Grumblers musing

[Herr Straße Laufer]

I guess where my frustration is concentrated does not depend solely on whether the game is WWII in play style, or the more modern tactical style (I can handle that too).

As I said, I played versus the AI both ways in the boot camps and the smaller scenarios. What happened in the smaller scenarios was eye opening.

I forget it's name, but in one scenario I was the Israelis who humped over hills to fight the enemy on a peninsula. Destroyed the AA guns along the way and even brought in Helos in the end to take a rear victory hex and radar station, one helo was shot at long range from a triple AA gun and destroyed. The other survived long enough to disembark it's passenger and get destroyed by close range small arms fire before it could fly away. The enemy resisted OK and even had a few assaults that knocked my boys back.

Playing in the reverse role was interesting. I did not expect to be tossed around like a rag doll, have all but one AA gun destroyed but even the one could not score hits at range. Then the Israeli helos swooped in and were airborne one hex away from machine gunners and AA guns, still loaded. I figured scratch two helos and their passengers, to rack up some points. It did not happen. I fired the AA and saw no effect ... twice. I fired the Mg's and small arms weapons multiple times to no avail. Bad luck die rolls? I replayed the scenario from the same side and it was almost a repeat of the play all the way to the helos parking next to my units and daring me to fire. Same results.

In my second PBEM game I am down to three tank platoons that sit and watch the Israeli infantry getting picked to pieces. I used up all 11 of my air strikes, my artillery is running low on ammo and I have stooped to letting my infantry try it's luck at Opt fire because it was totally ineffective against the enemy armor and infantry when I fired it myself. With nine or so turns left of me just plotting artillery fire where I think my infantry stands a chance of surviving the turn, it does not give me a satisfying experience (one where I say "hey, great game") let alone "great" scenario.

Edit: One thing that I did not mention is that my opponent took an unsupported strong point forward of my lines on turn three. Combined with the victory hexes around the strong point my opponent had a major victory. At that point I felt that it would require me to fight back into the enemy to retake the victory hexes and destroy whatever was in my way, to take away his victory and possibly gain one for myself. Nope! Did not even get off the ground. His armor was so fast and effective that my armor was not able to form up let alone advance.

I dunno. It is like playing an EF campaign game only to have your armor whittled down by the more effective AI's artillery fire which disables more often (and a disable is a kill that has to be replaced in campaigns). Watching it happen from small mortars opt firing as the armor moves forward is frustrating. Reverse it and try it from the other side and disables just do not happen as frequently. I learned to live with that. Part of the game ... move on.
Not as disappointing as the above, in ME.

Mike, to be honest I do not know what scenario to play to give me a better experience. If you have one in mind send it my way; esilcoxjr(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm willing to give it a go. Smaller is fine. I really do not enjoy the bigger scenarios unless they are team games.

HSL