Broken Ground Design Thread

footsteps

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Alan,

I picked up your sniper sheet at ASLOK and finally getting around to putting them away. from left to right, just confirming these are the nationalities: Axis Minor, Romanian, Brit, Free French, German, Hungarian, Allied Minor, Polish, Russian, Chinese, SS, US, Japanese, Finn, Italy, French, ???, Marine?, and Partisan?
Thanks!
??? = Chinese (Blue)
Marine and Partisan are correct.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Does this mean I'm famous?

Nah, just part of the growing group of enthusiastic third party publishers who have had Mark say dumb things about their products. :)

Nor, it should be noted, are countersheets wrapped in plastic/cellophane or included in baggies. Purchasers should either punch the countersheets quickly after obtaining them or store the countersheets in a large plastic baggie, lest some counters inadvertently get separated from their countertrees and become lost forever.

It's funny, for 40 years I've been buying wargames, and never managed to lose a counter because the trees were never coated in plastic, or not punched out quickly enough.
 

footsteps

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Nah, just part of the growing group of enthusiastic third party publishers who have had Mark say dumb things about their products. :)
I'm fine with Mark's comments. Nothing I do is "required" for ASL, but for those who like my stuff, roll low and enjoy the game. For those who don't like my stuff, roll low and enjoy the game.
 

Michael Dorosh

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For the TL - DW crowd, here is a transcript of the Broken Ground review:

Dave: So we'll take a look at the Broken Ground counters.
Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave: So, Alan kindly sent these over to me, and I'm going to put the details up on the screen and in the description for where you can...where you can buy these.
Martin: Yeah.
Dave: Now, these are a mixture of utility counters and order of battle counters. Now, some of these, obviously you don't have to buy these all, they are available separately.
Martin: I see.
Dave: So you can buy as and when you need them.
Martin: And you can pick what you want...
Dave: Pick and choose, that's right. So the ones that I think are going to be quite honestly sought after are things like the SS...
Martin: Because they come in black...
Dave: Yeah, the black counters here. And I know for people like yourself who missed out on A Bridge Too Far...
Martin: Yeah.
Dave: ...and didn't get the Waffen stuff.
Martin: And we're going to play with the vehicle counters from this set today...
Dave: Yeah, that's right, because this scenario has SS vehicles basically....
Martin: With just ordinary infantry.
Dave: That's right. Alan sent us over the counters for Acquisition... The acquisition counters are fairly similar to the existing counters from MMP.
Martin: Are these four different nationalities?
Dave: There are different nationalities here, yeah....
Martin: They are the normal nationalities that....
Dave: Yeah, so these are things like Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Partisans, Polish, Romanian....
Martin: Okay, so things that might not be well represented in the system.
Dave: That's right, that's right. And again we've got some large consumer counters and things like that. You've got some foxhole counters. Now, I have genuinely got more foxhole counters than I know what to do with in MMP's (mix) but some people I suppose may not have, so they've got those.
Martin: Yeah.
Dave: There are some nice initiatives on these counters. I like the idea that we've actually pushed...the idea of what you can do with a counter. I don't know why anyone's not thought of this before, but the Sniper counters, with the sniper number printed on them...
Martin: So these are the French Snipers. Instead of just one counter, you've got say six....
Dave: Yeah, exactly. And that's... really quite useful.
Martin: It's easy.... it's difficult to remember sometimes. There are all sorts of systems for remembering, in fact you have two of each, haven't you, so even if it was a Campaign Game you could, sort of do that....
Dave: Exactly. So there's a....
Martin: What's on the back of those?
Dave: The page...
Martin: So just the same as normal then.
Dave: You have Sniper counters there that you can utilize, which is a good idea. Another good idea was the Fire For Effect and the Off-Board Artillery, but including the size of the artillery in them.
Martin: I see.
Dave: So if you've got two different artillery....
Martin: Say you've got an 80 (mm) and a 100 (mm module) then you've got two different sets of counters.
Dave: Which is quite nice. There's the bicycles with extra details on them, the art on the counter as they currently are printed.
Martin: Bicycles!
Dave: Yes.
Martin: Okay.
Dave: So motorcycles, I think, and bikes, so a little bit extra so you can just kind of see...
Martin: A bit of information about them.
Dave: Exactly. There's a comedy sheet, which may or not appeal to some people. You've got PINs with the voodoo dolls with pins sticking in them, you've got SHOCK with a guy getting electric shocks, STUN with the stars across his head. You know, a bit of nonsy, but some people might enjoy those. Certainly a bit different, and would certainly raise questions.
Martin: And then you've got a Japanese order of battle there.
Dave: That's right. So I'm assuming this is if you for example if you haven't enough counters for some of the bigger scenarios, maybe, I don't know, Blood Reef Tarawa has an awful lot of some of the counters so we've got assorted counters here for the Japanese. Very similar they are...they're the same colour...
Martin: Essentially the same as the official ones.
Dave: The other good thing that's been done here, is when the counters are Fanatic, rather than putting a Fanatic counter on, or Heroic, actually the counters modify themselves. So you can see that the Morale has gone up in certain... certain counters as well to signify that they are actually Heroic or they are... their morale has gone up or whatever Fanatic might be, things like that. So that's quite interesting. And he's done the same as well for the squads, so, again, if you are Fanatic the morale on these guys is up to eight or nines.
Martin: So there is a kind of a normal set of Japanese, but for each counter type there are Fanatic versions?
Dave: That's right. So Fanatic, or when their morale has increased because they're fighting a certain nationality, which happens to certain...I think happens to the Italians, maybe, I think there's a few...
Martin: And that would mean you don't have to remember, for example...
Dave: Yeah. We've got a set of Italian counters, not the only ones we've seen today....
Martin: Absolutely not.
Dave: We've got a set of Italian counters here. We've also got the full order of battle here, really, for the Italians. And again, we have things like the increased Morale for Fanatic troops and things like that here.
Martin: So I guess what's.... useful about this is if, you know, you can pick and choose about what you order. If you, I suppose, if you haven't invested in the full Rising Sun module you could potentially still have the Japanese order of battle to play scenarios from Schwerpunkt or something like that.
Dave: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. So, very nice. Nice addition to people's collections. I know, certainly, I would imagine that the SS will be very popular because people have missed out on ...
Martin: You would have thought so.
Dave: But these ones are really good. Something that I would like to see more of. People pushing the boundaries of what can be done with a counter. I know it happened before with the Support Weapon First Fired when, I think maybe it was Bounding Fire maybe covered it...
Martin: It was.
Dave: Someone did it here....by the way, someone did a...counter
Martin: One of those. Yeah. One of those.
Dave: And then MMP realized it was a good idea....
Martin: Yeah, yeah.
Dave: ...and printed their own. So you know, these kind of things actually came...
Martin: The Advancing Fire counters are good, aren't they?
Dave: That's right.
Martin: Which you can flip over to get....
Dave: Yeah. Exactly. So Alan, thank you very much for those, we really appreciate that. We're going to be playing with the SS....
Martin: Today!
Dave: And I may give some of these away to some patrons as well if we can think of a good prize for something. And that's that.
 
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Michael Dorosh

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It's a nice review. They put up some good pictures to illustrate the points they made. I may actually drop some money on a set after seeing this, finances depending. Did I see a captured British 25-pounder in the Italian counter-set? I'm not sure the Illuminati (is that what we're calling the Illuminating Round guys?) are aware of all the rare vehicles you included in the packs.
 

daveramsey

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Thanks Alan for the counters. The weird photo that came out during the game really exaggerates the surface bumpiness - I couldn't understand what had happened when I saw the counter in the photo, it was that different to how we'd seen it "live", so don't let that put you off them.

The counters are nice. I love the full colour AFVs and the snipers with the activation number on them. I wonder whether MMP will transition to full colour AFVs at some point?

Michael, thanks for posting the transcript (I had never seen that feature in youtube before).

I'm not sure the Illuminati (is that what we're calling the Illuminating Round guys?) are aware of all the rare vehicles you included in the packs.
We weren't - we just assumed they were a set of most of the more frequently used AFVs/Guns in each nationality. Apologies if we missed out on mentioning that.
 

olli

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I’m now using A complete set of Alan’s counters for my Travel kit . I like them so much!
 

Gordon

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Not strictly a BGD counter issue, but I've acquired a number of colorized counters in various products over the years. Personally, my aging eyes find the colorized AFVs MUCH harder to recognize than the simple black & white standard counters. Too each their own.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Michael, thanks for posting the transcript (I had never seen that feature in youtube before).
It's not a YouTube feature (well, it is, the auto-generated close captions, but they are usually awful) but I've done medical transcriptions in my sordid working life, so I just did it manually.
 

cathmor01

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Has Vinnie's consolidated Chapter H notes for the Broken Ground nationality sets ever been released? I'm sure I could go back through the designer's forum and piece them all together, but I'm lazy and don't know if they were ever finalized and made "official" by Alan.

Thanks
 

von Marwitz

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Has Vinnie's consolidated Chapter H notes for the Broken Ground nationality sets ever been released? I'm sure I could go back through the designer's forum and piece them all together, but I'm lazy and don't know if they were ever finalized and made "official" by Alan.

Thanks
I think that Vinnie maintains his personal eASLRB in which he might use them.
But as things are, such labors of love that some ASLers have embarked on cannot be published for the sake of copyright.

von Marwitz
 

cathmor01

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I think that Vinnie maintains his personal eASLRB in which he might use them.
But as things are, such labors of love that some ASLers have embarked on cannot be published for the sake of copyright.

von Marwitz
Thanks for the quick response...

I was under the impression that Vinnie was doing notes for the new vehicles (and variants) that appeared only in the Broken Ground countersets and that they would at some time become available for those that purchased the sets. I allow that I could have the wrong impression...I am not looking for complete chapter H notes.
 

von Marwitz

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Thanks for the quick response...

I was under the impression that Vinnie was doing notes for the new vehicles (and variants) that appeared only in the Broken Ground countersets and that they would at some time become available for those that purchased the sets. I allow that I could have the wrong impression...I am not looking for complete chapter H notes.
Hm, I have not thought of that. But if so, then the user 'footsteps' should know as he is Broken Ground.

von Marwitz
 
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