Re: [Epic] Blast Markers

From: mlooney - IOnet <mlooney_at_...>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 21:39:20 -0600

Thane Morgan wrote:

> This post reads like it was written by a company flackey rather than a serious wargamer.
> Some BM effects are good and proper, but the amount of blind fire an army puts out should
> not be 50%+ of a battle.
>
> Furthermore, "killing" a unit in E40k does not necessarily represent fatality, but an end
> to its combat effectiveness. Playing to 20% casualties may be appropriate for a real
> battle, but makes for really bad games, considering how easy it is to "kill" a unit.

Concept: Maybe a kill DOES reflect an in fact casualty (be if fatal or
not) and the BM reflect all the other things that other games use in
place of kills.
>
> Historically, most battles have been fought to acheive some goal other than "kill 50% of
> the enemy", or "pin the enemy down". Once upon a time, objectives represented this fairly
> well. Now they do not.
>

Horse hocky. (on the second part, not the first, you are correct
there). Hmm, maybe horse hocky is to strong there, but given how I have
seen people play SM/TL and read about it here on the list most people
play capture the flag, not any thing at ALL like historical goals of
battles. The objective in ANY battle is to break the enemies will to
fight. You do it often enough and his whole country give up. Very,
very seldom is this achieved by taking some chunk of ground. In SM/TL
it is possible with games under a set number of points (2000 IIRC) to
win with out killing a single enemy, on turn one, by jumping on all the
objective markers, never mind the fact that your force would be wiped
off the face of the map on turn 2, if it didn't stop after turn 1.

> Finally, this is supposedly a list of ideas, not of game-company dogma. If you don't like
> alternative rules posted here, that is your right; but people pointing out perceived flaws
> of a system is not "whining", and you don't have to play by a single thing that is ever
> posted here. Obviously a great number of us are disatisfied by the current system, and
> I've played LOTS of non-GW games; in fact SM/TL was the only GW game I played for 2 years.
> Otherwise its been avalon hill/ssi/computer wargames, which play much more like 2nd
> edition and require much more thought.

< blink >
Excuse me? I think I hold the record for most alternative rules for
E40K posted to the list. For that matter that is ALL my web site IS,
for ghod's sake...
< /blink >
Received on Tue Mar 31 1998 - 03:39:20 UTC