Using OPs as QBs

[Juardis]

Meeting engagements are losing their luster (actually, I've never really liked them because I lose ) and the QB maps are not all that interesting. Before I go on, let me state that I am NOT complaining, just thinking of ways to add variability before the battles start to get stale.

So to add some spice to my CM gaming experience I'm playing some custom QBs. We go to the scenario creator, autogenerate a map, tweak it to put some interesting stuff on it (like rivers and bridges and hedgerows), then have a 3rd party purchase our stuff. I'm playing 2 7500 point, 75 turn battles this way and they are an absolute blast.

But in my quest for ever more interesting battles, I've been experimenting with destroy operations. The idea is to create an op of say, 3 battles each 30 turns long over a big map (operation maps can be MUCH larger than the single battle maps). Destroy ops work well with 0 m no mans land since there is the possibility for small salients to develop between battles (I'd still like pockets to develop between battles, but alas...). A lot of parameters can be tweaked like weather, time of day, reinforcement levels, etc. But the basic premise is that you search for the enemy, engage the enemy, get resupplied and reinforced, then continue the fight. Again, I'm still experimenting, but the players would have the option of spending all their points up front for the first battle or spending some for the first battle and saving some for subsquent battles. Players could even agree that no more than x points are spent up front, and then you could spend the rest for subsequent battles. Of course, if you were going to allow 100% resupply, then it doesn't make sense to spend money on reinforcements, so you'd have to give it average resupply where some units will get resupplied others will not. For those units that do not get resupplied, you'd probably be better off moving them to the rear and bringing up your reinforcements or reserves.

And since this is all based on destroying your enemy, there is emphasis placed on recon and exploitation. There are no flags. More emphasis is placed on saving your troops for the subsequent battles. Knocked out tank crew? Better not use him gamey like. Mortar team out of ammo? Better retreat him to get resupplied possibly. Oooooo, I'm getting giddy just thinking of the possibilities.

So what I want to know is who out there does this? Any advice that would save me time? Any pitfalls to avoid? Does this sound interesting to anybody? I've lined up Havermeyer to give this a try, but we're still ironing out the details. I can post results if anybody cares. Let me point out that I'm not talking about playing a canned operation (although those can work too if they are destroy ops and you know what you're getting and when you'd be getting them). I'm talking about the player having as much say so as possible given the framework we have to work under.

------------------

Jeff Abbott

[This message has been edited by Juardis (edited 02-15-2001).]