Latest Opinions on Assault/Defend PBEM Ratio

[Narwan]

Very important are special restrictions for the creation of minefields.
Those who are interested on this subject may feel free to contact me.

Cheers, Klaus

Uhh, well yeah if you're going to rob the defender of some of his most useful assets I can understand why you would want to give the attacker more points.

An assault scenario is per defenition an attack on a well dug-in enemy who has reinforced his position with trenches, minefields, obstacles, barbed wire and/or pillboxes and who has cleared away terrain to give his units better fields of fire (now I'm betting most of you don't know the game gives you this ability when defending). That's the whole point of the set-up. If you want a more fluid attack vs defense battle you should play an advance/delay battle and not strip away the defenders advantages.
There should be no restrictions on minefields etc as a general rule. These are bought with points and it takes some skill to get their cost's worth in a 2:1 points game. And there we come to another important point; just as the minefields etc are integral to the whole set-up so is the static nature of the defence. It is NOT a mobility battle. And I suspect that that's where it rubs; many people like to move about their pieces, 'do' things with them. In a defend the most important phase of the game by far is your set-up when you place your units. That means you have to spend time and effort on it. The commander you're playing will surely have put many hours into placing his units. So should you. But how many people do? Again I'm betting most people want to get the deployment over with asap, get thing moving (literally too) and place their units more or less on gut feeling rather than calculation on the map. That's not the way to play a defense.

Final point, I think most people don't really like to play pure defenses because of it's static nature and try to turn the game they play into something more fluid as that suits their style more. My advice, only play defenses if you like to play battles where you move maybe only half a dozen units the first 5 to 10 turns.

Narwan

EDIT:
PS two gentleman agreements can be agreed upon for defenses though; first to limit the amount of VH's that can be mined (like no more than a third) and to limit the hexes that can be cleared for improving fields of fire (at most a few dozen or so).