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mllaneza posted:In Soviet-era Poland A Soviet-era Pole would not appreciate being called a "Soviet."  
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Feb 5, 2021 16:38
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You can call Lem Soviet if you, like P. K. Dick, believe that he was not a man, but rather a pen name for a collective of Soviet authors spreading Communist propaganda through the science fiction community.
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Feb 6, 2021 18:16
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We really need a biopic about Dick, directed by David Lynch on some really hard drugs.
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Feb 6, 2021 18:26
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Hypnobeard posted:I think it's probably the latter. GDW did produce an actual wargame for WW3 (called, appropriately enough, The Third World War), but that was more tank-pushing than political maneuvering. GDW made a lot of wargames- their most notable probably being the WW2-set Europa series that could be combined into a monster game. Their Tunisia game is actually reputed to be quite good. Some of the GDW designers went on to make other wargames, the most recent effort being Thunder in the East, which went from Victory Point Games to GMT. If wargames are allowed I might have to do a review of the ludicrously bad Vietnam: Rumor of War Panzeh fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 18:39
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Panzeh posted:GDW made a lot of wargames- their most notable probably being the WW2-set Europa series that could be combined into a monster game. Their Tunisia game is actually reputed to be quite good. Yep. Slightly surprising they didn't do a Great Game, but who knows. As for the wargame reviews, 
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Feb 6, 2021 23:49
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Panzeh posted:If wargames are allowed I might have to do a review of the ludicrously bad Vietnam: Rumor of War Get to writin', boy, there already was an Infinity miniature wargame FnF.
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Feb 7, 2021 06:44
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So while I continue keeping RM on hold waiting for this to be answered, it's been a couple weeks so I guess I'll ask again: are we moving to a 2021 thread as was suggested previously, and is anyone backing up the entries (for public viewing) now that inkless pen isn't if we do move?
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Feb 7, 2021 06:49
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I went through my posts in the thread and backed the ever-so-important Eurovi- Degenesis stuff.
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Feb 7, 2021 06:56
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For what it's worth, I've been working on a web app to archive recent reviews but dunno when or if I'll finish.
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Feb 7, 2021 07:50
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BinaryDoubts posted:For what it's worth, I've been working on a _________________ but dunno when or if I'll finish. Summary of this thread. (I too am guilty)
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Feb 7, 2021 12:19
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Been meaning to get back at the Mutant 1984 supplements but eh. Can't seem to regain my interest in doing that again.JcDent posted:Get to writin', boy, there already was an Infinity miniature wargame FnF. Not to mention one for the old Inquisitor skirmish game.
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Feb 7, 2021 13:01
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Vietnam: Rumor of War, Session 0 A rumor of quality(and player agency). Published by Compass games, this is the second of Adam Starkweather's OSS(Operational Scale System) series of games. The first was Korea: Fire and Ice, which had a rulebook so bad it had to be completely rewritten and put up online. This rulebook is also full of holes though not as bad as that. Starkweather also did some work on Multi-Man Publishing's GTS(Grand Tactical System) and Compass' CSS(Company Scale System). You might say that's a lot of systems, which is true, because (cardboard) wargamers like systems. The games themselves are complicated as is, so anything that eases the learning curve helps. It also helps sell games, as wargamers are quite hide-bound and will flock to seeing new conflicts in an old system, even if the system isn't suited(See the COIN series trying to model hotter conflicts). Let's get back to the game at hand. The first half of the rulebook or so is the OSS system itself, with a few allowances for the differences between Vietnam and Korea. The second half are rules about the campaign, victory points, and an enormous amount of chrome. You can follow along by downloading the rules here. Most hex and counter games have their rules online, though sometimes they hold back the scenario book. This is helpful both in trying to gauge a game, as well as trying to play it online on VASSAL. So, next update, we'll open the book and gawk in amazement at the game's mission statement and marvel at a game that allows the US to invade North Vietnam which can trigger a PRC intervention with troops, but US troops are committed on a fixed schedule and have to adhere strictly to corps boundaries. A game that has an incredibly detailed air system that gives the F-4 and A-4 very different capabilities but has no ability for VC main force units to actually evade attacks.
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Feb 7, 2021 13:44
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That poorly repurposed photo is setting a high bar for rushing ahead with no editorial oversight. I'll be disappointed if we don't get plenty of rule callbacks leading nowhere.
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Feb 7, 2021 13:57
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By popular demand posted:That poorly repurposed photo is setting a high bar for rushing ahead with no editorial oversight. You've got Compass down to a T(There are some good games published with Compass but this ain't one of them)  Here's a taste of editorial quality.
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Feb 7, 2021 14:26
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At least Number 4 managed to escape this awful dice chart, there's some comfort in that.
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Feb 7, 2021 14:35
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Cooked Auto posted:Not to mention one for the old Inquisitor skirmish game. Considering the whole "lol, what are points" thing as well as general fidliness of the rules, it's more like an RPG that stopped pretending it cares about non-combat stuff.
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Feb 7, 2021 17:12
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When you're making a 2D6 chart, get bored, and just say it will be a D10 chart without any changes. E: This is dude is like the anti-Fabrizio Vianello JcDent fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 20:05
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Panzeh posted:A game that has an incredibly detailed air system that gives the F-4 and A-4 very different capabilities but has no ability for VC main force units to actually evade attacks. This (and the subsequent posts) sets off my alarms for "this game is going to simulate the Totally Awesome War the designer sees in his head". While there's nothing wrong with a war movie simulator, I'm getting uncomfortable vibes from these rules concepts. A US Unrest track? The US player heavily restricted by timetables and operation zones? This is going to be one giant dolchstoßlegende simulator, isn't it?
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Feb 7, 2021 21:39
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Loxbourne posted:This (and the subsequent posts) sets off my alarms for "this game is going to simulate the Totally Awesome War the designer sees in his head". While there's nothing wrong with a war movie simulator, I'm getting uncomfortable vibes from these rules concepts. A US Unrest track? The US player heavily restricted by timetables and operation zones? yeah welcome to wargaming, a community that has alot of issues with designer pet projects getting waaaaaay out of hand. Although US restrictions in a Vietnam game should absolutely exist because historically there were restrictions so if you ignore that then you're missing important simulation elements. US public unrest is also an issue given the time period and the effect it had on how the war was fought.
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Feb 7, 2021 22:59
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'How willing is the side that isn't under attack to continue fighting vs. end this foreign adventure and sue for peace' does definitely have a place in a wargame about a 'war of choice' by a large power, at least.
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Feb 7, 2021 23:26
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Night10194 posted:'How willing is the side that isn't under attack to continue fighting vs. end this foreign adventure and sue for peace' does definitely have a place in a wargame about a 'war of choice' by a large power, at least. "Where there is Discord" covering the Falklands War handles this for example - you need to balance UK and international opinion (and if you have any sympathy for the UK, winning too hard leads to a thousand years of Maggie Thatcher, so try not to do that either)
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Feb 8, 2021 00:05
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Vietnam: Rumor of War, Page 1: A Wargame's Thesis Statement In many ways, wargames are kind of a way to present someone's take on a war, not by writing long paragraphs in books but by trying to drill down the different elements into a simulation, and hopefully a fun game as well. Not every entry here will be a single page, but I think this one's important. Let's begin with this beginning paragraph. Adam Starkweather posted:Welcome to the second game in the Operational Scale Series I really question the notion that if you have a system, it should work for World War III in 1985, the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, and the Vietnam War. Such a system would either be wrong for some of them, or so high-level and vague as to barely resemble the thing. OSS manages to be both of those things. The underlined sentence is telling, because as we see later, Starkweather likes the air war. He likes it in all his games, and Vietnam is no exception. For what it's worth, operational literature about the war in Vietnam is sparse, especially outside a few specific topics- Ia Drang, the air war over North Vietnam, and Tet. Better works are coming out on a wide variety of topics, but it's coming slowly. Thankfully, modern works are better able to use Vietnamese archives and have a better handle of Vietnamese operations and strategy throughout. I think Starkweather chose the literature that excited him most- the air war. It's not a bad thing to simulate the air war in some detail, but it always comes at a cost in weight, and if one has to choose important elements in the context of the passage i'll get to later, I would probably leave out detailed simulation of different aircraft types' capabilities or even worry about basing. There's also nothing in this game that really resembles coalition warfare. The SVN politics is non-existent, reflected only vaguely through entries in other mechanisms. There are no coups, no overall leadership. There's also no simulation of divergence between China and North Vietnam. It all just comes out as switches in reinforcements, reduction of a few supply points here and there based on politics outside the scope of the game. There's only one major strategic divergence the US player can make from historical, and it just feels like fanfiction. That will come later. Adam Starkweather posted:The general mission for this series is to fill a niche that I hope First of all, almost nothing for this game is designed from the ground up. Much of it feels like kitbashed Korea mechanics begrudgingly adapted to a much larger map. In fact, its scale is exactly the same as Korea's in terms of units, but with smaller generic units available for the Communist side. The air mechanics are also identical. And this game is not fast. If you want fast, play Hearts and Minds, a game that somehow goes more quickly and feels less scripted than this(and H&M is quite scripted). And I suspect this note will get a lot of people here, but I'll let it pass. Almost every Vietnam War game is two-player. In portraying this war, it ultimately did become about what Johnson and Nixon wanted, what Mao wanted, and to a lesser extent what Le Duan wanted. While many modern overall studies of the war I think take an over-focus on the RVN's appeal to the detriment of the interplay with how NLF semi-conventional and conventional forces played into the government's ability to even try to garner support, this game seems uninterested in either. In fact it seems not very interested in what's happening on the ground in Vietnam at all. Almost every complex element of the war- this game sidesteps.  So, at first, this cardboard chit depiction for units is rather normal for wargames but Starkweather has decided to be very clever and try to find a way to depict units on the counter while having very little game information about the different kind of units on the counter. Normally, the advantage of a wargame chit over a miniature or say, a cube or disc is that you can put a bunch of information on a counter like this:  Depicted: A much older and better game about the war. Starkweather has decided to aesthetically improve his counters by having unit emblems on them... except this has a great many implications on the design. By not putting any information on the counters, this imposes many mechanical limitations, some of which are really crippling in trying to show land warfare in any kind of detail at this scale. The implications will come fairly clearly in the next few pages, but i'll give a little tease of one of them. The 11th Armored Cavalry regiment was one of the last US units withdrawn from the theater. While the Pentagon at first thought that armor would not be of much use for US operations and adjusted the composition of divisions it sent to Vietnam with this in mind, they learned after a year or so that armor was useful as the roads proved to be conduits for both sides, and armor was quite useful when fighting along these paths. The 11th ACR proved to be a valuable reserve rolling column during the 1972 NVA offensive. It does not exist in this game. It could not exist in this system, because it really has no way to differentiate an armored regiment from any other regiment or unit. Armor is ephemeral and vague in OSS. Much like much of the rest of this system, especially when it comes to ground combat. Yes, this designer wants to make the system depict the Arab-Israeli wars and a 1985 World War III but has no way to have armored divisions or brigades running around. Good luck.
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Feb 8, 2021 00:34
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I see we're starting right off the bat with 'btw I don't care about the politics of the regime the US was intent on propping up and whose actions and situation were absolutely critical to any understanding of the war', huh.
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Feb 8, 2021 00:42
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Those are certainly some choices in designing a game to encapsulate the Vietnam War. Is this about the war McNamara thought he was fighting rather than what actually happened? Do you count bodies?
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Feb 8, 2021 00:51
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kommy5 posted:Those are certainly some choices in designing a game to encapsulate the Vietnam War. It's kinda hard to single out the kind of war McNamara thought it would be. Yes, there is in fact a body count track but it only increases US military victory slowly. They get a small trickle from controlling certain lines of communication but it's much easier to go down than up. The US immediately wins if it can get its military victory meter up to 31, but this is rather difficult. Unrest will go up more quickly and has threshholds that once it passes, it can't return back from, whereas military victory does not. Unrest reaching 31 means a Communist victory. Night10194 posted:I see we're starting right off the bat with 'btw I don't care about the politics of the regime the US was intent on propping up and whose actions and situation were absolutely critical to any understanding of the war', huh.  This is a game made in 1984. While this is probably the heaviest depiction out there, even lighter games do try to capture it to some extent.
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Feb 8, 2021 01:13
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Panzeh posted:Vietnam: Rumor of War, Page 1: A Wargame's Thesis Statement Wait, in this infinitely asymmetrical war between a modern high-tech mechanized army and a guerilla insurgency with conventional but less high-tech support, military land units are only differentiated by size...? Edit: I could actually see that making sense in a game focusing on the political/control aspect where units are more representative of your presence/commitment in a region rather than specific combat capabilities, but that is obviously not this game! PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 8, 2021 |
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Feb 8, 2021 01:35
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Idea: I'd really like to have a game simulating the air war over Vietnam. Plan: I'll just convert this other game, how hard could it be? (other game is a failure). Execution: A classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect. Marketing: The bestest and realest simulation of the entire Vietnam war ever LOL!!!!!111!! It's like the more complicated and detailed the game became in the designer's head the dumber he became.
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Feb 8, 2021 12:07
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By popular demand posted:Idea: I'd really like to have a game simulating the air war over Vietnam. True pros only skip on the visuals, but aspiring pros save money by skipping visuals, blind playtesting, and editing.
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Feb 8, 2021 13:32
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Wait, in this infinitely asymmetrical war between a modern high-tech mechanized army and a guerilla insurgency with conventional but less high-tech support, military land units are only differentiated by size...? Yep. If you want to make an abstract game, you can absolutely go that way. Starkweather does not want to make an abstract game, though he makes one anyway. One of the big critiques of the Vietnam CDG(Card-Driven Game) Hearts & Minds is that units are generic. Sure, there's infantry, armor, and artillery and such but there's no 1 ID or ROK Capital Division, etc. Unfortunately for people looking to this game, while it has nice pictures on the unit, they're also generic in function. For US brigades and regiments, the only difference between them is whether they're airmobile or not(which reduces the cost of airmobilizing a battalion when they send one out) as well as which corps they're assigned to. Neither of these things are actually put on the counter. A grog might remember that the 1 Cav, 101 Abn, 82nd Abn, and 173d Abn Brigade are all airmobile units(though the regiment of the 82nd sent to Vietnam was not actually airmobile, it was simply part of the US strategic reserve and sent in to stabilize things after Tet). You can make your units cubes or miniatures if you want, but they come at a significant cost- if you don't want to be looking things up all the time, the units themselves and their relationships have to be pretty heavily simplified to accommodate this.
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Feb 8, 2021 14:08
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JcDent posted:True pros only skip on the visuals, but aspiring pros save money by skipping visuals, blind playtesting, and editing. He seems to have skipped even making a semi-playable alpha version. Is there a single system that actually works ok?
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Feb 8, 2021 14:26
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Vietnam: A Rumor of War, Page 2 - Movement When you teach somebody a wargame, or when you're playing it, it's good to have the sequence of play out- it helps keep you on track and make sure you know what you're doing. Not everything is particularly involved, but making sure everything gets done in the right order is important.  The focus in this post is going to be on the activation phase, as this is where most of the player agency and game action is. In it, the Communist player will activate as many HQs and move units as they please, then the US player will do the same. During the other player's turn, you will get a chance to engage in reserve movement if you have a fresh HQ with which to do it. HQ activations are fairly simple. You pick an HQ, flip it to spent, and choose four units. In the Korean game, some theater commanders allow HQs to activate more, but in this game it is always up to four units. Blue capitalist HQs can activate anyone, US HQs can activate US units, Royal Lao and Cambodian army HQs can activate their respective national units(same for Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge). For the communists, PAVN and PRC HQs can activate anyone, but VC HQs can only activate VC units. One at a time, each unit moves, and they move 5 MP- units always have five movement points, no matter what kind of unit activates. If the unit ends its move without being adjacent to an enemy unit, it can move another 3 MP before anyone resolves any combats. Once a unit is done moving, it can spend remaining MPs to attempt to attack a hex with enemy units. Choose the type of attack(better attacks cost more MPs) and lay down a combat chit. Combat- i'll get to that in another part of this review. For now, let's look at how Starkweather chose to give the sides asymmetical movement capabilities. First of all, for the Capitalist player, ARVN divisions and US regiments can, instead of moving their base unit, can spawn an ARVN regiment or US battalion respectively, leaving the larger unit behind. This is how Starkweather gets by the problem with the way the map is huge compared to the unit scale. Even with this gimmick, the US and ARVN simply don't have enough troops to guard the major provincial capitals(so the game doesn't actually value them much in consequence), instead they're rather unrealistically concentrated, which makes for an uninteresting experience for both sides. The Communist player has more strategic freedom but operations are just so unrewarding. Oh, and here's the other side of his attempt at asymmetry in movement- an asymmetrical TEC:  At first glance, it seems reasonable- the Capitalist units, being generally heavier have trouble moving through the worse terrain. However, it makes things a bit of an unwieldy mess trying to reference this and remember it's different for both sides- for example, the US gets half-movement on roads, towns, and cities, but the NLF does not- though the NLF does get half-movement on the trail. Worse, it's actually not very historical, either. Both sides fought heavily over transport routes. Even worse, as the war went into the 70s, PAVN troops relied on these routes more, as their artillery was motorized and they featured more armor. However, the TEC does not change to reflect this. A better wargame would probably look to differentiate between unit types for MP costs per terrain, but Starkweather just isn't interested in distinguishing between units if they're not airplanes. The differential defense factors are even worse(why are the Communists better at fighting in cities than the Capitalists? Remember, these are 10 mile hexes.), but more on that later. Also, just as a note for you reading before, yes, this game includes a very vague representation of the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, but it's completely uninterested in them- the only rewards are a few VPs for holding the capital hexes and the units have no real detail to them. To be fair, lots of Vietnam games include these wars but give them no detail. They mattered to the Vietnam War, but very few games really get at exactly how they mattered, and the dynamics of each. The Pathet Lao was a very different group than the Khmer Rouge, and the countries were very different. I think it does a disservice to those conflicts to include them in such poor detail. It's very hard to make a Vietnam game without some reference to Sihanoukville and the Lon Nol coup's effect, but it isn't that hard to include these without trying to model the whole conflict. Next up: Combat, or Schrodinger's artillery and armor.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:30
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CAN YOU BREXIT without breaking Britain? is not so much a game as a game book. Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure things from the 80s and 90s? Like that, except with less dragons and/or spaceships. In this book you play the British Prime Minister, who is also the (supposed) leader of the conservative Tory party. The book begins the day after Great Britain has declared its intention to leave the European Union. As the British PM you have two years to deal with the various issues involved in leaving the EU as well as some issues at home. In practice this means that the book is divided into four six-month periods. You have ten issues which you need to resolve one way or the other: The Exit Fee for leaving the EU EU Trade Policy General Election (if you wish to call one early) Immigration Policy (for non-Britons wishing to live/work in Britain post-Brexit) International Trade (forging new trade agreements with non-EU nations post-Brexit) Negotiation Strategy Residency Rights (for EU members living/working in Britain) Second Referendum (if you want to hold a second referendum on Brexit) Security and Defense Agreements with the EU The NHS (dealing with Britain's Health Care system in the wake of Brexit FYI, two years is really not that much time. You can only deal with five of these issues yourself. The rest you'll have to leave to deputies or just leave to sort themselves out (generally a bad idea). In terms of your "game stats" your have four metrics which affect your ability to "get stuff done." Authority (represents the power you hold within the Tory party itself) Economy (measures how well/badly the economy is doing) Goodwill (measures tolerant and/or pissed off the EU is at you) Popularity (represents what the voting public thinks of the job you're doing) All of these metrics start at 52% and will go up and down based on the actions that you take. They can go no lower than 0 and no higher than 100. If you had a Popularity of 95% (somehow) and did something that raised your Popularity by 10% you still only go to 100. The other 5% is just wasted. Generally the higher the metrics are, the better - but only generally. There are occasions where a low metric can be beneficial. A low Goodwill means you're highly unlikely to get useful concessions from the EU, but it also means that people in your party and in the general public might (perhaps stupidly) see you as someone who "stands up against the EU's tyranny" which can help you get re-elected. To "win" the book you have to navigate through the various issues but you also have to be in power as Prime Minister at the end. However wisely and compassionately you navigated Brexit, it won't matter if some fuckwit comes in after you and messes everything up. There are no dice for the game but when you go through the general election at the end of the two years you might need to flip a coin a few times to resolve some random situation. The book also has Codewords and Tickboxes. These are ways for the book to "remember" choices you've made and time that has passed. If you choose to sell Scotland to US President Dumpster T Widrip you might note the code word, "Dipshit" Later in the book you might get a chance to put a military base near Inverness but if you have Dipshit Code word, you can't because Windrip is turning the country into a giant golf course. FYI, the above is not a real situation in the book. But the US President's name in it is Dumpster T Windrip (obviously this is Trump. I found his characterization extremely unrealistic as Windrip came off much more honest and rational than Trump actually was). Some sections of the book will have a small rectangular box near the section number. This is a Tickbox. When some condition is met (often just arriving at that section) you'll be told to "tick" the box. Section XXX (Box) If this is the first time you've arrived at this section, tick the box above and turn to Section YYY. If this is the second or later time you've come here go to section ZZZ instead. Don't actually put marks in your book if you've bought it. Just use a sheet of paper and mark the various Tickbox section on that instead. There isn't rally a "Scoring" method as such, but if you've remained in power to the end of the book, the final section will direct your to various areas to see how well you did in terms of how high your Authority/Economy/Goodwill/Popularity metrics were. The scores are divided into Bad, Average and Good depending on how high they were. It's possible to be Good across the board, but it's a path with only a small amount of "wiggle room." If you play the book one thing I would highly recommend is that you go through the various sections where you can do research and learn about the various issues. As a dumb American those were critical. Also there were times when an action in research/learning affect the various metrics for good or ill. Probably people from the U.K. will get the most out of the book in terms understanding who the fake names represent. "Windrip" aside, I knew none of those folks. Still, the book was enjoyable and pretty drat educational. It's worth shelling out a bit of money to get it.
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Feb 9, 2021 03:42
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I’m sure a Brit will chime in soon but that seems pretty tasteless as a game. Like “selling off Scotland” as a mechanic. I enjoy loving around and being chaotic but don’t like it with current events.
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Feb 9, 2021 06:48
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Do I have the option to hide in a fridge?
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Feb 9, 2021 06:48
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Xiahou Dun posted:I’m sure a Brit will chime in soon but that seems pretty tasteless as a game. You can't sell Scotland, nuke France or do ridiculous BS like that. The options you have are fairly realistic - which means that they're also realistically limited. In a lot of cases there are no really "good" options, just less bad ones. That includes moral/ethical choices. There's one bit late in the book where you have the choice to be truly honest with the public about things. If you take that option, you lose the game. Along with trying to make good decisions for the country, you have to make "good" decisions as a politician running the country, which means you occasionally have to be manipulative and even ruthless. Jimmy Stewart's Jefferson Smith would do poorly in this game book.
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Feb 9, 2021 10:13
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Vietnam: A Rumor of War, part 3 - Combat So, we just finished discussing activation and movement and I briefly mentioned combat there, but we'll dig into it here. Combat is part of activation, and either happens in the middle of a move(meeting engagement), or after all units have moved. Due to this implication, there is always only one attacking unit(though other friendly units adjacent to the battle hex provide support). The unit activates, and if it has enough MP remaining for the attack type, it can put down a combat chit.  The chit has a bunch of things that affect the combat, from the attacker's die roll, to whether a random event happens, to how much the winner(if the attacker) gets to advance, and how effective support is. Generally, the better the attack type, the better these tend to be(not all the chits of a type have the same numbers). For a game going with not-busy counters, these are awfully busy in a way that seems bizarre. Essentially, the attacker rolls the dice+mods listed on the chit, then the defender rolls a d6 if spent, or a d10 or d6 if not spent, though if they choose to roll a d10 the defending unit(s) become spent. Both sides are modified by many factors. The first is unit size(A,B,C).  Is this anywhere on the unit counters themselves? Of course not. This is the US troops' main advantage in the game- their battalions are class B units while other battalions are class C. In fact, other than airpower it's their only real advantage. OSS does not like different units being different. Once you get class differential and terrain(see the last update), we go into support. Support is awful. Each side has a universal artillery, armor(and for the US, air) support value. The planning type determines how much you subtract before you get the raw support available, and then the terrain determines how many points of whatever support it is needed to get a single DRM. The VC has seperate artillery value from the PAVN, though I assume VC units can't use PAVN tank support, though this is never stated in the rules. ARVN has their own artillery and tank support values. Who the hell knows what the Cambodians and Laotians of either side use? It's nowhere in the rules. The support value doesn't actually go down- it's basically just available every combat, the only way it gets reduced is if you use a special tank bonus to get the road value instead of the defending hex's terrain value, or if a unit using the support retreats, in which case the support rating drops one for every hex the unit retreats. Air support for the US is a value, but when you spend points, you have to roll for planes on ground support to stay on station with a rating equal to what was spent. It's finicky and odd, and really out of line with everything else, but that's how airpower is in this game. So, basically, every unit has the same access to artillery, armor, air support, etc. There's some specifics about ARVN support during the Westmoreland period but it doesn't add much and honestly doesn't make a lot of sense. The differences between the armies involved don't really come out, and this seems to be a testament to a system that had almost no thought put into it. Indeed, there's not any real flavor with this, either. You don't get the feel of the firepower of the US side or the craftiness of the NLF forces. There's no real flow to the battles, either, despite all the map space compared to the units. Anyway, there's a few other modifiers, and once you've rolled dice and added everything up, you get a differential. This is modified by the leader(the US and PAVN do not get corps leaders for some reason, but the Pathet Lao do), and the loser has to satisfy the differential in losses. Only the loser takes any losses, though the winner can lose a single tank support point if they took the road bonus. To satisfy losses, the loser can do each thing once: - add 1 to the body count/casualties to satisfy 1 point of differential - use 1 replacement point to satisfy 1 point of differential - retreat 1-3 spaces to satisfy 1-3 points of differential, with units taking further penalties for every retreat hex beyond 1 - destroy one losing unit to satisfy 1 point of differential(this will increase the body count/casualties based on the unit class) - destroy all losing units to satisfy all differential(this will increase body count/casualties based on the dead units) It's actually kind of hard to attrition anyone down in this system, oddly enough- your best bet sometimes ends up being to surround a hex entirely and pound it. The winner taking no losses is also bizarre. I have no idea what Starkweather was doing here. It's neither accurate, nor quick and easy, nor is it particularly flavorful toward anything. Every unit has equal access to tank and artillery support based on their side. There's absolutely no feeling of the conflict here, especially given how sparse the map is.
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Feb 10, 2021 15:08
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It's a weird mix of abstract and fiddly. It doesn't seem to give any sense of what or who is actually fighting.
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Feb 10, 2021 18:58
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wdarkk posted:It's a weird mix of abstract and fiddly. It doesn't seem to give any sense of what or who is actually fighting. There are much better games at modelling the US, ARVN, and NLF forces' various strengths and weaknesses. I kinda feel like it suffers a lot from the design constraint of having the unit counters not actually have numbers on them. Victory Games' Vietnam, for example, does a pretty good job of showing the differences in styles. The way firepower works to both improve one's own strength and the enemy's casualties in that game while VC units get to roll to just completely avoid an operation targeting them does a lot more for showing things off. ARVN units unaugmented are significantly weaker than PAVN units, and the PAVN can augment their units, making them mechanized but this also makes them significantly more powerful than ARVN's. Also, in operations, for example, the US player can call in additional reserves after a round of combat, while the NLF player cannot- they have to allocate everything they want, whereas so long as the US side can stomach one round of combat, they can always bring more stuff in if need be. This reflects their superiority in communications and operational mobility. It means the NLF player's conventional offensives are different from the US player's, as well as their own less conventional offensives.
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Feb 10, 2021 20:36
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Wow, this sucks poo poo, and yes, not cramming all the numbers and data you can on a chit is unorthodox - and plainly terrible. Meanwhile, here's Advanced Squad Leader, the game God used to run WWII:  The white stripe is there to show you that it's a vehicle that moves on skis, in case the image wasn't enough
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Feb 10, 2021 21:12
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JcDent posted:Wow, this sucks poo poo, and yes, not cramming all the numbers and data you can on a chit is unorthodox - and plainly terrible. I mean, honestly that counter is relatively uncluttered for ASL vehicle counters...
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Feb 10, 2021 21:33
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