One Most Overlooked Asset

[Riley D. Smith]

Most ya'll who have played me know that I am generally about 1/2
braindead (due to my rapidly advancing age and the simple slipping of mental faculties resulting from raising 4 eleven year olds...3 being the female variety).

With all that being a given, I must take advantage of every "friendly asset" at my disposal while commanding troops on the cyber battlefield. The one that I most often seem to overlook is the very one that should be first and foremost in each of our minds...the scenario victory conditions.

Remember that the real goal here is to play to win. That means playing directly to the victory conditions. If you need to hold point "a" and exit 2 men from hex "b" then your focus should be that and only that.

I recently was involved in an ES game. As the Germans my real goal was to exit as many units from the exit hexes on the Western edge of the board as possible. No victory hexes or any other victory conditions existed (or if there were some they would have been inconsequential). After an initially successful attack into the center of the enemy lines, my assault was quickly ground to a halt (in no small part due to some very nasty converging fires and a very well played defense). Instead of trying to slide off the attack the either the North or South, I kept slugging it out head-on until my attack was punished to the point of stopping and not being able to retreat safely. All this while an escape route on the southern edge was wide open in plenty of time for me to exit more than enough units for a win. Bad on me. The central attack, after its inititial slight success did nothing but bleed off VP's. Live and learn.

Another game, this one in Africa at War, another debacle due to me not paying close attention the victory conditions, and, in this case, some special rules covering specific units that were able to cross open water hexes. Too late I realized the entire mechanized column I was sending in a flanking move to secretly cross a river at a remote spot, thereby suprising my opponent, was not going to be able to even cross at the crossing due to a special rule in the scenario (only amphibs can cross there). My opponent also had not noticed this rule. He crossed some light armor which I ran smack into. Long story short....had I read the rules my entire game strategy would have been vastly different. Not to mention at least have a chance to succeed.

I find, again and again, that success in Squad Battles lies in paying very close attention to the details. It's easy for even experienced wargamers to forget how vastly different the Squad Battles series plays from any other on the site. Reading the scenario description and paying close attention to the victory conditions...and then playing directly too them. Also...with the many mods we are playing there are often special conditions and rules that come into play.

When it comes to Squad Battles, the devil is truely in the details, but don't overlook the obvious.