3 things I'm tired of

[Tiger 88]

Unfortunately for me - I think Earl is referring to our current games we have played - as the axis player in:

Puma's - Market Garden Scenario (WF)

Alpenglohen (WF)

Currently - Puma's - Kursk Scenario (EF)

All three to me are excellent scenarios and I will continue to play them - from any side.

If any of these three scenarios were played with EA - then they would suck big time as you would never bump the defenders out of the hex or you would try the entire game to gain the hex - and I need fluid scenarios to feed my craving!

As we all know this has been debated over a thousand times - EA is not for the older scenarios and personally is not for me - I'm just sayin! I have not played too many newer scenarios where EA was in play - perhaps my discontent with EA could be swayed (but I doubt it).

One final point - Allied tactics do have to come into play when playing against Panthers and Tigers - shooting them not at ideal ranges or front on will not cut it in this game.

[Askari19]

One final point - Allied tactics do have to come into play when playing against Panthers and Tigers - shooting them not at ideal ranges or front on will not cut it in this game.

I'm with Earl on EA - prefer it over the silly "disrupt-surround-destroy" business, although it does make a hash of the some of the earlier scenarios.

However, I think AF is quite appropriate at this scale, and I enjoy the challenge of fighting the big cats, and remembering "front toward enemy" with everyone else as well. The problems aren't with the AF rule, they are in its interaction with the retreat rule (I've always wanted an AFV retreat rule that allow a unit to maintain its facing - or face toward the incoming fire - and back out of a hex); and with the juvenile "Axis bias" that loads up scenarios with unrealistic numbers of Pz V's and VI's.

That "Axis superman" or "German bias" thing has been a plague on the wargaming hobby, and an embarassment, since the 1960s. (Warning, another old curmudgeon mounting soapbox...) :stir:

It's everywhere - on box cover art, in the ubiquity of Nazi & SS subjects in the military history section of the bookstore, in our usernames here, and in too many scenario designs. It's one thing to recognize the strengths (such as they were, and no, they weren't ten feet tall) of the WW2 German military; but something else entirely to identify with them, or glorify them. Professionalism and proficiency in an evil cause is still essentially evil.

Anybody remember Jack Radey, the founder of People's Wargames? His doctrinaire Marxism was repellant, but at least his research and game designs were brilliant and unbiased, and were a refreshing change to the pro-German bias in the hobby.

Bill

[PawelM]

I got aas well bored with this disrupt capture routine but I agree some scenarios are no go with EA in terms of balance. I prefer EA, but would never play EA off as allied for instance in A Legend is born. There is no way shermans can win without being able to capture disrupted panthers in this scenario. There is definetely too many big cats.

As for AF I think scale is ok and it is interesting option, but would do with some improvements. First of all a disrupted unit should loose its facing, i.e. be treated like for AF off. As I unerstand disruption it means a unit has lost its cohesion and is in disarray. Therefore one cannot expect all armor will be aligned to the same directio, but rather opposite?

So, this is for disrupted unit which retreat. If however a unit is retreated but not disrupted in the process, I would expect the unit should be assumed to be able toreatreat and position itself as it were in terms of facing as it has retained its cohesion. Change of facing costs 0 AP in the game and would not mean extra effort as assumed by the game designers as well. So therefore I second Askari idea for undisripted units forced to retreat

This joined with lack of facing for undisrupted units would make AF more sensible in my view.

[PawelM]

Oh and another lame thing about AF is that OppFire makes the change direction.

I thought the turrets were revolving?

I wish I could influence facing for OppFire for my units somehow without having to disable OppFire completely.

[Herr Straße Laufer]

I'm with Earl on EA - prefer it over the silly "disrupt-surround-destroy" business, although it does make a hash of the some of the earlier scenarios.

If you would not have used the word "silly" I might agree with you.
EA does not make "hash" of anything. It fundamentally changes the game.
I may think EA is "silly" but I never describe it that way because it does not define those that play with it on.
And, I do not find myself "silly" for wanting "disrupt-surround-destroy". I'm playing one now with EA off and the fight has been tough all the way.

Anybody remember Jack Radey, the founder of People's Wargames? His doctrinaire Marxism was repellant, but at least his research and game designs were brilliant and unbiased, and were a refreshing change to the pro-German bias in the hobby.

Yes to both. That is old school for sure!



HSL

---

Oh and another lame thing about AF is that OppFire makes the change direction.

I thought the turrets were revolving?

I wish I could influence facing for OppFire for my units somehow without having to disable OppFire completely.

Yes, opt fire would make the formation change direction. Most armored tactics called for facing your best armor defense in the direction of the enemy?
Turns are a fluid thing. It might be IgoUgo but if you look at turns as being fluid then it makes sense. :capture the flag:

I agree with a multiple opt fire setting. If they could add "no shooting at half tracks" in with the hard target selection. Or, "no shooting at empty trucks" to the soft target selection. That would be a good thing.
But, it has also been asked for by players since the game was first introduced.



HSL

[Askari19]

I'm with Earl on EA - prefer it over the silly "disrupt-surround-destroy" business, although it does make a hash of the some of the earlier scenarios.

If you would not have used the word "silly" I might agree with you.
EA does not make "hash" of anything. It fundamentally changes the game.
I may think EA is "silly" but I never describe it that way because it does not define those that play with it on.
And, I do not find myself "silly" for wanting "disrupt-surround-destroy". I'm playing one now with EA off and the fight has been tough all the way.

HSL

No offense intended to any players or their choices. I've played a lot of "silly" rules and a lot of "silly" games, and play EA-off when it's necessary or my opponent insists, and I don't think it makes me "silly" either. :fireman3:

But this is a "silly" rule for a game that strives for realism, harking back to the old Zone of Control and retreat rules from 60s-era AH operational scale games, wildly inapplicable to a 250m-hex tactical game.

For that reason, I'll call it "lazy" as well as "silly", because it saved the designer the effort of crafting assault rules that fit the scale and period. The ZOC concept works on larger scales, where the unit counter is an abstraction of the unit (usually a battalion or larger), and its subunits, patrols, and fields of fire can reasonably be assumed to cover a wider area than the hex the counter occupies (usually mile a more in diameter).

In CS, we represent platoons and sections with ranged fire. I'll accept that a retreating enemy can't move through a hex that my unit occupies (although even that is an abstraction; 250 meters of urban or forest terrain can't be cordoned off by a step or two of anything), but CS tells me that my unit can lock down an area three times that size by fire? When it can't do that 100% in normal movement and combat?? Well, let's just let Opportunity Fire settle whether that's the case or not! We already have "extra" Opportunity Fire triggered randomly by units moving adjacent; the probability of that OF could be tweaked upward in the case of an enemy retreating from assault, or not... But that kind of work, as well as addressing the facing questions we're talking about here, and the level of detail that the EA argument addresses, is the level of effort we ought to see in a tactical game design.

In a quiet moment, I could crack a dozen very well-crafted and wildly dissimilar tactical boardgames with similar subjects and scales and compare their assault/retreat treatments to JTCS. JTCS (especially JTCS pre-EA) would not compare favorably. So I stick to my choice of adjectives.

Despite which, I respect and enjoy the game and it's aficionados immensely.

[Herr Straße Laufer]

I think any game engine that relies on one final die roll in spite of conditions and previous die rolls is "silly" and "gamey".
But, I won't belabor the point.

I thought and think that the compromise between game and "realistic" simulation was good. I won't go on about building bridges and setting up a minefield.

Maybe we can get together and play that realistic Avalon Hill Tobruk. I have a few hundred dice sitting around if I get a Bofors.

We can do sticky ZOC's, gooey ZOC's, rigid ZOC's, hard ZOC's, or no ZOC's. :lecture:

It's more important how the game is played? EA takes a bit out of the way the game is played by injecting the game engine into the assault roll. It is the only part I really do not like about the new rule.



HSL

[Askari19]

Maybe we can get together and play that realistic Avalon Hill Tobruk. I have a few hundred dice sitting around if I get a Bofors.

It's more important how the game is played? EA takes a bit out of the way the game is played by injecting the game engine into the assault roll. It is the only part I really do not like about the new rule.



HSL

Oh now, don't bind me up in a straw man here, I had enough sense never to even buy Tobruk, and of course there's always a balance between realism and playability. The joy of PC-based systems like JTCS is that we can actually play them without the endless record-keeping, table-consulting, and rule-reading that their boardgame predecessors demanded. What's wrong with detailed analysis, historical fidelity, and complicated multi-factor algorithms in the game engine so long as you don't have to play with a pencil and a stack of charts in your hand? I judge them by the *effect* I see in the game. The original CS assault rule gives outcomes that look like pure BS to me, again and again. EA does not. 'Nuff said. Everyone to his opinion. :whis:

[Crossroads]

While I never owned any other classic boardgames but Avalon Hill's Panzer Leader and Rise and Fall of Third Reich, PL especially is guilty to these old sins.

While I don't have the rulebook in front of me, and not having played it for some 10 years, there certainly were symptoms of uber Axis there. Only German tanks were allowed to transport infantry (I am sure Panzerblitz must have allowed the Soviets to do the same?), and not only that there was a special rule how they can approach the enemy counter, drop the infantry, and then perform a combined or separate assault as one wished. Together with an artillery barrage that was a significant advantage to Axis player.

As for EA=off, it reminds me of the PL CAT (Close assault tactics I believe) rule, where an enemy counter can first receive a disruption from either direct or indirect fire, after which any armored unit can override it and destroy it given it has enough action points left. It was a cool rule on a board game, as it provided for fast action. I am sure Tiller et al had played their PB and PL and atleast I see similarities with original assault rules and those board games.

JTCS is a fundamentally different game based on whether one plays it with or without EA. There are certain old scenarios which I immensely enjoy with EA off. After all, against a skilled opponent, surround-disrupt-assault is not an easy task.

Having said that, I prefer the EA optional rule, and would welcome more optional rules in the future should Matrix guys have the resources to do so. Unit facing would be such an addition that again would make us study each scenario again.

I don't like AF mostly for the retreat behaviour, and many good suggestion have been made how it would be better. Unit facing is still valid in this scale imho. I've seen several documents where e.g. a basic Sherman platoon encountered a Panther platoon traveling on a road, and destroyed the lot without any friendly casualties. For infantry platoons, facing is an issue as well, and to cover more alleys of advance one should have more men on the hex. TOAW allows for break-up and combination of units, with a penalty attached.

Here's hoping Modern Wars gathers a new following that would allow Matrix to invest in enhancing the engine with new (optional) capabilities!

[Herr Straße Laufer]

What's wrong with detailed analysis, historical fidelity, and complicated multi-factor algorithms in the game engine so long as you don't have to play with a pencil and a stack of charts in your hand? I judge them by the *effect* I see in the game. The original CS assault rule gives outcomes that look like pure BS to me, again and again. EA does not. 'Nuff said. Everyone to his opinion. :whis:

I was not throwing up a strawman.
There was nothing wrong with Tobruk if you liked to roll dice?
The best part of computer games is that they do all the rolling.

It's not the "multifactor" algorithms, it's the one final morale roll that I object to. And, continue to object to.
I have seen more "BS" results with EA on than not on. I also thought there was nothing wrong with the original. Though, I play with EA on when called for by the scenario designer.

That said, I see we are polar opposites. And, yet, neither of us is "silly"?
--------- :rifle3




HSL