One of the most difficult parts of learning to play POA -- once you get past the initial shock of PK's radically difficult mechanics -- is coming to grips with what looks like an utterly random environment. It feels like you're entirely at the mercy of the impetus rolls and the Sequence Deck. If you get a run of good impetus rolls, and some good cards, everything goes well. If not, you just hope to survive until your luck changes. At this point, you're not really playing POA; it's playing you; and, the word "planning" might sound ridiculous. Why bother to think up a plan, if your actions are controlled by forces beyond your control anyway?

The truth is that, perhaps more than any other system on the market, POA requires good planning. In most systems, you really don't need to develop a battle plan. The old "Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle" will be enough to get you started, and with telepathic control over your units, you can react to events as they develop. Try that in POA, where your reactions are constrained by the dice and cards, and events will quickly overwhelm you. To play POA well -- not only to win, but to get the most enjoyment from the system -- you have to plan your battle.

But how? POA doesn't have order chits, written orders, or lines drawn on a map to guide you in planning. There are no mechanics which blatantly compel you to commit to a course of action. When the dice and cards fall your way, you can do whatever you want, regardless of what you might have intended earlier in the battle. How do you develop, maintain, and implement a battle plan in so chaotic an environment? There are probably as many ways to do this as there are people to ask, but here are some ideas:

IDENTIFY AND PRIORITIZE YOUR OBJECTIVES

Renowned golfer Jack Nicklaus has often said that he plays every hole backwards before he tees up the ball. He begins by examining the pin position, to determine the best position from which to putt. Next he looks at the fairway to determine which position would offer the best shot to his target on the green. Finally he plans his tee shot, choosing the club and type of shot most likely to land the ball in the desired spot on the fairway. How different from the hacker's "grip it and rip it" approach!

I believe this "backwards" approach is equally useful in military planning, and in tabletop gaming. First consider your final objectives, usually given in your scenario briefing. Consider whether it's even possible accomplish all of them with the forces available; it many cases, it's not. Regardless, you should assess their importance -- both tactically and in terms of victory conditions -- and prioritize them.

Without this setting of priorities, it becomes far too easy to pursue a less important objective at the expense of a more important one. This kind of distraction has led to many a lost battle, both in history and on the tabletop.

Having identified and prioritized your final objectives, next consider the best approach(es) to your final objectives. This will guide you to intermediate objectives -- the best positions from which to close on your final objectives -- and step by step back to your initial dispositions. Remember to prioritize each intermediate objective, in terms of its importance to the final objective(s) toward which it is directed.

At this point, you've probably already more planning than most gamers do for most systems. But you've hardly begun with POA.

WHAT CAN YOUR ARMY DO?

Throughout the planning process, you have to keep your army's capabilities in mind. How many mobile units do you have? Which units will be most effective versus armor or infantry, both in terms of unit/weapon type and Basic Die Value? How many command groups do you have. And, most importantly, how does your Sequence Deck compare to your opponent's?

There is very little more frustrating (and futile!) than trying to conduct a complex operation with a sluggish army. You won't know everything about your opponent's Sequence Deck; he may have some special cards which make his army slightly better (or worse!) than the norm.

But there's no excuse for not reviewing his basic Sequence Deck as given on pages 20-21 of the supplemental rules. How many Officer Check, Radio Check, and Barrage Hits! cards does he have? How many Hunker Down/Snafu and Mechanical Check cards? In most cases the movement and target acquisition cards are roughly the same; is his army one of the exceptions? And the same for your army.

You need to have an idea of whose army will be more responsive. If your army is more responsive, and if you the mobility to take advantage of that responsiveness, you can structure an attack plan which probes for weak points, or a defense plan which relies on "tripwires" and bold counterattacks. If your army is less responsive, you'll have to plan attacks which use overwhelming force, and defensive schemes which rely on dogged, tenacious resistance.

MAKE YOUR PLAN IMPETUS EFFICIENT

Regardless of how flexible your army might be, you will never get as much impetus as you like. Thus, the best plan will be the one which will cost the least impetus to implement. This means the "best approach" to an objective must be measured in terms of how much impetus it is likely cost. This may not be the most direct approach; your opponent will usually see these and deploy his strength against them. And in POA, fighting is almost always more expensive than maneuver. (Consider that it costs one pip per unit to fire or melee, but only one pip per command group to move!)

On the attack, look for a single approaches which threaten multiple objectives, rather than multiple approaches which converge on single objectives. A single approach is more impetus efficient and puts your opponent "on the horns of a dilemma," forcing him to spend extra impetus covering each potential target. By contrast, convergent approaches cost more impetus, are more difficult to coordinate, and telegraph your intentions, allowing your opponent to conserve impetus by covering a single target.

On the defense, the converse is true. Position your forces with command group boundaries such that several units within a command group can cover an objective with overlapping fields of fire. With multiple units covering each objective, the attacker must spend extra impetus to suppress or drive off each unit before the objective can be cleared. By contrast, a single unit assigned to cover multiple objectives becomes a "critical vulnerability;" if it is suppressed or driven off, you'll have to spend extra impetus making adjustments to cover each of those objectives.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Now that you've thought through what you want to do, it's time to do the "staff work." In POA, you use three tools to "write out" your plan:

HEADQUARTERS PLACEMENT -- Your headquarters define your main points of effort, because you need headquarters to rally suppressed and routing units. Remember that a unit with all stands suppressed can be rallied back to full effectiveness, but once it starts losing stands its strength is diminished for the rest of the game. And routing units chew up impetus -- they must be moved first on each initiative! - so you want to rally them as quickly as possible. Even if you don't have the initiative, you can try to rally a unit with an Opportunity Chip if it's within the command radius of an HQ.

Similarly, out-of-command units waste impetus by moving individually; in most cases, you'll want to get them back with their command groups as soon as possible. Thus, you should position your headquarters where they're most likely to be needed: along your major axes of advance or near the critical points in your defensive line. This is why Officer Check cards are important in assessing the responsiveness of an army; they allow you to move your headquarters, and hence shift your main points of effort.

COMMAND GROUP ASSIGNMENTS -- POA gives you a lot of liberty in customizing your command groups. Although the TO&Es give nominal groupings, you can and should tailor these to your battle plans. Try to keep a reserve, and hold onto it for as long as possible. Often as not, the battle goes to the commander with the last uncommitted reserve.

FIRE SUPPORT -- Regardless of whether the scenario requires or even permits you to pre-plot your barrages, the delays and uncertainty built into the off-table artillery rules make it very difficult to "shoot from the hip." Thus, you need to know where and when you plan to use barrages, so you can position your maneuver units to take advantage of the barrage when it arrives. Note that if you're playing the Russians, you must pre-plot your barrages, and you'll be limited to those barrages for the entire battle.

KEEPING IT TOGETHER

At this point you've identified and prioritized your objectives, with approaches tailored to your army's capabilities, aimed for most efficient use of impetus, set out your command groups and headquarters, and figured out where and when you'll use artillery. It's time to roll that command die and start turning cards, right? Not quite. There's one more thing to do: check your mind-set. I try to keep three questions in mind, from the very first initiative cast right through to the very last:

What do I want to do next?
What card(s) do I need to do it?
How many are left in my deck?

If the next step in my plan calls for an Armor Move in Open card, and I know I have one left in my deck, I want to get to it as efficiently as possible. Barring the need for an Officer Check to rally a shaken unit, I'm going to skip any other card that comes up. Ruthlessly. It's bad enough having to waste the impetus to turn over cards I don't need, without wasting more impetus on trivial actions "because the card says I can." If there are no Armor Move in Open cards left in my deck, I'm going to pause to do just one thing: restock my Opportunity Chips if necessary. Once that's done, I'm going to flip cards by count; I won five pips, flip five cards. I may not even bother to look at them, because my sole concern is getting to the end of the Turn so I can reshuffle and get to that Armor Move in Open card.

During the planning stage, you'll have considered scores of possible approaches, discarding all but the few that form your plan. The rest are "ghost ideas;" they come back to haunt you during the game. "Look over here," one says, usually while you're flipping through the deck to get a card you need. "Maybe you can try me after all." Call the Ghostbusters, or a medium, or an exorcist. Those ghosts won't help you do anything but fritter away your impetus and lose the battle.

The lone exception is where the situation presents a more impetus-efficient way to secure an objective of equal or greater priority than the approach or objective you're currently pursuing. Provided it doesn't take away forces or impetus that you'd tagged for a more important objective, this is part of your plan. Specifically, that's the reason you prioritized your objectives. If you hadn't, there'd be no way for you to know whether the response you're considering for this new threat or opportunity is a sound tactical decision, or a potentially fatal distraction.

CONCLUSION

As a closing note, there will be times when your plan lets you down. Almost every scenario has a winner and a loser, and that means that about half the time you'll walk away wondering what went wrong. Don't take these outcomes as a lesson in the futility of planning. Rather, use them to learn how to plan better. No plan will guarantee victory, but "no plan" will guarantee defeat. Good luck with POA!