Miller, Chris wrote:
>
> > I suggest the creation of closely cosseted units on the sheets
> > that
> > came with Epic40k and then randomly picking them from a "deck". How
> > many
> > real world commanders could hand-pick their force availability's?
> >
> >
> > sauron1_at_...
> >
> ---------> Uh Oh - somebody's going to get mad if you try to bring cards
> back into the game...
> (I couldn't believe the venom people had for this. As if the cards were
> one of the major flaws in SM/TL - too many special rules, OK, but the
> cards?)
<sigh>
You mean me.
</sigh>
Well, as it happens what Sauron suggests is VERY close to how I do
stuff. I have a set of "my normal detachments" (at
http://www.spellbooksoftware.com/epic/detachents/Waagh-Tunez/index.htm
if you want to go look at them.) I have printed them off, and I more or
less chose my army by adding up detachment costs until I hit what ever
our current level is. For what it is worth I could deploy ALL of Waagh
Tunez at one time, and all but the Blood Ax Mech. Inf are painted (The
Blood Ax Gunz and the Recon Boyz are painted however).
<rant>
The problem, nay, the flaw, with SM/TL and army cards is I was locked
into doing what GW said an army looked like, not what I wanted to do. I
come from a background of historical gaming, where you deploy a TO&E,
which may or may not be "balanced". My micro armor game of choice
(Command Decision check it out at
http://www.primenet.com/~bgeipel/cdmailer.html ) doesn't even HAVE point
cost for units. And yes, the option to major cheeze out is there (ever
been on the wrong side of 12+ Tiger II tanks? With mainly M-5 light
tanks as your armor? It's ugly.) But, as a rule adult WWII/Modern
players try to run games that each side has a chance of winning. This
might be done by special victory rules, having nothing to do with who in
fact "won" the battle. As an example one side is going to lose the
battle (say UK vs Italy, early desert war), this is a given, the side
that loses the battle might win the GAME if it either
1) does better than the "real" army did in real life or
2) achieves some sort of "mission" (i.e. exit x number of units from the
board, hold a pass for x number of turns, that sort of thing).
E40K does something like this with the Fog of War option. (which is my
favorite version to play, BTW)
Getting back to cards. The problem with them, from my point of view, is
that it was the worst of both options. I got a point based TO&E system,
with no option to twiddle with the TO&E. As I have said on more than
one occasion, I LIKE doing TO&E's. I don't like games that will not let
me do them, with a basic granularity of at least a platoon. SM/TL's
basic granularity was the company, but the game was/is a 1:1 game (i.e.
each model was 1 "real" tank/gun/what ever) 1:1 games are designed for,
at best, battalion level games (i.e. 3-5 companies per side). With a
company level granularity, this then to violently limit your options.
</rant>
Received on Sat Feb 07 1998 - 16:42:54 UTC