LongLeftFlank

Celebrity has made Tufte quite the shill though; I went (on the company dime) to one of his daylong seminars back in 2006 expecting an intimate classroom-sized audience at $600 a head (30). Wrong. Try 400 people crammed into the hotel's biggest ballroom. $240k for 7 hours of lecturing which mostly involved paging through his Holy Books (at least a boxed set wasincluded in the tuition). Minimal Q&A -- he basically punted any extended conversation to his website forum (which is quite worthwhile btw). To quote Sinatra: nice work if you can get it. In case you're wondering how he affords that sculpture garden on his Connecticut estate on a professor's salary. He's the Suze Orman of the academic world. No disrespect to the relevance of his teachings though.

Fiery, the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc.

Yup, I remember discussing that with you and others a while ago; as a scenario designer do your player the courtesy of providing a suggested setup that is appropriate to the situation and to the experience of the troops involved. Assume that most of your players just want to get into the action and only a small minority want to spend an hour scrutinizing LOS and fields of fire. IMHO, it's bad form though to suggest a setup and then screw them over with horrific ambushes that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't taken the suggestion. If you're dealing with large formations, per NewLife's suggestion above, it's a nice courtesy to have them in their echelons slightly off the access roads under tree cover (those Jabos, you know) to minimize traffic jams. And if certain troops start the game already under fire, be sure to make that crystal clear in the briefing and/or provide an Prior Intel level >0% (unless you INTEND to have them wiped out in an ambush within the first 30 seconds, which is fair game -- just make sure the scenario is still winnable with the remaining forces). Also you rightly observed during the Ramadi playtest, WeGo players must live with the consequences of whatever movement orders they give at Setup for at least 60 seconds, so be sure to playtest both ways.

Nice! Get busy with that vintage comic book effect again, Broadsword! full story Budda budda budda!

Just one suggestion from the Lorax here (I speak for the trees!).... That dense vineyard could use a windbreak of trees (poplars, maybe?) along their western edge -- maybe the other side of the road -- if you don't have one already (I assume we're looking North and the vines have a southern exposure). Sicily does get the Scirocco and other seasonal winds, and they can be severe. [/vinicultural groggery]. That close to town you'd at least want a wall to keep livestock (goats and donkeys) out, which you do have.

....umm, I'd playtest for you too Pandur if my CM were working. Trying to get an ubergeek friend to see of my motherboard can be saved. *Sob!* Can't We All Just Get Along?

PzKw, it does seem like the review in the OP could have been written by any number of grog posters here, (and possibly was). As I haven't read the book, it's unclear to me whether this reviewer is accurately summarizing the author's thesis here or cherry-picking to push his own particular pet theories. I'm prsonally dubious about the practicality of conducting a world war by focusing on one front at a time once you've started one. The schwerpunkt analogy is misplaced at a grand strategic scale. Not that Hitler didn't waste resources on marginal causes; he surely did. But I don't find this to be the Rosetta stone for a "Lost victory" (and I'm not suggesting you do either, of course :-)

For the record, Erwin has been one of my most reliable playtesters and I greatly appreciate the feedback he's given, even if I don't accept all of it either. As to bedside manner, he's not the only guy who can get a bit cranky on this board. Let's all follow Pandur (the thread owner) and stand down.

Yeah, it took me a while to recover from the brain muscle I pulled trying to lay out a defense for that Le Hamel nightmare map! I think that's what drove me to put bocage aside for a bit.

But when you're a scenario designer setting up a fortified position, or a player deploying forces in a setup zone, it would be very useful, even if it's too calc intensive to be usable during play.

It and the subsequent comments are comic dialogue from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Not relevant to the OP - just banter.

Yeah, you're right, I was just thinking that I overstated it but you beat me to the edit -- there is some difference. I am CM-less these days so I can't run your test, but I would still recommend even more muffling effect in soft ground and water.

I'll say it again -- it really isn't the accuracy of mortars that's the problem, it's their hideously lethal effects on infantry who are (a) artificially clustered around Action Spots ( don't hit the dirt and stay there when their RL counterparts would have.

Figure out what the main potential enemy advance routes will be, and estimate how long it will take a cautious or a reckless player to arrive in force at the place along each route you want to hit him (the "kill zones"). Divide the PC controlled forces into two groups: static and mobile if you're defending and fixing and flanking if you're attacking. In both cases, the first group's job is to make sure most of the player's force doesn't leave the kill zone(s) for a lengthy period and ideally, has to commit his reserves by engaging him there.....ambush, obstacles, ranged weapons, artillery. The second (mobile) group is deployed in hiding at one of the lateral ends of the map or appears as reinforcement. It commences a big sweep across the enemy direction of the advance, so that it hits one killzone after another in sequence from a covered flank. For this force, you want to use units which have the best close-range firepower and resilience (make sure the infantry dismounts from their transports before going in harms way). The idea is to get close and maul units that the enemy would have preferred to stand off with. And if the enemy has divided his forces, he risks defeat in detail unless he redirects his main effort away from the terrain objectives. Even if it doesn't work, you're giving the player his money's worth with some great "oh sh*t!" moments. In my experience, TacAI controlled units will react nicely and give as good as they get once they get close in; it's when they get caught at range during their timed moves that they get mowed down like zombies. Anyway, that's how I cope with AI units that only move on the clock.

Nicely done countryside. You've clearly spent time in Northern France. Tres bien! P.S. It is a good Shrubbery Farm. I like the laurels particularly.....

Click on the formation in the editor, select the desired Experience and Morale setting (or ammo or whatever) and voila! all subordinate units have that same setting. Easy enough -- 3 clicks or sumfink. The only thing you can't change is the "Equipment Quality" (e.g. setting it to Poor). You need to delete and rebuy the formation in that case.

Well done. My only thought would be to keep your review succinct and avoid wading into the "he said- she said BS". Otherwise the casual reader will just go "WTF"? and skip it. Stick to "3 sentences that explain why I gave it an 8-9" and "1-2 that explain why it didn't get a 10."

I can live with the existing LOS tool while playing, but I would just love to have some kind of tool -- shademap or not -- to use while scenario building. Right now it's a total PITA to set up defensive positions and establish fields of fire. Not least because the Target tool frequently shows LOS blocked to locations when in reality an enemy unit moving into the location (unless it's crawling on the ground) will be perfectly visible. The fix might be as "simple" as making friendly units Targetable during unit setup mode only, so you can put out test "surveyor" units. Or at least making their floating icons light up while in the editor (as enemy unit icons do while playing the game in Elite+ mode) to show they're in LOS of the selected unit.

Agreed! When I playtested my CMBN Makin scenario, I was very pleased to find that the first wave company (Green) consistently secured the beach, but was then basically a spent force. Even though casualties were not "high" by CMBN standards (10% -- one man down per squad avg, although this is of course textbook "decimation"). The Rattled / Broken squads were useless for anything but covering fire. The push into the jungle had to be undertaken by fresh forces, which is basically what you'd expect, and why RL high risk operations like beach landings were carried out in "waves" to begin with. As Andrew notes, you need to husband these troops carefully, advance under suppressing fire, and worry about things like being in command and Fatigue levels. Otherwise, you run out of willing shooters and your men begin Panicking and dying like flies if you keep pushing them. Even when you have vastly greater numbers and firepower than the enemy (also Green, but Fanatic and in good cover).

...against opponents who were increasingly undertrained kids.

My CM PC is dead at the moment, but here's a screenie I had on my laptop showing my own special workarounds to turn bocage from "100% impenetrable wall" if it doesn't have a gap to "crossable in some spot(s), but with difficulty". 1. I want Low Bocage to be crossable by infantry fairly readily but by vehicles with difficulty and bogging risk. So I put a Hedge segment in, together with a Mud tile. As one playtester found out, you don't want to do this with jeeps or ACs more than once or twice. Tanks do a little better. 2. I want High Bocage to be totally uncrossable by non-cutter vehicles but crossable by infantry with a (risky) delay.... a surrogate for hacking a gap through a thin patch in the hedge then scrambling over. Creating a chevron-shaped gap (which also can't be viewed through from a distance) as shown between the "Y" and "bent" bocage segments placed in 2 adjacent Marsh tiles (infantry worms its way around a single tile) takes a 3 man Scout section about 15 seconds to get across. I'd rather this delay was longer but hey, better than nothing. This workaround is more important in Recon scenarios like the one I am about to publish, where you have small detachments working their way through fields trying to get eyes on the enemy. Less so when you're designing an Assault -- you aren't going to push an entire rifle company one by one over a tiny gap in the bushes. You blast or bulldoze a bigger gap. FWIW. No new terrain segments needed.

I dunno, after putting at least a couple hundred hours of research, design and testing into my PTO Makin map and scenario, I'm pretty disheartened by getting only 50 DLs in 2 weeks when throw together ETO scenarios seem to get twice as many. I can't really say how many is the magic number that makes it all worth it, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't maybe just make scenarios for myself and screw the testing, tweaking briefings and AI work.

With respect, I disagree; I'd say that, sunken road or not, that's a fairly typical hedgerow and that it's a rarity to find a long wall of vegetation that is 100% opening-free along its entire length like a topiary maze. In sections, sure, but remember these things were grown as windbreaks and cattle fences, not some kind of fortification, and didn't need to be that carefully maintained, except where the hole might get large enough for livestock to escape.

Agreed. I just realized that with my CM PC hors de combat, I have inherited the Kettler stream-of-consciousness kibitzing mantle. Sorry about that; I'll try to self-censor more until I can get up and running again.

The screenshots thread is still Ok, and maybe the mockumentary one serves a marketing purpose, but the others seem a bit stale to me. A very minor nit, sure, but....