Etiquette

[Elxaime]

It depends on the situation.

The first time I played F40 as the Allies, it was right out of the box. As I played the opening days, I had no clue an entire German Army Corps enters from the north edge, behind the Belgian lines. Sure enough, when they came in, they broke about twenty Belgian units who were too close to that edge and helped bring the battle to an early end. I kept on playing, but my opponent was the one who brought it up as something I should be warned against in the future - I think he was disappointed I had been caught by surprise because it made the challenge much less for the Germans. Players like to win, but few enjoy complete walkovers facilitated by events like this.

In real life, while strategic surprises do happen, in that situation the Belgians would have had some awareness of matters to the north in Holland, would have some intelligence to help warn them to fall back.


So, in cases where a scenario has a "Deux Ex Machina" of an enemy force appearing off a board edge behind your lines (M41 German entries also come to mind) I don't think it is "gamey" to get an awareness of this.

An example of what would be "gamey" is to use knowledge of the opening set-up to target known stacks of enemy troops with first turn air recon followed by devastating air and artillery attack. The stock K43 scenario is prone to this problem from both sides. In no-holds-barred games (of which I have had several) it is no problem so long as both of you agree nothing is barred. But if you want to, some house rules could be used.

But my general practice is to prefer not looking. It is more fun to play with uncertainty.