Wrist Tapping

I’ve taken to using a 1 minute timer for players (me and one other) in 18xx games (the other players are not timed). It isn’t that 1 minute is a convenient time or a comfortable time. It isn’t. It is rather markedly too short. It is uncomfortable. Unpleasant. It encourages mistakes, big ones, game-throwing ones. It is too short and deliberately so.

There’s strong temptation to break the time limit, to make allowances, to permit a player to break and go over time maybe once or twice a game when decisions are especially chewy. Maybe a player has unlimited time for their decisions…say…oh…once or twice per game. Maybe a player could play very fast and accumulate time to spend later on bigger decisions? I have sympathy for the argument, especially given that I’m one of the players subject to the timer and also more likely to recognise and chew on such a decision. Such an approach would play to and accentuate my personal interests and abilities. But I refuse the argument. Players have a minute, period. I have a minute, period. If a player is not done in that time, if I’m not done in that time, then I or they auto-pass and it is the next player or company’s turn. Finis.

Why? Because the purpose of the exercise is to force the players to prioritise. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no forgiveness, no choice. There is barely time to look at your own position, let alone to examine the other player’s positions. Prioritise! The purpose isn’t for the players to make the best decisions, isn’t for the players to be maximally competitive, isn’t to approximate any sort of ideal game session, isn’t to make the game the most enjoyable. It is to give no choice other than to continuously prioritise everything and to still be too short of time.

Because then we learn, have no other choice but to learn.