Re: Another POINTless Argument

At 10:07 AM 4/23/97 -0500, John Medway wrote:

>> Point systems, once an aid to scenario design, have resulted in the
Games
>> Workshopping of the hobby. Grand defenses, stunning offenses, and
>> hopeless/heroic delaying missions have been replaced by that most
rare of
>> modern military occurances: the balanced meeting engagement.  Instead
of
>
>You need not restrict yourself to "modern" here.

Quite true, but most medieval and ancient battles consisted of one side
deciding that this was as good a spot as any to fight and then waiting
for
the other to show up, or laying siege to a castle/city until it fell or
someone else showed up. While hardly balanced, most battles could be
seen as
some form of meeting engagement by choice.

>Even that is more sane and sensible than the WRG Ancients/DMA/DBM folks
who use
>their points system to justify battles beween Samurai and Roman
legionaries.

This is an example of what I mean: wargaming as a tournament hobby
almost
exclusively. You almost never hear of ancients players re-playing Cannae
or
Bannockburn or Marathon anymore. They seem more worried about how their
500
point Successor army will do against that Early Imperial Roman army. 

>What I would find useful, rather than any sort of scenario-points sort
of
>system, is an economic cost system. Regardless of how effective X is
vs. Y, I'd
>like to know how much it costs _to _produce. Bugger how well it works.
This
>would be very useful for campaigns, where scenario points are, well,
pointless.

That's actually not a bad idea. 

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage