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Will the Rumblings of War tournament (Row) be Returning


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OK, its time to approach those Scenario designers that showed their willingness to sign up and be immortalized/despised via their creations, being evil incarnate = prerequisite. We have already 2 designers signed up. Recent Beta tester Jaws, and jwxspoon, a beta tester and designer par excellence of CMAK battles earlier in the franchise.

Anyone else that's interested and have a good track record of CM scenario creations, please let me know here again.

I will forward the BSR doc (Battle Scenario Requirements) for those interested designers. At moment, we have 4 of the required 7 scenarios slotted for design, and are in need specifically of Axis attack/Assault and Allied Assault type scenarios. We might have more scenarios then needed, but internally we will select those fulfilling our needs.

Benefits for Creators:

What do you, scenario creator, get out of this? It safe to predict your scenario will probably be burned into combatants minds for a long time, judging by some scenarios we had for this tourney in the past and comments here and elsewhere. You will find that, as designer of a scenario(s), you'll have 72 players available to write up and test your creation(s). AAR's, or more specifically, filling in at least the "COMMENT TO DESIGNER" will be a mandatory requirement. So we are ‘forcing’ players to write up and comment on your scenario(s) before they can even progress to their next PBEM battle. Failing that, players will get booted out of the tourney and will be replaced by an official Waiting List of players. Harsh, but I'm sure the Official Waiting List players wont mind to step in, as per previous ROW tourneys. ;-)

AART OF REPORTING, aka “After Action Report Template”

AART Document => "AAR Section" + "Comment to Designer Section" = Bonus Points:

The AART document will be provided to do a write-up on your AAR plus a specific comment to the scenario designer. Bonus points will be added to your final Tourney Score upon submitting AART’s. AART’s will receive either full credit or half credit. Each full credit AAR will be worth 4% of the highest player's tourney score (before adding his AARs). If you write 7 full-credit AARTs you will receive additional tourney points equal to 28% of the highest player's tourney score.

AART’s are mandatory, as in everybody writes one for each battle. A minimum of 5,000 words and 30 screenshots will be required. OK, we’re kidding about that last sentence, but not about the mandatory requirement. Look at it this way: you get to play in a very challenging and entertaining tournament. You get to play scenarios designed just for you. What do we ask in return? Feedback. AART's are mandatory before your next battle. Why?

1. You will be replaced by the Tourney Director if you don’t adhere to the AART’s minimum requirement;

2. Not filling in a complete AART/AAR will make you lose Tourney Points. This could put you ahead or behind if you're in a tight race in your section;

3. Your memory is still fresh. This will make it easier for you to comment on the scenario parameters, the map design, force composition, fun factor etc. We suggest you keep all your PBEM files to help you in this endeavour;

4. AARs provide the scenario designers with constructive feedback. Your review will allow the designer to tweak the scenario before releasing it to the community. If you've ever designed a scenario for the community, you know how rare it is to get any feedback. Writing a review is one way to express your thanks to the designers. Even negative feedback is welcome as long as it's constructive and not mean spirited;

5. AARs also help people to learn and improve their Combat Mission tactics. Every scenario is played 36 times in a tourney such as this. There are 36 other combatants who had to deal with the same tactical situations you did. It can be very instructive to learn how others handled the battle, especially if you did worse than most. It's safe to say that very few, if any, scenarios get that degree of testing before they are put out to the public.

6. All RoW AAR’s will eventually be published for the greater CM community enjoyment;

7. NOTE: The Battle report (for full credit) within the AART Document can be done later, upon request, due to time constraints and/or if you want to spruce that part up for public viewing. The Tourney Director will provide the deadline for the Battle report to be finished;

8. Lastly, and importantly: Do the decent thing; write your AART. This is one of THE factors we cherish. It will guarantee you as “in good standing ROW vet.” Failing to do so, apart from being replaced, you will never be invited again for future ROW’s. Period.

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  • 1 month later...
Vet of at least 2 ROW tourneys. Great fun. Count me in if this gets the go-ahead.

Lt. Bull

I think I use to play Gettysburg with you via TCIP about a 100 years ago. My brother and I and you and Micky I think. I tried sending you a PM but it says your box is full.

Looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield again.

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Lt. Bull

I think I use to play Gettysburg with you via TCIP about a 100 years ago. My brother and I and you and Micky I think. I tried sending you a PM but it says your box is full.

Looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield again.

Hey CPT T,

Ah SMG MP with 56k modems....those were the days...but it would have been more like 150 years ago! Yes I have very fond memories of those early formative MP gaming days. SMG was such a good MP game. In fact that game still has some simple but innovative wargame features in it that I am STILL waiting to see implemented in the games of today. Requesting optional reinforcements or requesting scheduled reinforcements to arrive earlier at the cost of Victory Points is one of them. Can't say I can name another wargame that has this very simple dynamic option. I have suggested it before for CM.

Now I am sure you must've gone by another name because I don't recognise CPT T but I do remember the brothers thing, I think I remember getting you guys confused.. Though I do remember Mick.

You should be able to PM me now as I have cleared out the clutter.

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Hi Winecape et al...

Thanks for the bump just saw this thread today and has taken most of the day to read it. Good to see so many old names back here. Just playing my 3rd / 4th game of CMBN.

Happy to help out in running the tourney (if you need helpers) or if you have enough helpers I will play but still very rusty...

I have dug around my PC for old AAR's and I have a horrible feeling I house tidied them some years ago thinking who would ever want them again....

I will have a dig around on the net / old backup discs / wife's PC to see if I did a back up.

I did find sheet explaining rules on AAR but looks like you have that covered. Good to see Nabala has been woken.

Lots of fond memories of playing CM and CMBB /CMAK.

Some cracking scenarios and nice to see some of the designers still at work. I seemed to remember a cracking set of 3 or four interlinked Russian front games....

Too many sleeps since then so memories are faded but shrouded in a warm glow...

Cheers

H

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  • 4 months later...

Greetings ladies and gentlemen.

I have no idea about the status of this tournament, and I have no good news either. Basically earlier I promised to deliver a new scheduling and scoring system that would fit the planned tournament. I had scheduled the design and coding at a certain time, but my plan failed because I was sick for a couple of weeks. After the summer work activities have shot down any additional plans of creating the new system.

So in short: the new scheduling and scoring system is not going to happen, not in the foreseeable future. I am extremely sorry if this ruined somebody's plans. If I have the chance to devote time to design and implement the new system, this time I am going to do the work first and then announce it.

All the best and happy gaming! I will now proceed to play a short game of CMAK. (Yes, I am a few years behind.)

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Nablah!

Man, you are like a blast from the past.

Good to see you post again, good news or otherwise.

This is OK by me. I still do not have the hang of playing this thing yet anyway.

I was afraid the RoW would start and I'd get beat up for not having the technical expertise as opposed to just poor tactics ;)

Until later then, good luck and good hunting.

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Greetings ladies and gentlemen.

....I have no good news either.

Time to slit my wrists and bleed onto the Steelbook cover :D

On top of that, my footballing season = hectic and not much time on me hands, as I seem to be the current preferred flavour wrt national appointments with our #1 & #2 Referees off duty due to injury & other assorted ailments...

So take your time Fish Eagle.

To recap, the timeframe for RoW has not changed, too wit:

(1) Nablah reasoning of a tournament, which is a pair <N,A> where N is a finite set of at least two elements, which we will call players, and A is a zero-one matrix, such that its diagonal entries are zeroes and for all i, j ε N, i ≠ j, aij +aji = 1. The interpretation is that each pair of players in N played each other once, and aij = 1 if, and only if, i beat j.

(2) Nablah gets a bright spark, drops the "h" in his name, and produces another beautiful math equation for ranking/rating RoW in different sections. Failing that, repeat step (1);

(3) He writes a new front-end for NABLA, to be used by moi, the tourney director;

(4) Commonwealth Forces by now released in wild. Everyone forgets NABLA and RoW for awhile;

(5) Scenario designers approached with concept paper for designing 7 scenarios specifically for RoW to test players abilities w/ every CM unit capable of being clicked w/ mouse pointer;

(6) Invited Scenario designers goes in evil genius lock-down mode and design diabolical battles, never seen before; the need to wear clothes while doing so not obligatory;

(7) Invites and dates set and announced on forum for tourney start. Vets that showed interest to play RoW VI will get 10-14 days grace to reply to invites, following that invites send to newbies, who showed interest in playing, all via PM.

(7a) (7) above not possible for Newbies without obligatory thesis titled: Why we should character assassinate your name upon drop-out;

(8) Great fun and gnashing of teeth to be had for +/-150 days, depending on state of intoxication while playing;

(9) Winners announced, I drink wine, send corks as prizes, winners fêted as the greatest ever to set foot in Normandy.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 7 months later...

My instinct is that the variability inherent in CMX2, in actually spotting another tank which in my early tests varied hugely from seconds to minutes, make a tournament as ROW was unplayable.

Now it may be the constant tweaking and version V2.00 have made it less variable but my suspicion is that it may not. So from the tank/vehicle side of things I have concerns. I will run my tests again when V2.00 is out. However if it still has the huge variability in spotting then I reckon many people playing the same scenario may get different results but not just down to player skill.

I am beginning to wonder that for all its faults CMX1 is not a better game for tournament playing. Just to illustrate the thought no one would get very excited about chess as a game of immense thought if you rolled dice whenever a piece were taken. Or bridge with wild cards!!!

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