RE: SG:AC discussions (was: Official - More re GZG news update - NEW RELEASES!)

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"This system has been "borrowed" many times over the years, most 
notably by Brilliant Lances (the Traveller starship game), because it 
works! I certainly borrowed some of the Seastrike system icon ideas 
for FT, as many of you may have noted long ago, but I've not actually 
applied the objective card system to a game - though it would lend 
itself very well to FT games, and I'm sure it could be made to work 
for ground based games too."
 
Gee, I wonder where I got the idea for the mission cards I did so many
moons ago...
(Having BOTH SeaStrike and Brilliant Lances)






Michael Brown

mwsaber6@msn.com



 
> Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 18:49:04 +0100
> To: gzg@firedrake.org
> From: jon@gzg.com
> Subject: Re: SG:AC discussions (was: Official - More re GZG news
update - NEW RELEASES!)
> 
> >textfilter: chose text/plain from a multipart/alternative
> >
> >On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Roger Bell_West
<roger@firedrake.org>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>  On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 10:25:29AM -0500, Patrick Connaughton
wrote:
> >>  >
> >>  >There have been comments above inconclusive games. These happen
> >>  >(sadly) all too often when you're using point based, matchup
games.
> >>  >It becomes the challenge of the presenter to build a good
scenario
> >>  >that provides victory conditions or success criteria that
challenge
> >>  >the players to do more than body count.
> >>
> >>  Yes, I think that some sort of objective, even if it's just "get
your
> >>  guys off the other edge of the map", almost always improves
things.
> >>
> >
> >Ambush Alley had or used to have available a very short (4-page; 3 of
which
> >were the rules, one was the rules cover :-D ) set of WWII 'patrol'
campaign
> >rules which each side would roll secretly for their force's
game/scenario
> >objective. A friend and I adopted it to do a short (9-game) TW
campaign a
> >couple years ago, and it worked really well. One of the objectives
was to
> >exit the other end of the table with half your force or more. There
were
> >six objectives that you would roll for on each side, with each side
keeping
> >their rolled objective a secret from the other. Made for some
interesting
> >battles. (and a couple of potentially boring ones when both of our
> >objectives were to withdraw; but that happened far less often than
the
> >other combination of objectives).
> >
> >Mk
> 
> 
> That is similar in some ways to the classic "Seastrike" random 
> objective method - each player draws an unmarked envelope from a 
> stack of a dozen or so, and a card in the envelope tells them (a) the 
> budget for their force, (b) any specific restrictions on their force 
> composition and (c) the objective they must try to achieve, with an 
> alternative secondary objective (which is usually, but not always, to 
> prevent the enemy from achieving their own objective) that the player 
> may fall back on if the main objective becomes impossible.
> 
> Having drawn and read your objective card, you then "buy" your ships, 
> aircraft, land bases etc from the pool of counters (each has a price 
> in millions of pounds/dollars) up to the allowed budget on the card, 
> and then the game deployment starts.
> 
> The objectives range from a relatively small budget and a mission to 
> render just one enemy surface vessel inoperative (to "make a point" 
> to a	sabre-rattling enemy), to a huge budget that allows you to buy 
> almost your entire counter mix but with a mission requiring you to 
> completely neutralise all enemy forces.
> 
> As Indy mentions, it is possible to get some odd matchups - though 
> having the blind envelope draw rather than a die roll does mean that 
> both sides will never get the same objective. The classic very short 
> game is a small-budget objective to simply destroy the enemy's 
> (land-based) command post - unless the enemy has heavily invested in 
> SAM sites, then you just spend almost all your budget on strike 
> aircraft and wallop the hell out of him in the first turn....
> 
> This system has been "borrowed" many times over the years, most 
> notably by Brilliant Lances (the Traveller starship game), because it 
> works! I certainly borrowed some of the Seastrike system icon ideas 
> for FT, as many of you may have noted long ago, but I've not actually 
> applied the objective card system to a game - though it would lend 
> itself very well to FT games, and I'm sure it could be made to work 
> for ground based games too.
> 
> [I've kind of assumed that most here know what Seastrike is - for 
> those that don't, it's a hybrid board/tabletop game of mid-to-late 
> 20th Century (post-WW2) naval combat between two smallish states set 
> in an island archipelago, with surface units varying from missile 
> boats through frigates and destroyers up to a single cruiser (rather 
> vulnerable and seldom used, in my experience!) available to each 
> fleet, plus strike and interceptor aircraft and land bases such as 
> SAM and radar sites to place on the islands. Play occurs on a 
> tabletop rather than a board, with card islands placed at random as 
> "terrain". All combat is very simply driven by a clever special card 
> deck.]
> 
> Jon (GZG)
> 
> 
> 
>