Rout Limiting

[-72-]

I know Christian does a lot of testing on his own, but I don't know that he was actually on playtest teams -I don't have him down for any credits at SDC (which I took directly from the user manuals for each series).

Otoh neither am I for Overland, and I was on that team for 2+ years -so I guess just not being listed on credits is an absolute.

Ok - the thing that strikes me about the conversation is not the validity/invalidity argument -but I guess another way to see it is to know rules' potential impacts on a scenario and design them accordingly. In this case it sounds like a case of adjusting where VP's are earned and for what actions. Some designers take the approach that a scenario is optimised for a certain set of rules (or not tested with others) -the problem can be that sometimes designers forget to mention that part anywhere.

In REN, Rich White took the approach that armies were each sides' objectives with no vp hexes on the map I was never really sure that approach actually worked -in the context of REN, however that isn't really indicative of overall validity. It might have been more about what I was thinking at the time. Of course, too I am a big one for weighted loss scoring systems (one sides losses worth more than the other sides), and well VP juggling as a part of scenario design can be a bit of an art form all its own.

The question, then, for scenario designer (whether it is just brainstorming a design or be smack dab in the middle of working on one), is impacts - the rout limiting thing is an interesting discussion as there were situations when entire flanks bolted.

What do you as a player do to minimize the impact of that occurring? Reserves come to mind -and that then brings in another entirely different discussion - reserves management ( guys who are 'all in' types and just go at a battle with everything that they have usually come out on the wrong end of those battles (which isn't to say that I haven't when trying to use a reserve -and it might just mean that I have my off moments ;). Ok - I won't go any further with reserves apart from saying that I think that they are a big part of the rout limit discussion as well. Lose half your army to a daisy chain rout -better have someone else there to cover that flank (and quickly too.).