Mud Movement penalties seem low

[Ricky B]

Interesting Midge, do you play with storms on? They really have an even more serious impact on both movement and combat than mud, which really only impacts movement. Also, the infantry, especially Soviet, already are limited in mud to 1-2 hexes per turn, and a lot of towed guns (horse maybe) can only move that far.

So my question is do you really see allowing tanks and motorized infantry to move far but not infantry and guns as being more fun than limiting everything to a couple of hexes?

From my POV, a scenario that is mud from start to finish isn't going to be much fun, but if it is a 3 day scenario and 1 day has mud, that is okay. But keep the movement allowances for the units in sync with each other - and to me that means mud should slow down all the units to about the same speed, at least if it is heavy mud.

As to fun over realism, if it isn't fun then it isn't worth doing - so ignore the mud battles if that is all there is in it - where there was very little action anyway - or make the mud work so it is fun, but still realistic/accurate. For me that means that mud impacts infantry less than tanks - which would be the heavy mud and anything less than heavy mud is "soft" - and mud should be very rare as a result. We talked earlier about mud being lesser and greater, but writing this I think I now see light mud as the soft conditions, while mud would be rare, generally not more than a day, and it should be like the above pics and keep tanks down to walking speed of the infantry.

That puts all units on the same footing which seems very historical - and if it is a "playability and fun" question which is paramount to me also, then why would allowing only takes and motorized infantry the power to zoom around in mud and nothing else make any sense, or add to the fun? Trust me, having played Soviets in a mud scenario recently, where most infantry could move a single hex per turn, while the German tanks moved around at 8-10 hexes at a time isolating all my infantry a piece at a time, it sure wasn't any fun for my Soviet side at all, and unrealistic to boot. An alternative would be to keep the infantry movement up also, which if that is your primary criteria would balance things also.

Rick