Recently purchased “Custer’s Luck”.  Found out it could be played solitaire.  Very reasonable price, just slightly more expensive than a pint of beer.

While researching the game, I came across an interesting article by Charles Vasey over at Boardgamegeek.  I also read the posted comments about the game.   People either love it or (mostly) hate it.  Actually sounds best (now) as a multi-player game.

Vasey’s perspective is an interesting one, despite his caricature of an Ordered Gamer’s personal life.   Today, Experience Gamers might be characterized as interested in narrative flow.  Both Ordered and Experienced Gamers enjoy games that closely follow historical outcomes or their personal bias toward narrative/outcome.  Any uncertainty is limited to replayability, and often this categorization is predicated on the number of variety of scenarios, not the replay of the same scenario.

Chaos Gamers want nothing of it.  Any historical setting must be basic in the extreme, with limited constraints.  Game flow is unpredictable with outcomes varied in both impact and timing.  To me, this involves a level of impartiality that is difficult if not impossible to attain.  I know I have favorite units, sides, and the need for one side to attain an outcome.  It takes discipline not to re-roll for an event that shouldn’t have happened.

The upshot of this is that I’ll try to categorize my gaming experience, starting a game with the pre-condition that it meets one (and only one) of Vasey’s categories.  Good Luck with that, Ralph.