to a neutral Russia. The other was a Russian demand of Bessarabia which was refused so Russia MUST DoW Rumania and it aligned to a neutral Italy.

The first one was a FTF game that went to an early Axis surrender before reality set in and so that game was utterly ruined. The second went several impulses to a turn-end but it was on Vassal, so "rewinding" was relatively painless.

That particular error really will ruin a game and is likely made more than rarely. Other errors are less severe but I agree having MWiF enforce the rules is a huge advantage.

As a WIF player back in the 90's there were 3 types of error we came across:

1. Game ending errors - i can recall only one game killer when ahem..... someone forgot to add the German force pool in 1940 or 1941.......
2. More common were rules we forgot - and later realised that we had played wrong. With the choice between finding a compromise or starting again, the former was always chosen.
3. Most common of all were rules we simply misinterpreted and played wrong thinking we were playing right. This very occasionally came to light between games (lightbulb moments) and revised treatent was made for subsequent games but more commonly, the fact we played a rule wrong only came to light when i found this website! The number of people that played rules wrongly is astonishing. The number of rules that has had to be referred to ADG ditto.

The problem is - rightly or wrongly - the above does not make bugs - game ending ones in particular of course - easier to take. With a computer program it is not as easy to come to a compromise solution and i have come across more game ending bugs with MWIF.

But that is all part of being spoiled by the power and convenience of computers and sadly MWIF is not alone amongst computer games that frankly, have not been released in the form they should.

But although progress is slow, progress has been made and we live in hope and expectation that things will get sorted.

Here is a fourth type of error: Putting the Pacific map on a lucite sheet on top of small card table, and then letting the cat into the room.

The cat, of course, tried to jump onto the lucite, flipping the whole map off table. That game was not recoverable.

So MWiF has some game ending bugs and board game players have had game ending 'bugs'. It looks like the programing of WiF was a huge success as it has replicated the board game experience perfectly [:D]

Paul - time for your cat story with MWIF.

Maybe that's what MWiF needs! A digital cat to unexpectedly interrupt a game and scatter the counters! Just for laughs!

When the game crashes, a picture of a cat should be displayed lol

My cat story - to discredit those saying cats only ruin FTF games: I was playing Vassal WiF with a buddy recently when his cat jumped into his lap and he felt a jolt of static, looked up and saw his PC rebooting...

[:)]

For years, I thought that FTC applied to powers, not to individual countries. The main wrongful application of this was that when you plopped Gort in France, and aligned Belgium to the CW, I had played that the Belgian units, should they survive, could retreat to France and continue the fight from there, which stretched out the rather thin forces of the CW in the early game.

Oh, and again, something I had been doing wrong for about forever, I for some reason thought that face down naval units needed to return to base at the end of the turn.

ORIGINAL: Larry Smith
Maybe that's what MWiF needs! A digital cat to unexpectedly interrupt a game and scatter the counters! Just for laughs!

To take from Schroedinger's Cat paradox, MWiF may be simultaneously bug-free and bugged until the game turn is opened. [:'(]

Just for WiF, I bought a table. 6' square with 2 leaves that extend it to over 9'. Put the maps on it and covered with a giant sheet of plexiglas. (The DoD chart needed another table, though.) In an apartment without a separate dining room.

My cat would lounge on the table, but only on the Pacific Map (specifically in China). We (the players that met every other Saturday at my apartment) didn't really mind since he would only move 4 or 6 counters. And it was only China.

Of all the furniture I had at the time, that table and the plexiglas I still own. Even after getting married.

I miss that cat, though.

The question is did your wife see this setup when you started dating [8|]