Disclaimer: I would like to start by saying that these games are played for entertainment, and (except where one's entertainment comes from harming others), there is no right and wrong way to be entertained.
As my stories in the AAR section indicate, I prefer to play a scenario with a touch of imagination to give it a bit of personal flavor.
Dynamic campaign games were fun for a while, but became a bit boring. The scenarios represent a far wider range of game types. Even if a game fits within a rather traditional game type, the scenario is set up specifically for the objectives in that scenario, making the game a bit more interesting.
However, playing scenarios against the AI has a significant drawback as well -- the computer does not respond well to a somewhat innovative strategy. I look at a scenario, look at what I am expected to do, and do something else.
(For example, the flanking maneuvers I reported in "First Blood Part I" and "The Battle of Mokra", and the pull-back and consolodate options I used in "The Road to Pabianice" and "Action Along the Bzura".)
So, I am thinking about getting into the PBEM gig (while still writing my stories), so that I can deal with intelligent responses to different strategies. Yet, PBEM has two significant drawbacks as well:
(1) I like to think of my units as people, not as counters on a board. This tends to put me at a significant disadvantage when I go up against players who will sacrifice a platoon with the same indifference as a chess player sacrificing a pawn. In other words, I lose a lot of games.
(2) The time limit adds a bit of absurdity to the game. In a 15-turn game, the player with the most victory points on turn 15 wins regardless of how fragile his position is and how much damage the enemy can inflict on turn 16. When I play a scenario, I will increase the number of turns so that I can see if a technical victory accomplished on the last turn turns into a defeat a few turns down the road. If it does, I consider this a defeat.
(Note: Readers can see examples of this in "First Blood, Part I" where I discuss the loss of an engineer platoon in one of these after-official-game-end turns, and in "Action Along the Bzura" where I did not know how strong the enemy force was that had retreated into the forest, so I played a few extra turns to find out.)
This problem is worsened for me through ladders and similar mechanisms that increase the emphasis on point scores.
My ideal game, I think, would be PBEM with a like-minded individual -- a person who begins a game by looking at the scenario description and objective hexes to determine his orders, then turns these features off and tries to come up with a way of executing his orders without undue loss of life. A player who would consider having a technical point victory at the end of the last turn significantly less important if one is in such a terrible tactical position that one would not be able to hold onto those gains.
I would then like to write a story about THAT game.