Hey Michael,
Thanks for the feedback!
Some thoughts on the 15 (of 17) scenarios that Sean and I developed. Tom Morin may want to weigh in on his 2 scenarios, if he would like.
“Knowing that every scenario would require me to make OB choices is a negative for me.”
Understood. Sean Deller and I knew from the beginning that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we thought that having this be an integral part of the scenario design process/scenario mechanics would be appealing to (hopefully) a large part of the player community. In some cases, this mechanic does provide for quite a bit of thought/decision making, in other cases not so much. The scenarios that offer a defender the opportunity to purchase SWs and/or Fortification often provide the most amount of purchase “angst”. Again, potentially not for everyone.
“I had the feeling that since you and Sean developed these scenarios, then the VC and such would be complex and the whole thing would be aimed at high level players.”
Again, mostly a fair point. When one gets down to it, there aren’t that many different Victory Condition options available for a designer to use in the creation of a scenario (I’m always jealous/appreciative of those designers that do find new ways to challenge players). A fair number of the scenarios in TotR have VC that are mostly straight forward. A good number use CVP caps, which provide a scenario defender an alternate path to victory (which Sean and I thought was a good thing). A fair number of the TotR scenarios also use a “Point Salad” type approach in which the attacker is awarded VPs for accomplishing various “victory conditions”. For a player playing these types of scenarios for the first time, this can be somewhat more challenging to “grok”, especially for the scenario attacker. All in all, I think that there is a fair balance of simple vs complex VCs in the scenarios. I don’t think that Sean and I went out of our way to create more complex VCs for the sake of complexity alone, but rather how one goes about achieving those VC may be for the slightly more experienced player.
I’d also say the same about the majority of the Product SSRs associated with the TotR scenarios. Yes, there is a dedicated page of SSRs associated with ALL of the scenarios. But, frankly, ALL of those SSRs have been used at one point or another over the course of the past few decades.
The same goes for the majority of the scenario specific SSRs. I would say that 80-90% of all of the scenario specific SSRs go this way:
- How about that weather;
- How about those overlays;
- How about that random rubble/debris creation;
- How about those late war SS falling apart more quickly than their early war predecessors;
- How about we don’t take any prisoners today;
- How about we beat the snot out of each other with our entrenching tools.
Other than those 6 SSRs, the rest are pretty much historical flavor related in nature.
“What, my armor is leaving me…wtf…come back Shane!”
“Wait, I get smoke, and I’m good at killing tanks, says Ivanoff the AE.”
“I hate OBA…oh, great! I kinda get an off-board mortar capability without all of the SR/FFE/FFC/batter access overhead…sweet” (and it comes with a cool little off-board display that 9 out of 10 players say…wtf)
“Who the hell built this freaking wall that I can’t hop over?”
“Not really sure about these supposed “Allies”. Let’s not Rally them as well as our boys!”
“I get to buy even more shit DURING the scenario?! SWEET!” (for ~95% of all TotR players…YMMV)
Of course, two of my favorite scenarios in the box ARE a little more SSR “rich”…but 3-player scenarios and simultaneous overlapping scenarios do come with some more of a start-up “cost. Still, the most “fun” Sean and I had designing and playtesting scenarios were 303 & 305. (and yes, my research indicates that 305 is historically accurate)
So, having played you in the past, I’m not sure that there is a VC and/or SSR in the box that you couldn’t understand innately, it just may take more than one playing to come up the learning curve on a couple of the scenarios. There are definitely several “meat and potatoes” scenarios in TotR. Again, you may think differently.
“I have the impression that they are all dense urban scenarios, which is less interesting to me.”
Strangely, I never personally felt that way about the majority of the TotR scenarios, including the 2 that Tom designed.
I’ll acknowledge that some of them are, for lack of a better term, “urban-centric”, but during design and playtesting, I never really got the feeling of having to slug one’s way (for a majority of the scenarios) through block after block. And even the ones that are a little more urban dominant still require a fair degree of movement/maneuver to meet the scenario objectives.
A fair number of scenarios are dominated by their rather large railyard (or graveyard) overlays, which provide for a fairly new and refreshing ASL play experience.
Now, if one considers the 17a/b factory complex board “urban terrain” (which I don’t), then the number of urban combat scenarios does increase. But again, I think 17a/b provides for a somewhat refreshing geoboard ASL play experience relative to the majority of non-HASL based scenarios.
“All prejudiced thinking on my part, of course. I will read them in the near future and I will add at least one to my play list.”
I do hope that you are able to give one or more of the TotR scenarios a go in the future. And frankly, I tend to make the same type of initial “judgements” about most new scenarios/scenario packs/ASL products that I look at. Nothing unusual there. Kind of goes with the whole nature of the hobby (IMO).
In the end, I’d never argue that someone should absolutely play this or that scenario. Just not enough hours in the day/week/month/year, especially given the proliferation of new ASL material that is being pretty regularly produced.
One final note about the 15 scenarios that Sean and I developed. I will argue that they are as close to a geoboard-based HASL experience that is ever likely to be designed. All of the scenarios (except 1) are built around 1) an aerial recon photo of the battlefield; 2) both period and current maps; 3) both current and period photos of the combat area. To go along with this level of research, I think that the accompanying “Introduction” and “aftermath” content makes for a great read. Then again, I’m pretty sure that I am fairly biased on this perspective.
Again, thanks for the feedback. It is always welcome.
Have a great day, whether you’re playing a TotR scenario or something else.
Bill
PS actual photo of the railyard in scenarios 293 & 294
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Aerial recon photo of the railyard
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