MG A Man Can Die But Once - Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy

I was looking forward to playing a historical scenario about the Market Garden bridge battles but the play imbalance really took away from what could be a very exciting and challenging battle for both sides. The Germans have a massive firepower advantage that is further magnified by the British starting with "severe" supplies. Essentially, the British infantry can engage in a firefight for a couple minutes and then they are out of ammo and down to using knuckles and harsh words to fight German armour and MG42s! On top of this, the victory conditions favour the Germans as they have more VPs to achieve and British reinforcements, even if the bridge bug was fixed and they could actually cross the bridge, arrive too late to be of use. Here are three suggestions for improving the play balance and enjoyment of this scenario:

1) British Forces - start with "limited" vice "severe" supply as this would improve the ability of the crack airborne troops to delay the Germans. They could also use another company of paras to defend such a large area and the main reinforcements need to arrive 15-20 minutes earlier to force the Germans to have some time pressure applied to them.

2) Map - Add a couple fording sites into the town so that British reinforcements can actually arrive. I know this isn't realistic in terms of the history but until the bridge bug is fixed, it's the only solution I can think of.

3) VPs - In strategic terms, the allied troops were completely expendable in this battle as holding the bridges would have saved many times that number of lives by ending the war earlier. To reflect this, remove German VPs for inflicting enemy casualties and transfer these VPs to objectives and a parameter to keep their own casualties below 50%. At the same time increase Allied VPs for inflicting enemy casualties to even out overall VPs as any enemy wounded/killed here would not be available at one of the other bridges.

The larger the game, the more difficult it is to determine play balance as size magnifies tactical skills and errors. There are problems with the design of the map. At certain places the designer has overlooked properly placing doors and windows when adjacent buildings abut. There are buildings and whole blocks with NO DOORS. I am working on repairing this and will publish a modified map in the near future.

KanduThe larger the game, the more difficult it is to determine play balance as size magnifies tactical skills and errors. There are problems with the design of the map. At certain places the designer has overlooked properly placing doors and windows when adjacent buildings abut. There are buildings and whole blocks with NO DOORS. I am working on repairing this and will publish a modified map in the near future.

As the loser I am reluctant to give it a 'Totally favours the Axis' since my opponent also outplayed me.

As the British player I found myself limited by the short range (100m) of many of my weapons. Only a few MMG and one mortar. That would not have been so disastrous was it not for the fact that my opponent with his HMG & HE equipped vehicles could stand-off and comfortably destroy me outside of the 100m range.

All that said, I do not mind playing imbalanced games when these are historical situations. The pleasure is in attempting to do better than history and as much as possible to humbug my opponent (in a friendly manner).

Kandu

KanduThe larger the game, the more difficult it is to determine play balance as size magnifies tactical skills and errors. There are problems with the design of the map. At certain places the designer has overlooked properly placing doors and windows when adjacent buildings abut. There are buildings and whole blocks with NO DOORS. I am working on repairing this and will publish a modified map in the near future.

As the loser I am reluctant to give it a 'Totally favours the Axis' since my opponent also outplayed me.

As the British player I found myself limited by the short range (100m) of many of my weapons. Only a few MMG and one mortar. That would not have been so disastrous was it not for the fact that my opponent with his HMG & HE equipped vehicles could stand-off and comfortably destroy me outside of the 100m range.

All that said, I do not mind playing imbalanced games when these are historical situations. The pleasure is in attempting to do better than history and as much as possible to humbug my opponent (in a friendly manner).

I wish the Battlefront would build in time-based victory points into their program. That is to say, points earned for each minute you occupy a given objective. That could be used to build 'game balance' into this scenario even if there is no 'battle balance'.

The scenario was exciting but appeared to be very pro-German; I have not played the British, so it's hard to make an accurate judgment on this scenario.

As noted already, quite pro German. Scarcity of ammo for the British Paras is the biggest problem, IMHO. They just can't stand against the assault if they don't have anything to fire their weapons after 3-4 minutes. Didn't have the briddge bug, so some armour almost made it across .. almost ;-).