I know a non comp player entering these lists is probably otiose
but I do plea that judgements on the value ( and debates to change them) of ANY rules set or game system should not solely be based on how they fare or are used in comps.
Sure being written robustly enough to thrive in that environment is often an important contributory element in their success , availability and usability more widely. But there are other judgements to be made about game design such as whether or how well the methodology works for historically based games – are the outcomes credible? Has it got the look and feel?
It is readily possible to come to a conclusion about the outcome of a battle, without recourse to finiciky points counting for things like straggled units and the loss of the camp .
I regularly play big FoG(AM ( and FoG(N)) games well beyond any win-lose on a strict relative points outcome to get to an army break where regardless of the points 50% or more of an army’s units have been destroyed or are routing. This is a good place at which to take stock . When you got both sides coming close to that point tactics can change . Also is an army break when virtually all the cavalry in that army are still in good nick the same as one where that is not so? Or has an army essentially lost its capacity for fight or win and so reached the point where the Commander would withdraw while he still has the chance well before half the army has been lost? Valid military questions and tests of skill.
Sure I concede there is not the time etc to do that over a comp weekend and there needs to be ,for those events, some way of judging how people have done relative to each other. But whether a previously popular rules set is no longer as popular as it once was in comps is a pretty narrow way to judge a thing
. If the only people who were likely to buy FOG(AM) were comp players I doubt it would have got printed at all much less revised in later versions. I guess comps and the supporting community networks are probably one of the few ways feedback can be gleaned in some kind of consistent manner over time but that is still a pretty limited and skewed group.
But I suppose I am the equivalent of the old git
cricket fan who prefers the full five day test match, or village cricket to a floodlit 20/20 game and does want to see the laws of cricket changed to support the latter at the expense of the former!
