In Half-Minute History we give you a 30-second history lesson and then relate a laser tag strategy lesson to the snippet of history. Enjoy!
At the height of the Civil War, just three cigars lost on the side of the road changed the course of history. What do they teach us about laser tag strategy planning?
When doing your strategy planning before a match, don’t plan strategies for future games in case a teammate switches teams after the current game.
The History
September 13, 1862 found the United States at a precipitous point in the Civil War. Things were going very badly for the North; they kept losing ground time after time. The Twenty-Seventh Indiana Regiment stopped for a break and three soldiers who sat down spotted a small package wrapped in a sheet of paper: three cigars! The soldiers were excited by the discovery, but then one of them, on a whim, took a second look at the piece of paper that they had been wrapped in.
The paper was a copy of the marching orders(with all of their strategy planning) for the entire Southern Army, lost by a careless Confederate officer. The soldiers took the orders to General McClellan, in command of the Union Army. As luck would have it, one of the officers who inspected the paper happened to know General Chilton (who had written the orders) and could confirm that it was his handwriting. General McClellan used those orders to his advantage and quickly turned the tide of the war against the South, leading to the eventual victory by the North.
The Lesson – Strategy Planning
We’ve talked about how to plan quickly at the start of each laser tag game and we’ve talked about strategies like using rovers that can help your plan be more flexible. The story of the cigars, though, shows you that when you do have the luxury to think ahead farther, like during a quick water break, for instance, that you shouldn’t speak those plans even to your own team. Why? The simple fact of the matter is that we have a tendency to switch up the teams. Sometimes you get to choose who’s switching and sometimes we’ll switch a few people to balance the teams a bit better. The teammate you shared your plans with could end up on the other team when you want to try your plan! It could even be worse: the other team could come up with a new strategy (because they do think your plan is good) that is even better than the one you came up with!
Don’t spend lots of time planning out in advance. Plan your strategy one game at a time.