Below are the player's and my comments at the end of this postal game, as published in TWJO 26 (July/August 2002). Click here for an introduction to the game.

I asked for comments on the game last time and several people have let me have their thoughts. Several others sent in their next turn… Neil Packer starts.

You asked for some about Great White Hunter, so here goes. Obviously, I'm biased 'cos I won the game. I'm well aware that if you win a game the first time you play it, you automatically tend to think it's slightly better than it may actually be. Still, I enjoyed it. It required about the right amount of thought and planning for an addition to the En Garde! game. Keeping a map showing all the game's misses was essential, of course - and represented the major time investment each turn.

As I mentioned some time last year, I ran this for a tutor group I had in school. They enjoyed it too - and split into different styles of player. There were those that worked alone and kept a map; those that worked alone and just took random shots based on what they saw on the map each turn; those that worked in teams shooting up blocks of terrain. I figured out after a while that the team players appeared to be giving all their information to individuals, so they weren't particularly benefiting themselves.

One point to come out of it was what to do with how the snakes moved. I rolled dice for them each turn and gave them options for staying still, changing orientation as well as moving up to the three squares. I also marked any square that had been hit and would have allowed all the remaining points on a square to go to the hunter who hit the uninjured square had anyone done so.

This academic year I've tried running a game for another of my classes but they really aren't interested. (Different school, different idea of what's cool.)

Next, a few words from Mike Dommett.

You should get the same number of points whichever square you hit. If you don't, what happens is the elephant gets hit - score one point for the lucky player. Then you must all fire at it, because otherwise the players who do fire at it score an increasing number of points - in the extreme, 3 players could share 14 points.

I suggest that the value for an elephant is increased to 16 points, and everyone who hits a given square shares the 4 points for that square. Similarly, the value of the other animals would need tweaking to give a value that's a whole number when divided by the squares. Perhaps add a couple of booby prizes - Tarzan and Jane are out there: lose 2 points for hitting them.

My only problem with that is that it increases the points for players who get lucky. Mind you, this game is pretty much all about luck. What does Pete Holland have to say?

Reasonably fun for the level of simplicity. I suppose I showed that joining the game a bit late wasn't a disaster, though I became more and more aware that I could be targeting squares that had already been tried before I signed up. It was a big help realising that (snakes aside) animals were placed such that none had touching squares - anyone acting on this had a big advantage, especially as the game went on. The more interesting choices to be made were after animals had been wounded - weighing up the chances of a hit or kill along with the likely points return.

Nik Luker and Jacky Sharp have a joint comment.

As regards Great White Hunter, yes, most enjoyable. Can't believe people took it so seriously! It was just right - quick, not too much to think about, but above all fun. Thanks, and we look forward to the next one (whatever that might turn out to be…)!

And the last word goes to William Steven.

I enjoyed taking part in GWH. It's good to have an extra full readership-participating game besides LPBS in TWJO.

Well, the idea was to have a game that could involve everybody and that did not make any great demands on people's time. GWH seems to have worked from this point of view. I would be quite happy to run a second game, but I thought it would be better to have a change. I'm still open to suggestions for the next all-subscriber game.

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