Linear Setup Practice Drill

[Stephanie Oswalt]

We recently received the following question from a student:

Hello. My name is matt and I had a quick question. I'm currently doing the linear games drill (page 91 of LGB) and was wondering if it's okay to be creating a diagram of all possibilities and then using the Not laws afterwords. for example, on 93 I came up with 5 different possibilities of how each combination could happen.

An instructor will respond to the question below. Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the question! It's interesting, because by using that method you are actually getting ahead of where we expect you to be at this point In other words, the technique you talk about—which we call Identify the Possibilities—is one that we do use on certain games, and when used properly it can be devastating. That's a topic that will come up a lot more, so the first part of my answer here is that it's just fine for you to do that because later on we're going to want you to do just that.

The second part of my answer is that in a real game, once you have all the solutions drawn out, you don't need to show the Not Laws since your solutions inherently contain those. So what I would do for purposes of study is look over my diagrams and review the Not Laws that are present, and strive to understand what generated those. That's one intent of the drill, and as long as you do that at some point (whether during or after the drill), you will be just fine.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!