We all know how the luck of the Order Of Play matters a lot. It's part of what makes it exciting to play WOK, you are crossing your fingers, and then either punching the air or groaning (OK, maybe just relieved or slightly disappointed in the case of some people
).Nothing you can do about it, somebody has to have their attacks apply before somebody else's, no alternative. I agree. And don't worry, I'm not trying to make it simultaneous or anything. Only a small refinement for Duel.
Y'see, in Duel it matters a lot, especially in the first 1-3 turns. After that, there's a fair chance that going earlier is actually better for you (eg kill off those armies I spied in #XX before they can attack out to somewhere ....). But rarely in the first turn or three, where you can be seriously disadvantaged by having to go before the other guy.
You have to attack out first, and he might take what you attacked out from. And he might take what you attacked THROUGH before you stopped. And he runs no such risk; going later/last, he can be cavalier about attacking out and attacking on, because no enemy has a later turn to attack anything you left or took...
Plus it happens to seriously affect your EFFectiveness, to the advantage, again, of the player going later: you go early and spy him successfully, your EFF hits 99% and stops going up, successes wasted in terms of EFF. Then it's his turn in the OOP: He spies you EQUALLY successfully: he goes up to his 99%, with room for all the successes to help, and you go down; he ends up, on average, higher than you on EFF...
I'm not saying there aren't sometimes advantages to going earlier in the OOP. And you can sometimes be worse off and YET exploit it to your advantage. But on average, it's a strong factor ...
So I've rejected a couple of Duel start-up maps because one player had ALL his 3 colours, on Turn 1, going before ALL of his opponent's colours.
My suggested refinement: In Duel, the engine rejects any turn-run where all of slots 1,2,3 go before all of slots 4,5,6, or vice versa, and runs another run instead. So at least you automatically avoid the WORST case of 3 before 3. It would help me get fairer start-maps. It would help the game be a tad less dependent on a freak of luck.
I'd apply it to ALL turns of Duel, for simplicity. The players don't even need to be aware of it - the engine just never gives them an extreme in the OOP. It's like the engine never generates start-provs adjacent to each other - the rules dn't need to say it, it's just built in.
The issue is whether Kor needs to code it ONLY for Duel, or across the board. It would make a hidden slight difference to Standard in favour of the later slots (OOP gets re-run if 123 before 456 or vice versa, so some OOPs get rejected where 7,8,9,10 were on average later in the OOP, favouring them slightly).
And it might need a different coding for Duel-lite - reject if slots 1,2 before slots 3,4 or vice versa....
But for the "main" Duel, I reckon it's important, to avoid a freak of bad luck. It'll never happen? Well, it just did in Turn 2 of Duel #08. I got out of it OK, but it seems harsh for the future... and easy to fix?
