Reflections from Lancaster

One thought I had after having run Grey Day (bn level SG2) and having
previously run 3-4 company sized SG2 games at Autumn Assault and other
places. I'll share it FWIW. 

Time to play:
Very Small Conflict - a couple of squads each side -	an hour or 90
minutes
Small Conflict - a platoon each side, not much support - two hours to
2.5
hours
Medium Conflict - platoon each side, plus attachments and vehicles - 4
hours
or so
Somewhat Big Conflict - two platoons per side, plus attachments and
vehicles
- 5-6 hours or so
Big Conflict - Company per side, plus attachments and vehicles - 7-9
hours
Muy Macho Conflict - 2-4 Companies in aggregate size plus attachments
and a
bunch of vehicles - 12-18 hours

Now, things like hidden movement, spotting, recce, IPB, etc all take
extra
time. Every extra manoevre unit takes time, and fighting on a large
contiguous battlefield makes it harder to break apart the large games
into
smaller asynchronous games. 

Each level has different lessons to teach and different flavour and
requirements out of the players. I wouldn't want to do "Grey Days" every
day, but it was a wonderful experience and the players were quite
fascinating to watch. 

Someone suggested a Battalion Sized FMA game.... I cringed at the
thought....

Relating to game balance:
The big secret to balance in SG2 is thought. If cover is not dense,
squads
will take fire in the open very often. Green squads, smaller squads,
etc.
will break easily in such a setting. Vets and Elite can take abuse for
long
time! Firepower is an issue two. A force with ten man squads with three
SAWs
and 7 AARs with GLs is going to be rather revolting in its FP. And
vehicles
are inately unpredictable - GZGverse armour rules equate to Achilles
Best...
rolling a 1 on an armour check on your class 5 armoured grav tank can
let a
GMS/P take you down. Same with heavy weapons - rolling 3-4 dice can net
you
a 4 or a 48 for impact. And armour against a force without enough AA
weapons
is B-A-D. And a thought many people don't keep in mind is the advantages
of
quantity! More activations. More fire actions. Potentially more
suppressions
on target units which make their higher quality less relevant. Someone
suggested that when viewing differentials, keep in mind the squares law
-
however you rate two forces, the real difference between them is the
square
of the difference. What that means is it doesn't take long for a small
gap
in firepower, unit numbers, unit quality, etc to result in a huge
imbalance.
Plus you can't ever account for tactics. But in general a scenario is
well
balanced if two forces led by moderate leadership without making many
mistakes can both have some chance of achieving their disparate victory
conditions. If you have a scenario you feel is tougher for one side than
the
other, give the tough side to the best player as a challenge. And keep
in
mind the effects of the map - never design forces for a scenario without
consideration. Give one side armour, but no place to manoeuvre and it
isn't
that useful. Give one side lots of weapons effective at long range and
provide and open table and they have a huge advantage. 

Another Topic:
Someone brought up SG2 scenarios for a repository. I currently have four
or
five moderate sized ones (some with nicely done out squad cards even!)
but
I'm wondering if there is interest - my scenarios tend to focus on a
particular situation, rather than being generic. They may provide an
example
of what balance might be and they could provide a template for others to
basis from, but I would doubt strict recreation was likely. Having said
that, I'm more than willing to provide them if the people interested in
this
information contact me OFF LIST about it. I want to talk about formats
etc.
with them and that is not meat for on list discussions. 

Have a good evening all. 

Thomas Barclay
Software UberMensch
xwave solutions
(613) 831-2018 x 3008