I just bought Avalon Hill's new "We The People", and I'm looking for some advice on battle tactics. (I apologize if I missed this discussion already.)

In battle, is there really any strategy to how you play your cards, or would you do just as well playing randomly?

The only strategy I could come up with (and I haven't played the game at all yet, so I haven't actually tried anything) would be to try to play the maneuver that you're "longest" in (relative to the number of cards with maneuver available), and keep playing that maneuver every time you attack until you run out. For example, I'm thinking that if you're dealt 3 Probes, attack with Probes as long as you can, because you know it's unlikely for your opponent to have 3 or more of the remaining 3 Probes.

This plan would obviously work best if you did have a relatively large number of one of the "rare" maneuvers vs. the more common maneuvers. (However, no matter what maneuver you're using, the risk is always there that you'll run yourself out of that particular maneuver and leave yourself open to counterattack ... ) Also, since Frontal Assaults cause the attacker to lose a point, I would imagine you'd just save those for last. Am I on track with these thoughts, or is there a better way?

Speaking of counterattack, the rules mention that the defender wouldn't want to counterattack if he (the defender) has just used his last card. I think this is true only if the attacker has also just spent his last card. If the attacker still has cards, you *would* want to counterattack because that way, you'll lose, but you at least won't take any losses. (If you lose while defending, you can lose up to 3 points.) Are there any other times that you *wouldn't* want to counterattack? It seems to me that the attacker pretty much always has the advantage...

And speaking of advantages, I was curious about the actual odds of winning a battle, given the number of attacking cards vs. the number of defending cards. I couldn't think of how to calculate it, so I just did a quick program to give me some empirical numbers. My program deals random hands of whatever sizes you want, and then plays it out. The assumptions it makes right now are: The attacker chooses a completely random card to play, and the defender always attempts to counterattack unless the attacker is out of cards. (You can also specify commander's battle values for counterattacking.)

The results were somewhat counter-intuitive, at least for me. It looks like the attacker has about a 4 to 1 advantage (winning 80% of the time) if everything is everything even (number of cards and counterattack number). The odds don't even appear to change appreciably in a fight where (for example) the British get 11 cards (with a counterattack value of 3) and the Patriots get 9 cards (with a counterattack value of 2). In this typical Howe vs. Washington fight, the attacking British could expect to win 80% or more of the time. The tricky thing is: If the Americans are the attackers in this same setup, they'll win about 50% of the time.

In all fights, the average number of rounds played seemed to be between 3 and 4 (unless there weren't that many battle cards in play, of course).

Again, notice that these numbers are purely empirical (I was doing 1000 iterations of each configuration), and assume that play is random. If someone can give me some real battle strategy tips, I'll update the program appropriately and see what happens.

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