Heretical OBA rules

[jrv]

A rose by any other name ... -- jim

A rose you say? Then I agree.

JR

 

[semenza]

A modified OBA rule is the only house rule my friends and I use. Similar to Steve's but not the same.

After second red is drawn, the two red go back into the draw pile along with one additional red for each black that was previously pulled. After that every red goes back in plus one for each black since the second red. So if you have already received a good number of fire missions it gets even harder to get another one. If you have not pulled any ( or very few) black you continue to have a good chance to draw black. Creates a bit of a sliding scale. The likely hood is tied to the amount of success. You will never lose the chance to get a fire mission 100% but the chances get much worse if there was a lot of previous success.

EX- ( 8 black / 3 red starting deck) Draws = Black, Black, Red, Black, RED. Deck now becomes 5 black / 6 red. Continuing - Black, RED. Deck is now becomes 4 black / 7 red. And so on.

This has worked well for many years.

Seth

 

[Craig Benn]

I like the risk of a module being cancelled because of a double red. It adds spice - and it works to your benefit as much as the opponents.

What seems odd to me is;

• losing battery access and a black chip because you put your AR somewhere where you didn't have LOS to the base height. Why not just delay things a turn without losing the chit?
• You have a perfectly good fire mission set up, announce your intention to shift your SR and convert to FFE but it then deviates somewhere the observer cant see and is cancelled. Instead of melting the stacks my opponent had there. Took the chance when said fire for effect. Let it stand.
• All artillery fires deviate a maximum of 240 metres and when they do at exactly 60 degrees from the aim point. Seems some nationalities should deviate twice....plus artillery deviates more longitudanally than laterally...

Y'all too much control freaks. Embrace the chaos.

 

[semenza]

I like the risk of a module being cancelled because of a double red. It adds spice - and it works to your benefit as much as the opponents.

What seems odd to me is;

• losing battery access and a black chip because you put your AR somewhere where you didn't have LOS to the base height. Why not just delay things a turn without losing the chit?
• You have a perfectly good fire mission set up, announce your intention to shift your SR and convert to FFE but it then deviates somewhere the observer cant see and is cancelled. Instead of melting the stacks my opponent had there. Took the chance when said fire for effect. Let it stand.
• All artillery fires deviate a maximum of 240 metres and when they do at exactly 60 degrees from the aim point. Seems some nationalities should deviate twice....plus artillery deviates more longitudanally than laterally...

Y'all too much control freaks. Embrace the chaos.

How does drawing (or the possibility of drawing) a double red and losing OBA work to both sides benefit?

Personally I think the OBA rules are completely out of wack to begin with.

Seth

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

If you don't get OBA, you don't get it. Play on.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

A modified OBA rule is the only house rule my friends and I use. Similar to Steve's but not the same.

After second red is drawn, the two red go back into the draw pile along with one additional red for each black that was previously pulled. After that every red goes back in plus one for each black since the second red. So if you have already received a good number of fire missions it gets even harder to get another one. If you have not pulled any ( or very few) black you continue to have a good chance to draw black. Creates a bit of a sliding scale. The likely hood is tied to the amount of success. You will never lose the chance to get a fire mission 100% but the chances get much worse if there was a lot of previous success.

EX- ( 8 black / 3 red starting deck) Draws = Black, Black, Red, Black, RED. Deck now becomes 5 black / 6 red. Continuing - Black, RED. Deck is now becomes 4 black / 7 red. And so on.

This has worked well for many years.

Seth

Off the top of my head, doesn't Lone Canuck do this in some of their products? I like this one too.

 

[Craig Benn]

How does drawing (or the possibility of drawing) a double red and losing OBA work to both sides benefit?

Personally I think the OBA rules are completely out of wack to begin with.

Seth

I don't mean the same module. I mean overall - your opponent will draw two reds as often as you will, and you can exploit that - as often as he can exploit your OBA not working...

 

[von Marwitz]

If you don't get OBA, you don't get it. Play on.

Maybe if you would all use precision cards, everything would be so much better?

von Marwitz

 

[George Kelln]

I have seen and experienced that when a side with OBA draws the dreaded 2nd Red Chit, suddenly his opponent's stacks begin to cluster close together ... like they knew the OBA was lost. However, with The "Steve Pleva OBA Variant, Steve OBA Variant, or Pleva OBA Variant" the enemy can never be certain that his opponent, despite having a chit allotment of 5B and 5R might gain Battery Access. This Variant keeps the artillery in the game.

 

[Nineteen Kilo]

You can't convince me that a scenario that has OBA on the card is balanced if I get two red cards as my first two pulls. If it is still balanced, then take it out. Getting it unbalances an otherwise good scenario. If it isn't balanced without the OBA, then protect me against a double red, which is what the Pleva variant does. I believe Steve has done the math and the mission count doesn't vary too much from one to the other at around 6 turns or less. You would have to ask Steve for the math (or get someone smarter than I to do it).

Personally, unless there is an SSR to the effect "The first card is black", I won't play an OBA scenario without these rules in play for the above stated reason. JMO, YMMV. -- jim

Total agreement. The smaller the scenario the greater the impact of the DDR (dread double red).

I wish I could remember the scenario but it was played almost two decades ago. It was a small scenario with a hill that needed to be taken. The Attacker had OBA with which to saturate the hill. Before he came into any serious contact (normal range) up came the DDR - we looked at each other and said, "Well this game is over." That is a situation which should never occur.

 

[Vic Provost]

If a scenario has OBA it is almost always critical to the balance. If the fire missions go down the middle then all is fine. But no OBA or too much OBA tends to break the scenario. The extremes of OBA are much more telling and difficult to recover from than other extremes such as a bunch of malfunctioned weapons.

A lot of the early scenarios that had OBA suffer from this problem even more than recent ones.

Seth

Totally agree with Seth, as a designer, nothing can unbalance a scenario more than whether or not you not only get your OBA, but how many fire missions do you get and how and what does it get placed on. Makes all the difference in the world and makes balancing that scenario a difficult thing to say the least, Vic.

 

[Robin Reeve]

There also should be a rule which prohibits radio disablement.
The dreaded 6 repair dr has the exactly similar effect as the dreaded red card draw.
I wonder how many house rules would be needed to have the game work along the wishes of success and stability of some players.
That said, the Pleva rule makes sense and could have been included in the system from the beginning.

 

[Eagle4ty]

And there should be a rule to disallow special ammo depletion as well. I would strongly recommend a change to that rule to the effect that once one has rolled for special ammo but it would normally have been depleted, just simply reduce the special ammo for that ordnance piece by one. Nothing ruins a scenario faster than having a weapon with a s9 and rolling a 10 on its initial shot. Your opponent now knows that this is out of the action for its intended purpose and it adversely effects your whole game plan (and for units with limited AP or HEAT its an even worse situation). Perhaps disallowing a disablement of any weapon system should seriously be considered.

 

[mgmasl]

I will add a “radio doesn’t malfunction” rule.. IMHO the big problem with scenarios including OBA starts when your enemy knows you will not have any more missions.. there are two ways in actual OBA rules to give this so fantastic info: by taking the second red chit AND by rolling a 12 when trying contact.. I personally think both of them have to be inplemented to improve any scenario with OBA.
If rolling always above the contact number, player will not have OBA and same for getting always red chits, but because opponent doesn’t get the info, the scenario will keep playable.. not the same in any of the other two cases mentioned above.

 

[mgmasl]

And there should be a rule to disallow special ammo depletion as well. I would strongly recommend a change to that rule to the effect that once one has rolled for special ammo but it would normally have been depleted, just simply reduce the special ammo for that ordnance piece by one. Nothing ruins a scenario faster than having a weapon with a s9 and rolling a 10 on its initial shot. Your opponent now knows that this is out of the action for its intended purpose and it adversely effects your whole game plan (and for units with limited AP or HEAT its an even worse situation). Perhaps disallowing a disablement of any weapon system should seriously be considered.

My friend, you’re getting toooo close to heresy.. ?. Wellcome to the dark side!!!

 

[Robin Reeve]

And there should be a rule to disallow special ammo depletion as well. I would strongly recommend a change to that rule to the effect that once one has rolled for special ammo but it would normally have been depleted, just simply reduce the special ammo for that ordnance piece by one. Nothing ruins a scenario faster than having a weapon with a s9 and rolling a 10 on its initial shot. Your opponent now knows that this is out of the action for its intended purpose and it adversely effects your whole game plan (and for units with limited AP or HEAT its an even worse situation). Perhaps disallowing a disablement of any weapon system should seriously be considered.

Jest put aside, one could have depletion rolls made one shot in advance : the DR is the result of the next shot.
So you know if you have that APCR available for the next shot when you want it and decide if you move away or stand your ground vs. an enemy AFV that your AP could hardly kill...
There would be a problem if you know that you will malfunction or miss your next target. Making the depletion DR separate from the TH DR would be a simple solution.

 

[Mr Incredible]

A lot of this should come down to the play testing.

If a key weapon system IS required to make a game of it then it SHOULD be protected.

Be it OBA or that key AT asset.

Scenarios need to be stress tested when testing with the removal of that key weapon system. If it is a dog, then it needs protection.

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

And there should be a rule to disallow special ammo depletion as well. I would strongly recommend a change to that rule to the effect that once one has rolled for special ammo but it would normally have been depleted, just simply reduce the special ammo for that ordnance piece by one. Nothing ruins a scenario faster than having a weapon with a s9 and rolling a 10 on its initial shot. Your opponent now knows that this is out of the action for its intended purpose and it adversely effects your whole game plan (and for units with limited AP or HEAT its an even worse situation). Perhaps disallowing a disablement of any weapon system should seriously be considered.

Play Risk.

 

[Sparafucil3]

There also should be a rule which prohibits radio disablement.
The dreaded 6 repair dr has the exactly similar effect as the dreaded red card draw.
I wonder how many house rules would be needed to have the game work along the wishes of success and stability of some players.
That said, the Pleva rule makes sense and could have been included in the system from the beginning.

Pleva rules allow repair on a 1 or 2 and a 6 doesn't X the radio. -- jim

 

[Robin Reeve]

Pleva rules allow repair on a 1 or 2 and a 6 doesn't X the radio. -- jim

Which is logical, along the line of the non definitive aspect of drawing a second permanent red card.