Patrolling

[ComradeP]

It's somewhat confusing that the patrol range of 2 hexes itself is irrelevant when it comes to negating the Deception effect. Units don't negate Deception effects within their patrol range, but they negate Deception effects if within the Deception range specified for the side that the Partisan unit belongs to.

This can lead to situations such as MG units being difficult to move forwards with the infantry in Serbia '14, as you can place Chetnik units 4 hexes away from the nearest Austro-Hungarian units and the units in T-mode will then have a chance to become Disrupted when moving into 3 hex range on the next Austro-Hungarian turn. As units can't move and toggle patrolling, this situation can't be prevented.

[jonnymacbrown]

Good to know John, thanks. I went ahead and set up a test in each series, and actually both series seem to work as you suggest. The patrolling range is based on the deception unit side's deception range, rather than its own. However, I am positive that at one time in Serbia the patrolling range was limited to the patrolling side's deception range. The game notes even state, matching the PDT values and what i remember seeing awhile ago:

having a non-disrupted Chetnik unit within 3 hexes of enemy units moving in Travel Mode
and
enemy units patrolling within 2 hexes of the Chetnik unit will negate the Chetnik unit's Travel Mode disruption effect.

So it seems a change was made at some point, maybe not on purpose but I have no idea, to either bring FWWC in line with PzC, or impacting both to implement the current behavior. I will have to share that with Ed though, as he purposely had the different ranges in place and it seemed to work.

Also, it makes me curious what game and version Jonny is playing with, to have units disrupt in the patrolling unit's hex - as I noted old versions of Serbia, at least, did, but not seemingly the new version. And maybe the same with PzC.

Rick

I am playing M 44 fixed Germans Campaign. Scads of Red Partizans. I have had units disorder from Partizan effects either with a patrolling unit or right next to one. It was very frustrating and maddening. Now I have everybody settled a bit and patrolling so things are getting a bit better.

[Green]

In Minsk '44, the partisans have been given the Deception unit attribute. These means that in addition to the inherent deception abilities that partisans possess, it can also deploy as a Deception unit. Deployed deception units are not affected by Patrolling unless the Extended Patrolling optional rule is used. I suspect this is what is causing the problem.

Since Minsk pre-dates the Extended Patrolling rule, it is not clear to me what the intention of the designer was. I  have mentioned this to David, and unless he can discover the rationale, he will fix this as part of the update process.

In the meantime, players starting a new game should consider using the Extended Patrolling optional rule. For games in progress the Russian player could refrain from deploying partisans.