MC Changes

[Glenn Saunders]

Another way to look at things along the lne of what both Ed and Rick are saying is this.

Consider two hexes - both with West German Inf Btln in them. And both are facing a equal size\strength\Quality attacker.

Hex #1 has a Combined Btln
Hex #2 has the same Btln in three Coys.

If the game treated fire on the coys completely equally then when fire was taken with the same "Die Roll Result" killing "X" men with "Y" BF, if there was no Coy BF then the Btln would really be penalized because the entire unit is fired upon and suffers from the BF. While the hex with the 3 Coys would have two companies in PERFECT shape and one coy with the SAME BF as the BTLN.

This would mean we could and should completely remove combined units from the game because it really would be stupid to combine - right. I mean there would be no good reason the combine and plenty of reason it never combine.

This would lead to MORE counters to move around and it is just not good for the game or the series.

COYs n the Series came about when WIg Graves created the Normany 44 OOB with detail way beyond the original BTLN concept created by Greg Smith. The abilty to split off a COY for the Germans on the East Front was found to be ESSENTIAL when we made Kharkov 42 as the game simply would not work for the Germans defenser having only Btlns. Weak places in the line formed easily and lead to holes that didn't really happen. And the Russian player walked through them. The smulation broke down.

I had a huge discussion with John Tiller as recently on this topic when Minsk 44 was created. Here again German COYS were essential and I argued the BF penality made the historical German defense extremely difficult to simulate. John kept an open mind and created the optional rule "Quality Fatigue Modifier" to counter the effect I complained about. This worked because the Germans troops we still able to give the Red Army a sprited defense even though they were vastly outnumbered - so the had to be better troops!

So clearly we need coys, and we need Coy BF. And while I don't want to discourage debate on the pros and cons of what you might like to see, I just want all to understand this is ***NOT*** something that you will see changed by the developers!

So, if you don't want your COYs to have ZOCs - make them Platoons. If you don't want the Coys or Platoons to have added BF try the Optional Qaulity Fatigue Modifier Rule.

This is an extremely flexibly system to work with - probably more flexibly than any other game series and system I know of. But it can't do everything. However it does do many things fairly nicely. But it is a game after all and that COYS have ZOC might be a side effect we have to live with just like we have all learned to live with ONE SIDE MOVES all units and the other side sits and does nothing - just watches. Then the other side moves. I mean how realistic is that?

So I would recommend folks try to keep things in perspective. The game just can't do everything.

Glenn