Errata: Dealing with Captain Takeback
Long ago, in the before time, I posted about several different gamer personalities that can sometimes be irksome. The analysis paralysis player is a big topic about which I receive e-mails from time to time. But he’s not the only annoying player. This week I have a question about Captain Takeback, the guy who undoes and redoes all of his moves.
Advice Seeker asked, “One guy in our gaming group always takes back his moves. He’ll do his turn over several times. He even does it during the next player’s turn. It has gotten to the point where we need to enforce a rule that once he takes his hand off the piece, it is officially played. How do you deal with this?”
Different players have different peeves, but for whatever reason I’m fine with Captain Takeback. I don’t mind if he redoes his turn (as long as it doesn’t make the game too long). When I play a game, I want to play against the best opponents, and I don’t want to win because they made an avoidable mistake when they knew better and can catch themselves. I like to out-strategize, not hope my opponent makes a mistake.
That said, I can see how it would be annoying. And I think in a tournament setting you would need a “no-taksies-backsies” rule. That keeps everyone honest and avoids the chance that a player could do a “take back” after getting more information than he should have on his turn.
In my groups, though, gaming is much more casual. The rule we’ve come up with is that you can undo a move as long as: (1) the next player hasn’t gone; and (2) no random information was revealed (like a die roll or card draw). Once you see how a die roll plays out, you can’t be allowed to do a take back. That would defeat the purpose of the chance element. And, if the next player hasn’t gone, then you really aren’t messing them up too much. I even look at it as a punishment for AP. If the AP player takes a while and the person before him changes something up, I tell the AP player: “You took too long. You let him take back his turn. Hurry up.”
In the end, though, I consider Captain Takeback a minor gaming sin, and one that I’m generally OK to play with. I feel like, the vast majority of the time, it makes my opponents better and that makes the game more fun.
Got questions about strategy, specific games, or the hobby in general? Post them in the comments here, email me at geekinsight at gfbrobot dot com, or send them to @GeekInsight on Twitter and check back next week for answers!
Takebacks are fine as long as they come before the next player’s turn has started, and as long as there aren’t like 30 in a row (on the same turn). Some people can think better if they can see the results of their move, so actually placing their piece and then stepping back is just how they process their strategy.
Although if there are a lot of complicated steps that have to be undone, it can be very annoying.
Also if someone is doing it a whole bunch of times on one turn, it’s really just a disguise for AP. You have to make a decision and let the game go!
What I really dislike is when, 3 or 4 turns later, someone goes “wait! I think I forgot to draw a card!” or something like that. In some cases it’s obvious what’s missing, but other times it’s kind of like… you snooze you lose.
At my house, I’ve enacted a one-mulligan-per-game rule. We’re also casual players and everyone makes mistakes, but at the same time the players shouldn’t be able to bank on taking back moves whenever they like.
I was at a HeroClix tournament one time where taksies-backsies eventually caused one guy to literally scream in another guy’s face.
Needless to say our gaming group went their seperate ways after that.
Now my HeroClixing is strictly casual with close friends and family.
@Big Tim, Yeah, I think it a tournament situation, there may need to be some kind of take-back rule. On Who Wants to be a Millionaire, you can’t take back your answer once you say its your “Final Answer.” Maybe something similar for tournaments?
In any event, for casual games I think take-backs (in moderation) are nothing to get bent out of shape over.
For games in which it matters, often abstract strategy, we use a token that you hand to the. Ext player when you’re done with your move.
Sometimes it’s hard to mentally see how the board will look when your turn is up, and you need to see the lay of the land to be sure it’s the right move.
If this prolongs the game too much, a chess clock style of timer, set so that each player has a limit of time for all their moves may help.