Re: [GZG] DSIII

["John K. Lerchey" <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some comments, as I've been playing a good bit of DS3 lately. :)

Mark Kinsey wrote:
> 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.

This isn't always a mistake, but often is.  If you use a few units as 
individual activations (as opposed to using Command Points to activate 
multiple units simultaneously) and perform recon (whoo hoo!  recon!) it 
can help you to determine when and where to make that big push with a 
pile of combat units. On the downside in the ECC game I ran, the K'hiff 
don't really have recon units. :)

> 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.

But again, be prepared to launch a pile of stuff when the time is right. 
 This is equivalent to the German WWII "Shwerpunkt" (which I guarantee 
that I misspelled!) - finding the right point in the enemy line to 
concentrate your forces into to perform a breakthrough.  But yes, 
overall, Mark makes a very good point.

> 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.

I agree.  Firefights should not extend total BMF in a given turn.  I 
should have watched that more carefully while running the game and not 
allowed Grants heavies to advance.  They should have had two options - 
go to cover or fire.

> 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.

I put out 12 of each color die in the middle of the table. I told every 
player to use them. No one took me up on it. :(  It truly does make 
things easier.  Color coding the sheets is harder to do because you 
don't know the units command color before the battle, and since each 
sheet is "per vehicle type", and not "per unit" and each unit could have 
different colors based on command chits, it further complicates things.

> 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.

I hope that with that said, you enjoyed it. :)

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

To date I've been using Chessex boxes - the 80 figure ones.  Each 
compartment (foam) generally carries 2-4 vehicles, depending size.  At 
least for my Order troops (almost all vehicles are from the GZG Future 
Wars line).  For my K'hiff grav tanks (Grav vehicles from GZGs DS line), 
I fit one per slot in the chessex box, sitting on their sides.  That 
seems to work pretty well.

I just bought a handful of cheap pistol cases at a new sporting store, 
just before the show.  They have ... toothed? foam.  Each side has 
points like pyramids that press into the gun (assuming you have a gun). 
 I turned the foam upside down to present a smooth surface, and since 
the foam doesn't *quite* make contact from each side of the box, I'm 
going to get a third layer of thin foam and cut holes for my infantry 
bases.  Each pistol box (total of like $6.00 each) will carry one or two 
companies of infantry.  I may put the APCs in there as well if there's room.

For the show, I packed the infantry into VHS tape boxes lined with foam. 
 They feel a bit too flimsy to me, and I worry that they'll pop open. 
Thus, the pistol cases.

John

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