Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Bren

Walking the American Civil War battlefield at Antietam for the first time, I was struck by how the terrain alternately concealed and revealed the cannon that are set up to mark the sites of the batteries in the battle. Take just a few steps in one direction and suddenly one was staring down the muzzle of a cannon at a rather startlingly close range or by taking a few steps in another direction, the cannon would quickly fall below sight-line.

Yes! This! Antietam is a 'messy' battlefield; if you accurately modeled the terrain, you'd be laughed at by a lot of miniatures gamers - "Nobody fights in that!"

Gives you a whole new take on "Double canister at forty paces!", I think...

Originally Posted by DavetheLost

I live out in the country. Lots of hay fields and corn fields. What most wargamers would classify as "flat open ground". It isn't. Lots of little dips and rises. It doesn't take much to hide a man.

Yet players with look at a obvious way to attack a flank or even rear and ignore it.
So the slight imperfections in the terrain are completely alien concepts and hardly worth the effort to describe to them.

If a player asks how or if they can outmaneuver an opponent, I'm more than happy to point one/some out.
Few bother to.
=

Originally Posted by DavetheLost

I live out in the country. Lots of hay fields and corn fields. What most wargamers would classify as "flat open ground". It isn't. Lots of little dips and rises. It doesn't take much to hide a man.

Yeah; this. It's food for thought, when you consider the terrain and how it can be used.

Originally Posted by DavetheLost

I live out in the country. Lots of hay fields and corn fields. What most wargamers would classify as "flat open ground". It isn't. Lots of little dips and rises. It doesn't take much to hide a man.

Yeah; this. It's food for thought, when you consider the terrain and how it can be used.

Originally Posted by DavetheLost

What are these "flank" and "rear" of which you speak?

I will be the first to admit that I am a terrible tactician, but even I know to look for cover, and attack the flank or rear when possible. I also know that head on frontal assault is rarely the best way to approach a problem.

But then I started gaming before the days of "every encounter must be balanced and 'winnable'". Certainly the generals of history were never guaranteed equal points or matched forces. They did the best they could with what they had. Didn't Sun Tzu say something to the effect of if you give your opponent a fair fight you have already lost?

Yes! I was roundly taken to task for not including this kind of scenario in my own set of miniatures rules; I pointed out that Phil had published two very asymmetrical game scenarios - Chanis and Ry - and was told that he'd done them wrong.

We neber had a 'balanced' scenario out at Phil's; it was always a fight against the odds for our survival, which Phil thought was appropriate as we were Heroes and Heroines and should be engaged in desperate struggles. So, we were, and we did.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yeah; this. It's food for thought, when you consider the terrain and how it can be used.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yeah; this. It's food for thought, when you consider the terrain and how it can be used.

And sometimes the food is so plentiful that one needs to think twice.

Originally Posted by Bren

And sometimes the food is so plentiful that one needs to think twice.

I have no idea why that posted twice; I tried to delete it after it happened, but my browser locked up and refused the request. The site also told me that I couldn't do it, either. So, back on now, and it seems to have been cleared. Sorry about the double post.

Had quite a bit of fun, yesterday; went to a picnic where my opponents in the RPG campaign that I'm (playing the formerly NPC bandit chieftain) were there, and I had quite a lot of fun doing a bit of gamesmanship - in my best Don Corleone voice, of course.

There was some parsing out of "sleeping with the fishes", but I did a little role-playing and demonstrated what large barrels full of watre could be used for - we're way out in the steppes, so I understood that they were being player-characters and trying to exploit what they thought was a mistake - and then they got pretty purturbed when I showed them that the barrel also had my stock of fish for dinner.

My, oh, my, did the room get quite quiet all of a sudden...

It appeared, from the drift of the conversations, that I have quite the reputation as a Fearsome Adversary With Whom It Is A Bad Idea To Trifle. Well, he said modestly, I do try to make an effort. I was hugely amused; the potato salad also went over a treat.

It was a very good day.