In the context of my Juno Beach game, we have a situation where we have a very weak group of German defenders, who it can be argued are fairly experience and who know the ground, are in a wood. The attackers are inexperienced, on their first outing, and don't know the ground in much detail. The rules allow for dedicated recce assets but without them the attacker is likely to be pretty cautious, possibly holding back while a recce patrol is send forward, or unto some supporting fire can be whistled up. In the meantime I am inclined to dice for the possibility of the defender being spotted, or the attacker having a moment of decisiveness and advancing anyway.
What is the received wisdom please?
It's entirly up to you but I would say don't make changes untill you have had a few more games.
A valid point. Easier to find areas to niggle over than to create complete rules sets. But a lot of game designers, and gamers, do tend to assume that if you have a piece of equipment, then it always works.
And then there was the Chieftain Power Pack! And, indeed, the Combat Engineer Tractor.
I'd also make two more points - the local population would be assisting, as you are half way through a game it feels worng tyo make changes.
The local population would be getting in the way I reckon.
This is very much what the command roll represents. A failed roll, could easily be explained as the troops taking a bit longer to check out what is in front of them. A few successful ones is local initiative being shown.
You could therefore give the defenders a +1 for local knowledge. But you may also want to factor in the bombardment they had received.
Most things in BKC are really part of the command roll. As it determines how often a unit / formation gets to do stuff. The other stats become less important compared to how many command success you get.
Quote from: holdfast on 17 February 2021, 04:53:00 PM
The local population would be getting in the way I reckon.
I think they would have f***** off or be hiding in their cellars. They aren't going to be getting involved in the middle of a tank battle.
Indeed, so the Canadians having first three then six and eventually nine points of command is going to tell, in a Lanchester sort of way, against the Germans with three rising to four points of command. Outnumbering in HQ assets seems more important than actual disparity in troop numbers.
Quote from: holdfast on 17 February 2021, 06:02:20 PM
Indeed, so the Canadians having first three then six and eventually nine points of command is going to tell, in a Lanchester sort of way, against the Germans with three rising to four points of command. Outnumbering in HQ assets seems more important than actual disparity in troop numbers.
To a degree. CV is important as well as sheer numbers of HQs. And taking it too far isn't that helpful. One of the rules of thumb in the earlier versions was a HQ per 500 pts (or so). Which could be a fair bit of infantry, but just 3 or 4 tanks.
If you play Russians vs Germans, the Russians will do a bit but struggle, then the German CO will order all sorts of units to do multiple things...
But it seems right, if you have loads of poorly led troops, you would expect them to be fairly ineffective, But fewer well led troops could be very effective.
I struggle to manage to order more than two sorts of actions for a group. Fire and movement seems to cover most eventualities.