"Gamey" tactics

[Dog Soldier]

Capture objectives come with their own problems. No solution is without some exploit. As Mad Dog points out, capture objectives make a lot of sense in a certain context. In other situations a designer can get weird results. I have played games where once the objective on one side of the board is "touched" by occupying the hex, such as just moving through it thus "capturing the VP"; then the attacking force concentrates all their forces on the other side of the board without any regard to flank security to overwhelm the defense there. This works best where the attacker has superior mobility (roads, no streams etc) or the terrain lends itself to the attacker being able to interdict such a shift by the defense due to a choke point near the first objective.

I am sure the SB community has seen many such examples in other game systems of what I am trying to describe here.

Static objectives do not lend themselves very well to a situation where there is either a delaying action by the defense or an attempt to retake key ground by the defense in a counter attack late in the game. In this case a VP award of "x" VP by turn for the side holding the objective works. This VP per turn basis does not have to be a linear one. Sometimes it makes sense to start with a low number that increases slightly each turn so a late game re-capture of the objective by the defense could tip the game result. This forces both sides to both attack and defend or causes the defender to try to hold a little longer to a forward position to get those extra VP.

Bottom line, a designer chooses the best approach for the game system for scoring objectives and balancing that with expected casualty VP, and we just live with it.

Dog Soldier