The proper balance between skill and chance (luck) is important to modern gamers. There must be some chance in most games, but it should not so overpower the game that the skillful player has no more of a chance to win than the unskillful one. Unfortunately, even some of the newer games do not achieve this balance.

Some games are totally dependent upon skill, like chess, checkers, and the classic, Diplomacy. Others, like roulette, or dice, are almost entirely chance. In sports , which are totally skill, the only chance aspects may be the weather, the playing field, and the skill (or lack of it) of other players and umpires and referees. The well-known games like Monopoly, Blitzkrieg, Kingmaker, maintain their popularity because of their balance of skill and chance. In many war games, chance is involved only in the CRTs. By now, CRTs are standard, so that the experienced gamer knows what risks he is taking. Chance may depend upon the roll of a die, or dice (as in most war games), or on the draw of counters (Infinity) or cards (Kingmaker).

The balance between skill and chance should be set up so that the course of the game should not depend upon the outcome of a single die roll. In other words, a skillful layer should not have to lose everything on a single die roll (unless he chooses to risk it, via a Combat Results Table). If chance becomes too important, as it does in some of today's games, a player's skill means nothing.

But how much chance is too much? It depends for one thing upon what is being simulated. If you take something as risky as the stock market, then chance plays a large part. AH's The Stock Market Game, or 3M's (now AH's) Stocks & Bonds are good examples of this. Yet in war games and science fiction games, you see errors in design that make chance almost the dominant feature in determining the outcome and winner of a game.

An example of such an error in game design is the game Outreach. In Outreach, during the Fate segment, it is possible for a player, upon a single die roll, to lose 10% , 30%, 50%, 70%, 80%. or even 90% of his forces and planets. This makes skill and strategy a farce. Through the expenditure of Resource Points, this chance factor may be postponed , but sooner or later it becomes necessary to take it. I recall one game in which I finally obtained the Wisdom Chits and tried to increase my civilization level, necessary to win. I expended the maximum of 150 Resource Points to increase the die level by 3, and then rolled a "1". This made a "4" and on the 70 to 79 column, it brought an 80% dissolution. It was enough (of course) to lose the game. So much should not depend upon a single die call. But it does.

Look at Operation Olympic. In this game, it is the Tokko (Japanese suicide attacks) results. In the basic (solitaire) version, the loss of even a single regiment can seriously weaken the U.S. forces. Yet it is possible to lose two, or even three (one division). I suppose a very skillful (and lucky) player could win with the loss of a division, but I would have to see it happen. As a solitaire player, if I get the loss of more than one regiment, by Tokko, I just give up and start over. I suspect others do, too.

In American Civil War, it is the command control that is subject to chance, and one or a series of unlucky die rolls can influence the game unduly. In one game, as the Union player I had a huge stack of troops in Washington, D.C., but could not move them. The Washington hex ends in a "6" and try as I might, I could not get the correct die call. This inability to move my troops out of Washington lost the game to me. I suppose that in a sense this is a simulation of McClellan's extreme caution, but there ought to be an override factor. After all, Lincoln did finally order Mac to fight, and eventually replaced him.

After the Holocaust is a good game that I like to play, but it too has a flaw of chance. It is in the Food Table. A roll of a two results in a 20% or 30% reduction in food production; a three or a four results in 10% or 20% reduction, and even a die roll of five results in 10% to 20% (with 1 to 5 areas). A steady series of 2s, 3s, 4s, or 5s can be disaster. This means a player has a 33-1/3% probability of a 10% or greater loss of food production. I suppose it represents extreme drought, but it certainly eliminates any skill a player may bring to the game, if he is unlucky enough to roll a 2, 3, 4, or 5 almost constantly.

To show that I am not just picking on SPI (after all, most of the games I own are SPI), Avalon Hill is not entirely free of this dependence upon pure chance. The game is Outdoor Survival, which does not rate very high on lists, and perhaps the chance factor is the reason. So much depends upon a die call (in this case, one die roll determines direction, and another may determine Wilderness Encounters). If the object of the game is to discourage people from entering the wilderness and show all of the possible hazards, fine. But to an experienced person, outdoor survival is not all that difficult. To have victory conditions like " ... the player who gets closest to the West edge before expiring may be considered the relative winner," shows that too much is dependent upon chance.

In spite of the bad examples I have given, most war games and science fiction games have a good balance between skill and chance. But when you play your next game, ask yourself if chance plays too big a part in the outcome of the game. If it does, perhaps some modifications of the rules or victory can conditions are in order.