Some loose thoughts about "balanced scenarios"

[Sgt AA]

Hi,

First, it's a game and a game should be for fun. I can understand that people prefered balanced scenarios (and ME)for the pure fun. But unfortunalty, I'm a great fan of the historical possibilitys in this game.

IRL it's must be bad strategy to attack if you're not sure to win. I guess strategy is mostly about logistics and to masses up secretly.

Can it be fair to say that a commander, who hold the line for a certain time or killed eg. 3 enemys for every friendly KIA actually is a winner, even if he lost all his troups? It seems to me that the challenge should not be to win, but to win big enough.

Perhaps it's almost impossibly to create such a scenarios - with known outcome - that is interesting enough for making people wanna play them? I guess that a tool might be a fair use of "Axis Bonus".

Perhaps there is some scenarios out there who is "unbalanced" but still interesting to play, any suggestions? It would be nice to analyse and to get some ideas how to create such a thing.

[Craig Champagne]

This is a great issue for debate. I've been thinking about this quite a bit.

One of the things I'd like to see more of is balanced scenarios that require an attacker to exit points off of the opposite board edge, rather than scenarios that focus on fighting for Victory Flags.

Most of the great balanced scenarios seem to be Meeting Engagements in which the two sides fight for a few Victory Flags. It must be very difficult to design a scenario using the format that I suggest above.

I really admire you folks who have developed a talent in designing medium to large scenarios that are balanced, because I could never do this with great skill unless I devoted most of my leisure life doing this.

[Mike Summers]

For quite a while now I've played mostly meeting engagements, for this very reason. Most exceptions were if there was a specific tactic I wanted to work on, or if a scenario represented a battle/unit I was interested in. However, I have played a scenario that has been quite a bit of fun...Berezina River. Even though playing as the Axis you have plenty of units (at least two or three dozen vehicles and guns, a couple of inf companies), the Russians have more/better. My first time playing, I managed only a draw, but was assaulting the final two VL's as time ran out. Second time around I was much more successful, but again, I did know what to look out for.

YMMV.

[crab]

Originally posted by Sgt AA:

Perhaps there is some scenarios out there who is "unbalanced" but still interesting to play, any suggestions? It would be nice to analyse and to get some ideas how to create such a thing.

Abbot has some excellent scenario's out there. He made one which is exactly like you described. Its called 5th SS Pz Gr. Excellent fun against the AI.

[Stoffel]

Have a look at the Onion war campaign!

We can always use people to fight battles,most are unbalanced

You might end up in a battle with a 4 or 5 to 1 odds in tanks and infantry.

www.onionwars.net

[dieseltaylor]

Have a look at Band of Brothers:

web page

Mainly for humans : ) but there are plenty of unbalanced tournaments and also the rare beast attack/defence battles in the CMAK World Tourney.

I have also been playing unbalanced scenarios like Eritrea Camerone etc which are very accurate : )