Boards 58 and 78 - Remarkably Similar, Yet Totally Different?

Evan Sherry

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I'm sitting here at Tampa ASL Group HQ designing another gem of a scenario and again made an observation I made a while back. Mind ye, I am not complaining, but boards 58 and 78 are so daggone similar that even I (an experienced scenario designer) can barely tell them apart at first glance. The only comment I have regarding them is - why? It seems that a little effort might have made the difference more appreciable.
 

von Marwitz

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You made me take them out...

While might look similar at first glance, I believe, they "play" differently. Probably, bd58 is the more useful one of the two.

Bd78 is just one of those hill-boards with a few level 3 Locations, that might be the "obvious" places to put some long range weapons or to cut down on blind hexes - with not much rally terrain around.

Bd58 has a larger level 3 area - inclusive of woods in non-crest locations which will very likely make them safe rout havens in many many board configurations. You can build very hard to tackle "king of the hill" positions on this one especially provided with a couple of fortifications (Trenches might work especially well together with the gullys there).

von Marwitz
 

xenovin

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I believe the geometry of the geoboard configuration is at play here as any large hill will tend to take this long narrow general shape. Remove the trees from 39 or the buildings from 60 for example. However, there is a bit of difference in how they will play as vM pointed out above. The "Fort" boards are really allowing for more diverse hill boards in this regard.
 

Paul M. Weir

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I suppose another way of looking at it is with 58 & 78 is that you can combine them to make a long valley between them for those "Head them off at the pass" Blazing Saddle scenarios that you have always wanted or a nice Yugoslav mountain ambush of the supply convoy, you know the supply convoys that always have a Tiger tank (T-34/85 tarted up) as escort.

What have we now as official boards? 1-76, 78-83, 1a/b-9a/b and p-z for 76+6+9+11 for 102. While my previous paragraph was being a bit facetious, a second long thin ridge will not go too far amiss amongst those. You could say something similar about 79, it's not that we don't have a few river boards already, 7, 8 and to a lesser extent 40 and 23.

I do agree that the Fort style boards add variety, but they really only stand out because of the limitations of the long boards. If the Fort ones were the standard we would be going "ooooh!" at the long boards. Long live all boards and the mix!
 

Mister T

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Board generation is impacted by the law of diminishing returns.

Creating novelty will increasingly require original/intelligent theaters/SSRs/VCs.
 

DWPetros

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Evan, I'm in agreement.
The layout for these new geoboards gives one the impression 'we've run out of ideas'. Not true. There are many new ideas that haven't yet been seen which would give designers like you and others more to choose from.

I've been working on several new ideas personally, and have prepared 50+ new geoboard designs in sketch form. Tom Repetti has done a great job translating a few of them already and they're very cool.

As for ideas - here's just one; a Soviet 'town' (below - rough idea). The Soviet layout for towns (not city, not small village - Town, as in stand alone or as in the outskirts of a larger city) was unlike that in the West; often little vegetation, spread out, harsh, flat, uniform.. you get the idea. Those little dashes - wooden fences (Hedge rules).
There are other ideas too which haven't been produced yet but could easily be.

upload_2018-1-8_9-38-51.png
 

Tuomo

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Don:

Re: your recent "Russian Town" idea. Please resubmit with Gully.

Thanks,

MMP

;-)
 

xenovin

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Pitman used to talk about a rubbled urban geoboard and I thought that would be useful. You could also do a Fort board with intact buildings on one side and rubbled cityscape on the back
 

DWPetros

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i like the Russian town idea and would like to see them on a double wide board
I like double-wides too, but try to use them as 'necessary' - meaning only if there is not another way of depicting such a large terrain feature (ie. Hill, Grainfields, etc.).
The sketch below is a large hill, with adjoining Ukrainian village - kind of like what you'd see around Teploye.
upload_2018-1-8_13-7-26.png
 

DWPetros

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Pitman used to talk about a rubbled urban geoboard and I thought that would be useful. You could also do a Fort board with intact buildings on one side and rubbled cityscape on the back
Agree that we could use some damaged terrain - Rubble, Debris, Shellholes - or at least overlays.
 

von Marwitz

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I think some time ago it was noted that there is nothing like a "horseshoe hill" yet, for which probably a Double Wide or Fort Board would work best.

An alternative would be a large overlay that would join two existing hill-boards to become a "horseshoe hill". There must be an old thread here somewhere, where I proposed that idea with a picture of how it could look like.

von Marwitz
 

footsteps

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Here are three devastated city AP-style boards I designed. This was back when I tried to organize a MwT contest - then discovered that it was much more work than I had the capability for.
bg13a thumb 200.PNG bg14a thumb 200.PNG bg15a thumb 200.PNG
 

Mister T

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As for ideas - here's just one; a Soviet 'town' (below - rough idea). The Soviet layout for towns (not city, not small village - Town, as in stand alone or as in the outskirts of a larger city) was unlike that in the West; often little vegetation, spread out, harsh, flat, uniform.. you get the idea. Those little dashes - wooden fences (Hedge rules).
There are other ideas too which haven't been produced yet but could easily be.

View attachment 3740
I see elements of Boards 22 and 49 inside.
 

Mister T

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I like double-wides too, but try to use them as 'necessary' - meaning only if there is not another way of depicting such a large terrain feature (ie. Hill, Grainfields, etc.).
The sketch below is a large hill, with adjoining Ukrainian village - kind of like what you'd see around Teploye.
View attachment 3743
This one provides added-value, exploiting the D-W feature.
 

DWPetros

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I see elements of Boards 22 and 49 inside.
There really aren't any existing boards that depict the kind of 'Soviet' layout that my sketch poorly illustrates. This Soviet style was distinctive, with little vegetation, uniformity, plainness - something that the existing mix of boards fails to achieve. If we're looking for new ideas - this is one.
 
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