PLAYING M&T2 WITH MULTIPLE PLAYERS

[Pan Marek]

I'm a longtime player of M&T.  I bought and played M&T2, and generally find it to be pretty good.  I have a quibble with getting your opponents cards in one's hand, as I currently (I've only played the new set once)
am not sure the game needed more "fog of war".  I'll need to play it a couple times to see if I want to
keep using this rule, and its attendant "leadership points" mechanic.

But a more important question involves the giving a of hand of cards (instead of just pulling one card) to each side.  This new mechanic allows each side to choose which of three cards to play.  This is OK with one on one games.   But what happens when there are more than two players?  Who decides which card to play?

I've seen some on line discussions suggesting that one player per side be the C-in-C, and choose which card to play, and thus which unit(s) to activate.  This would work, but the other players may feel "left out" of decision making.  Does anyone out there have any thoughts about this issue?

[SteveBurt]

The leadership points work really well, it is often better to play an opposing card as the points give you more control. For multi-player we just allow players to confer. Works fine

[Pan Marek]

Yep.  I thought about "conferring".  But such could draw out the game.  You could always limit such to a short amount of time, I suppose.  More of an issue if putting on a convention game.

[racm32]

I was supposed to be running a convention game next month and this was also my concern. The plan I had settled on was to use the cards in the same manner as 1st addition and drop the command points all together. I would explain to the players that they had been dropped for easy of play in this setting. That way you introduce the players to the basic mechanics but don't slow play with the new card/points mechanics for multi player games.

[Pan Marek]

Racm-
A practical move on your part.   Its what I may end up doing for all games if, after I play a bunch more games with the rules "as is", I find the current mechanics cumbersome.  Or just not adding anything.
I know about the game design concept of "give the players decisions to make", but I'm having trouble with layering on more "decisions" just to make a game more complex.  Its the part of the game that was not "broken".

[racm32]

I agree completely and its my only complaint about the new game mechanics.

[SteveBurt]

The command points are definitely an improvement, but the extra decision making could slow the game if played with indecisive players. The simple solution is to give players a short time limit to either play a card or use command point; I’d think 15 seconds would be ample. If there multiple players on a side, give them 60 seconds to confer. In v1, you could often watch helplessly as your opponent’s troops activated; now you can do something about it if you plan ahead a bit.

[Mindenbrush]

I used a modified M&T 1st Ed for my KPW games and as the system is card driven, I would advise the next player(s) that their card was up next so they had time to plan their moves in advance.
You could try the same with the special cards.

[Pan Marek]

SteveBurt-  Good point.  I may feel the same way after playing a few more times.   But the "vigilance" rule seemed to solve most issues of opposing the other side's moves.  I will be thinking of your comment the next time I play!

[SteveBurt]

There are times when it is essential that you move or reload a particular unit. Vigilance doesn’t let you do that, but command points do. Use them wisely.