On Wed, 4 Feb 1998, A. Allen McCarley wrote:
> I do agree with you on the lack of character. When we complain to our
> squat player about his army makeup, he points to the army list and
> asks what else he should take. (Sometimes we say "infantry", but we
> know that getting him to take infantry is a lost cause.) A Dozen or
> so Overlords can hold the line while 6 Goliath's pound the enemy into
> oblivion. A few squads of Gyrocopters are more than capable of harrassing
> the flanks. It always works, so why change it?
Umm, 'cause everyone's complaining. It also helps with the variety and
keeps the army from being a bit stale. Sure you'll win every time if you
always have solid lines of Overlords backed by Goliaths, but where did the
fun go?
We have lost 3 Squat because of exactly that. 2 under SpMar, 1 under E40K.
The first perfected the Goliath+Colossus+Biker Guilds rush and then quickly
found his girlfriend *much* more interesting. Before we'd get him to play
every other week -- after, maybe he'd play 1/year. The 2nd declared that
"a trained monkey could play the Squats" and promptly left for WHFB and
Napoleonics. 3rd bought the 1st's army and, armed with CitJournal, found
the Goliath+support weapon+thunderer trick. After he smashed my 2K Tyranid
horde in the fire phase of turn 1 [1/3 casualties, 3/4 army morale gone by
end of turn] I haven't seem him for 4 months despite the fact that he's
on our "I'm playing this week" mailing list.
As someone who has built the EPIC group from myself and 2 buddies to a height
of 9 and am currently watching it dwindle down to probably 2 [we have 5 now
-- one never shows, one will graduate, one is the Squat] I'm passing this
along as a warning/caution. It is *very* easy for the Squat player to get
bored and move on to other things. Partly, it the fault of their restrictive
lists [in both games] and partly it's the fault of arty heavy armies since
they work best when holding ground and rolling dice as much and as fast as
possible.
Try some special scenarios too. See how "Arty Boy" handles a Dawn Raid or
Breakout type scenario. Fog of War [while it is extreme] might promote more
balanced armies, but has several pitfalls of its own.
Sean U
---------
Sean A Upchurch
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~sau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Sean.Upchurch_at_...
Member of Information Systems and Computer Science Staff - Associate
Received on Thu Feb 05 1998 - 00:26:23 UTC