Re: [GZG] DSIII

[Mark Kinsey <Kinseym@xxxxxxx>]

I had a couple of thoughts on Dirtside III as well. Mine were more of 
the "things you don't want to do in Dirtside III because of the game 
mechanics".

1) Remember that a Dirtside III game rarely goes past 3 turns. The 
Friday night game was two turns and the Sunday morning game was one 
turn. As a result you need to be very careful about what order you 
activate units. In the Sunday morning game I had my commander activate 
about 2/3 of our force in one action (a big plus in DSIII) since we had 
three players and were eager to get started we all started moving our 
units onto the board at once. WRONG. Huge mistake.

I was expecting to get another turn or two, so I moved my 2/3 of our APC 
force onto the board just to have them sit in the rear, expecting to use 
them to follow up in the next turn. Had I waited to see what all the 
tank units did I could have used that force to follow up on our sweeping 
right flank move during the end of turn one. As it was I only had one 
company I could have moved before we called the game for time (did I 
mention that we still had 3 activations left?). So only move one unit 
onto the board at a time in turn one and be very careful the order you 
use them in.

2) If you're the defender, don't shoot at a superior force that has 
stopped after a firefight is over. It only gives them a reason to 
reactivate and continue their move. In my opinion, this is a problem 
with the rules. Grant's heavy tank force moved onto the board, got 
involved in a firefight, moved out of LOS and the firefight ended. They 
moved around a large outcropping (using ALL of their major move) and 
began another firefight at closer range.The firefight ended because the 
defender went under cover. Then at the end of the game the defender 
activated a unit that had LOS on the stopped Tank unit. The resulting 
firefight gave Grant all the excuse he needed to roll into the base and 
wipe out the defenders command unit. This create a bit of a cascading 
stress situation, which seems to be the way most DSIII games end, which 
is fine by me. I don't think any unit should be able to move beyond 
their major move capability, firefight or not. The major move is the 
maximum move you can move during the time a turn takes if  you were 
unopposed. Firefights should not extend this ability.

3) Having enough color coded dice and perhaps color coding the vehicle 
charts would definately speed things up. Next time I'm bringing some 
color coded dice.

4) As I was the commander I felt engaged the whole battle, which is more 
than I can say for some. Grant did most of the heavy lifting, but I did 
have a lot of fun with my "not-Death Gliders". And the K'Hiff did get a 
nice meal out of the whole engagement. So there's that.

-Mark

P.S.John, what's your preferred storage solution for DS vehicles?

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