DB002 Sochaczew vs J26/140 Round Two (Same scenario/Different Names?)

esprcorn

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Curious about a few things.... Is it unusual that this clear reprint from Dispatches was retitled? If I'm correct, reprints in official products usually keep the original name.

So it looks like J26 has been updated a bit with some changes to the OB and additional overlays. 140 from 3rd edition of Doomed Battalions seems a duplicate other than indicating the arrival of Air Support potentially on turn 3 on the turn track.

ROAR Data.
DB002 German 6 Polish 8
J26 German 25 Polish 15
140 German 1 Polish 6 (Despite no changes - the balance has swung!)

I guess the original seems the most balanced without enough plays to be sure. The newer official versions seem to be 26/21 if you add 'em up.

Any thoughts on these? Which is the best version? I still see DB002 Sochaczew come up on play lists even today. I imagine this is mostly due to people being unaware that J16/140 Round Two are the same, updated, scenario?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts...
 

Paul M. Weir

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Sometimes it can be as simple as it taking some time for players to discover and fully understand the inherent subtleties of a particular scenario, that maybe even the original designer(s) missed. As well, "practice makes perfect".
 

Carln0130

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Curious about a few things.... Is it unusual that this clear reprint from Dispatches was retitled? If I'm correct, reprints in official products usually keep the original name.

So it looks like J26 has been updated a bit with some changes to the OB and additional overlays. 140 from 3rd edition of Doomed Battalions seems a duplicate other than indicating the arrival of Air Support potentially on turn 3 on the turn track.

ROAR Data.
DB002 German 6 Polish 8
J26 German 25 Polish 15
140 German 1 Polish 6 (Despite no changes - the balance has swung!)

I guess the original seems the most balanced without enough plays to be sure. The newer official versions seem to be 26/21 if you add 'em up.

Any thoughts on these? Which is the best version? I still see DB002 Sochaczew come up on play lists even today. I imagine this is mostly due to people being unaware that J16/140 Round Two are the same, updated, scenario?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts...
I didn't get into the SSR yet, but even without it, there is a 1/2 turn difference in length, it is played on an entirely different board. Let's see about the OB's and SSR. The Germans get another 5-4-8 and another DC in the Journal version. Seems to be about it, but that is a lot.
 

nebel

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I remember playing DB002 as the Poles a few years ago and it was fantastic down to the wire. OBA smoke / MMG mayhem / and had to chase down a wily SMC and kill it to capture the last building for the win...
 

commissarmatt

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I didn't get into the SSR yet, but even without it, there is a 1/2 turn difference in length, it is played on an entirely different board. Let's see about the OB's and SSR. The Germans get another 5-4-8 and another DC in the Journal version. Seems to be about it, but that is a lot.
With differences that extensive, it should indeed be regarded as a totally different scenario based on the same action. I wouldn't really call it a different version of the same scenario. Inspired by, or based on, yes, but that's it.
 

boylermaker

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A good way of seeing whether balance is shifting is with a Sign Test. You can run a Sign Test here:

https://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/binomial1.cfm

Just plug in the number of Axis wins for a given scenario in the first box, and the total number of plays of that scenario in the second. Leave the "probability=0.5" box alone, and hit calculate. It gives you a bunch of numbers, but what you're looking for (in this case) is the "two-tailed p-value".

A good rule of thumb is that if the p-value is less than 0.1, that's telling you that the scenario might be unbalanced. None of the scenarios you list have a p-value <0.1, so that's a good sign that what is causing the balance to shift from edition-to-edition could easily just be chance.
 
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