QB ME's with no objectives

[LJFHutch]

Ok here's something to consider, what about ME QB's where the only objective is enemy casualties?

It's one of the things I loved about Men of War with the combat game-type actually, but I'm not sure how well that would translate to CMBN or how authentic it is (certainly not incredibly authentic for small engagements - although if you take the "many hats" idea a bit further you could be passing orders from your commander). The idea is that the battlefield would more dynamic and unpredictable that way, you don't know where the enemy will move to, especially (and this is probably pretty important for this to work) with larger maps and smaller forces.

What would be interesting then is it would allow for large-scale flanking and other maneuvers not typically found in battles with objectives since no force would be capable of stringing out their units from one map edge to the other - there is suddenly too much ground to cover and scouting becomes important. Not to mention there is no "right" place to do it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I would hope to come from it though is that with no objectives it would allow the players to be much more creative in how they create their tactics, you no longer capture that hill because the game tells you to but because you want to utilize it in some way. If you are suddenly attacked do you swing your force around to face it or is it a decoy? Does the enemy want to draw you out or is he trying to make you dig in until his artillery barrage comes in?

I started really thinking about this yesterday when testing a QB map I was making and realized how "standard" and uninspired my tactics were. I'm thinking about including "No-ob" versions of each QB ME map in future to allow for better usage of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.