Re: [SG2] Bad things happen...

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:01:50 +0100, Frits Kuijlman
<frits@pds.twi.tudelft.nl>
wrote:

>Basic setup: plonk a lot of terrain on a table and see what happens.
>Well, I saw alright:-)

The problem with SG2 is that it works best with a scenario with victory
conditions and everything. It doesn't work well in the, "build a team,
tear
each other to pieces" mould. This makes it harder to set up than a game
like
WH40K. It also makes it more satisfying in the end. 

>Defender had the high ground with a command squad, 2 normal squads and
a PA
>squad. He also had a small walker. All were vet as he seemed to be
seriously
>outnumbered (yeah, right).
>Attacker(me) had 1 command squad(vet) and four regular squads.

Ummm... he wasn't outnumbered. A PA squad is worth 1.5 to 3 regular
squads.
making them all Veteran helped him out.

>As my minis were skeletal terminators(from legions of steel) we decided
I
>didn't have morale problems.

If this meant that your squads couldn't take suppression, then yes, YOU
had a
major advantage. If it just meant that you didn't have to make morale
rolls,
that's not much of an advantage. Some of us have house rules to make
morale
nastier, which would have helped you out more. I would probably have
made your
troops High motivation, and his Low or Normal. That would have allowed
the
same effect without going "outside" the game.

>My squads had 1 support weapon each. This hurts a bit. His normal
squads had
>2 support weapons each. This hurt more:-)

That did hurt a lot. 

Okay, so he had one squad less than you (treating the walker as a
squad), but
had PA. He had more support squads. AND he was defending? If you had
about
twice the squads you had, it would have been much better. 

>How would people handle this situation, especially without artillery
support
>available? This seems very difficult as you can't sneek up on somebody,
>and once you see each other, both can fire at short range. Close
assaulting
>is also very unhealthy and not something you would do, except for
desperate
>situations.

There is no hidden movement, true. You were in a pretty desperate
situation. I
think if it was a case of one side having to sweep the other side, I'd
have
found a place to hunker down and let him come to me. 

>A few questions: how do people use artillery support in SG2 games, and
how much
>do you use? It seemed to have a big impact, especially with multiple
rounds.

I don't use artillery much. Usually the mission is to get a team close
to a
bunker or location or something and call in artillery as the purpose of
the
scenario. I have used air support, but you have to be careful with this
and
artillery. It can be overwhelming (though air is more susceptible to
ground
intervention). 

One good place for artillery is if you give one side a big advantage and
allow
them to attack against a defender with artillery. Another is if the
artillery
pieces are on the board (kind if a sci-fi equivalent of SCUD hunting). 

>About close assaults. In the beginning it says that if the enemy runs
away,
>take the position and follow up the next activation. However, this
paragraph
>also references the end of the section where it says you can follow up
the same
>activation instead of occupying the position. It seems that if you
don't
>folowup the same activation the enemy has the chance to get away
relatively
>unscathed.

Yes, that's true. They can run away, though we make them still have to
take
the test to stand in place, just so they risk a morale check. Close
assaults
aren't the "be all and end all" that they are in other games. Our group
tends
not to use them until the enemy is suppressed first. We keep them fairly
rare.

>We also had loads of cover on the table. The result was that once you
could
>fire on something, most of the time it was within the first range band,
which
>resulted in loads of damage most of the time. How much cover do people
put
>on the table most of the time?

Depends ont he scenario. Anywhere from "lots" to "next to none". A lot
depends
on where it's placed, and what kind of fire lanes you can set up.
Usually more
cover is better than less cover, but a lot depends on the type of cover
too.
Lots of bushes and stuff that you can still fire through may be better
than
big woods where movement and firing is drastically restricted.

>I also sort of suspected some of the participants to use some of the
more
>extreme things from the rules, just so the conclusion from this game
would be
>that the rules suck. There are some people at our club who seem to have
>problems with every ruleset they didn't invent themselves.

I know the type. You were outnumbered, really, and artillery isn't THAT
common
in SG2. Remember, just because some skirmish games have rules for 16"
naval
gunfire doesn't mean that every WW2 skirmish game should allow it! 

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,