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Lessons from the Front
Добавлен 4 сен 2021
Narrow Assaults (TaM02)
A short discussion of assaults on narrow approaches, a tactical problem Austrian and French players need to master to improve at the opening of Marengo.
Просмотров: 35
Видео
USE League 015: East First Opening
Просмотров 248Месяц назад
Watch as my East First opening goes badly wrong in the league.
Are the dice rigged?
Просмотров 1,1 тыс.2 месяца назад
I get why people get suspicious of random results, and intellectually I can see why that leads to conspiracy theories - but conspiracy theories are still dumb. Companies don't deliberately weight their dice, on-line sites don't rig their random number generators - but I'm always surprised by the number of people who think they do.
USE League 014: Battle for France
Просмотров 3043 месяца назад
Round 4 vs Kambaaa historical defence Covering the opening in this case up to and including an unsuccessful defence of France.
Attacking towns in Napoleon's Triumph (NT01)
Просмотров 874 месяца назад
00:00 Introduction 08:30 Beginning of the tactics stuff
Triomphe a Marengo (TaM01)
Просмотров 1,5 тыс.6 месяцев назад
A tactical review of the new edition of Triumph at Marengo by Rachel Simmons.
2023 Figure Diary
Просмотров 508 месяцев назад
Seven miniatures painting projects finished this year 00:00 Introduction 01:20 Battletech 07:42 Hordes of the Things 10:59 DBA 12:47 Kings of War 15:02 OGRE 16:51 Blood and Crowns 20:24 Deadzone 21:19 Payoff
USE League 012: Endgame Historical Game
Просмотров 809 месяцев назад
The Western summer offensive for the endgame against Sotakarhu
USE League 011: An endgame in the long opening
Просмотров 4210 месяцев назад
This is a slightly odd episode as the long opening with the wasp's sting is no longer an option under the revised rules.
USE League 10: Endgame on the Eastern Front
Просмотров 3211 месяцев назад
Two league games covered in this video, both concerned with the initial summer offensive in the endgame on the eastern front. In the first I briefly cover a counter-punch in a Long Opening against wksp in which I am running the Axis, in the second I go into a bit more detail in a Historical Opening where I am fighting from the Moscow Treaty line with the Soviets.
USE League 09: Long Opening Western Offensive
Просмотров 34Год назад
In this video I discuss the Western Offensive in the Long Opening (1942) during which the objective is first to transfer troops from the eastern front following the collapse of the USSR to other fronts, then to achieve (hopefully), a collapse of France, a Med Lock, and a successful Sea Lion. I discuss my league game against wksp for this period.
USE League Games 08: Long Openings
Просмотров 42Год назад
A lot of this episode is about a Long opening. It illustrates some of the weirdness that happens in that variant during the invasion of Russia in 1941. Note that a lot of this is peculiar to the 2nd edition of the game, and subsequent revisions have been introduced to prevent it so it may not apply in a version you are playing.
3D Shield Blazons? (Leuctra 03)
Просмотров 17Год назад
Were Greek shield designs three dimensional and why don't wargamers spend more time reading art history?
Hoplite Unboxing (Historical Minis Project 03)
Просмотров 16Год назад
Hoplite Unboxing (Historical Minis Project 03)
Why Lost Battles is such a bad book (Leuctra 01)
Просмотров 593Год назад
Why Lost Battles is such a bad book (Leuctra 01)
The Battle for Moscow (Typhoon Challenge)
Просмотров 72Год назад
The Battle for Moscow (Typhoon Challenge)
Probably the worst take on this entire subject I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear. I regret the time lost from listening to this unhinged, unsupported diatribe.
Again, interesting raport. It is good to see something about east first. I don't have many experience about it, but i recently started a new east first game(propably first, since rules changes). 1) For me interestng concept will be activate Poland, by conqauring Lithuania and Latvia. (i am testing it we will see what futere will bring). 2) Good point about Romania. I like too activate it, but propably it is a mistake, it is better, to active greece and in futere turkey, and not waste political succeses on Romania. 3) I think about Russia in historic opening it is a diffrent problem, than too law fair weather turns. I approach a situation. i have a fair weather in 42, but i cannot do much, because russia has onlu units on raugh terrain in south and north and many of my units, have to gaurd center. Development of retreat strategy combained with changes on the map in center Russia (near Saratow and in causasia), casue in far harder conquering Russia with similar oponent. i wonder, if we need a new concept of fight in Russia in historic opening. 4) Which opening, in your opinion, is better Russia in 40 or Russia in 41? Or they are preaty similar in tactics?
I will only tackle 4 at the moment. I'm currently playing a defence of East First where the player triggered East Invaded early by activating Poland. I would say that the tactics in 40 and 41 are similar because the forces are broadly similar, but there are some differences. The German army is a little bit weaker but the much lower NW means the Soviets have very little chance of surviving. You have to defend a bit more aggressively in an East First defence to give you a chance of winning, though still a retreat its probably more like playing the USSR 41 scenario (though you still don't usually try to hold border). The main difference is in effect, in both the Soviets surviving the attack is fatal for the Axis player, but in an East First there is no real downside to a Soviet collapse - its expected (as is a French collapse, the real fight in an East First is for Africa) - so an Allied player can take more risks to try for the Soviet survival.
Funny- Flames of War and Bolt Action “aren’t historical games” either except they are. So what constitutes a historical war game to you?
Try a thought experiment. Ask yourself if modern Chess is a historical wargame? Then ask yourself what formal criteria would distinguish it from things which are historical wargames? Pretty quickly you realise that this is one of those 'know it when you see it' things. To some extent it depends on intent, there is zero question in my mind that Flames of War in its first two editions was a historical wargame, in a way Memoir 44 does not even compare to. I'm not sure I would be so confident in later editions of FoW. But the changes mirror those in Chess and in the line that runs from Warhammer Fantasy Battles to the most recent Kings of War. I've not played Bolt Action so could not comment on that. Though it is worth noting FoW and Blot Action are both miniature wargames, whereas Memoir 44 is a board game with miniatures, and more apt comparisons would be something like Conflict of Heroes or Undaunted.
Question, on hill with a bunker or sandbags do the dice minus stack? Is there anywhere I can find rules clarification?
That's a good idea for a video. I have not been playing for a while so don't feel confident answering but knowing which things stack (the overall tendency is for things not to stack but its not universal) I found confusing and never found a really good resource to help with.
It's always nice when the algorithm decides to offer up a gem like this, hope it goes well for you!
Well, this got a lot of attention while I wasn't paying any attention. Clearly this kind of topic is popular. Unfortunately, no, it won't become the normal thing on the channel. It will be back to tactics and strategy soon, and only occasionally having to do a rant to get something like this off my chest.
It's like when people say "you should buy a lottery ticket" when you've had a bit of good luck. It must mean you're "hot" and now's your chance to get really lucky. But it seems to me, statistically, that's backwards. You should wait til you've had terrible luck, like 24 1's in a row, then buy that ticket, because you've just been as unlucky as possible, so you can only be luckier now. But this is also subjective nonsense. Personally, I think I'm very lucky, and I don't push it. I just enjoy it when it pays off. Seems like a healthier attitude imo.
Yes, the psychology of randomness is very interesting. I spent the weekend teaching Steve Jackson's OGRE, a game in which players feel a strong psychological pull to play poorly (by increasing the odds ratio on attacks, which makes that single dice roll more likely to succeed but reduces the overall effectiveness of their attacks).
@@Lessons_from_the_front And i really enjoy playing games with dice and randomizers, but I have no interest in gambling, which is for me an entirely practical thing. I don't mind losing. I hate losing anything of value, even money.
>physical dice r imperfect and biased Use digital dice >NOOOOOO DIGITAL DICE R NOT TRULY RANDOM!
Very nice.
Pfft. Dice need proper training.
This same phenomenon can be seen on the Steam forums for games like Baldur's Gate. It has lead video game developers to actually sometimes load random rolls in favor of the player if they have recently been on an "unlucky streak". Because it can be better to make fake randomness that acts like most players' bad idea of how randomness works, than deal with the publication bias you described.
In boardgames and war games, this is very important. In tabletop RPGs, however, dice superstition is an important cultural tradition and having a special die that only comes out for big moments, like a star athlete, adds to everyone's enjoyment. See also: jynxing dice
I disagree, at infinite rolls the independent probabilities converge at having averaged out and as the amount of rolls tends towards infinity the mean deviation from average gets smaller, but yes at small scale you may roll 30% more sixes than expected simply because of luck, but that's not going to hold forever. The distribution of a balanced dice would be very close to perfect at say... 24,000,000 rolls (it's extremely statistically unlikely that the die is properly balanced at 24M rolls if the distribution has meaningful error).
well made video, although I don't think it is outlandish at all for a 2% skew for a 1 to be rolled with a given set of dice due to quality control and I believe that buying higher precision dice is fine
About the "game" you play with your friend, loosing 6 out of 6 times would have a p-value of 0.0156 (H0: the dice arent rigged against you), meaning it would be statistically quite significant. Loosing 10 games would be a p-value of 0.1%, which would be very statistically significant. Not particle physics significant, and there are bound to be times where it happens, but the chance that you loose 10 out of 10 games without the dice being rigged against you is a tenth of a percent. This of course completely ignores the sampling bias of complaining on a forum, and is just about the statistical significance of a series of games with your friend.
That would only be significant if those are the only 6 rolls. Otherwise you get xkcd 882 style publication bias problems.
Say everyone follows your reasoning. If 1000 people play the game, on average 1 will wrongfully conclude that their friend is scamming them. So, when human activities are involved, i think the better question is not the statistical significance, but rather the amount of people experiencing it. This still results in a significance threshold, but a very lower one. As Matt Parker says in his "how lucky is too lucky" video (min 29:00), we can define the measure of how many times it will happen if all of humanity did that activity once each second for a year, and you can see that a lot of wrong conclusions would be reached. Also, for human activity, a threshold p-val of 5% is very high: it means that 1 out of 20 people will reach the wrong conclusion. I also want to cite the bayes theorem P(A|B)=P(B|A)*P(A)/P(B) where A="dice are rigged" and B="6 times 6". P(B) = 1/(6^6)= 2e-5. Say we give a prior P(A) that 1 in 1 million friends would rig the dice, and say that rigged dice have P(B|A)=50% probability of giving all sixes 6 times in a row. That leaves us with only a 10% probability that your friend is scamming you
@@gioelechristille4650 Yeah, im aware that the nature of the significance level, with the 6 dice rolls about 16 out of 1000 games will get a false positive if you use a strict yes-no test. However it still is somewhat significant, more so for 10 dice rolls, so to say "its almost certainly random chance" is, just like blindly (and genuinely) accusing your play partner, not a reasonable thing to do. That doesnt mean you cant get suspicious and start taking a closer look at the dice-rolls in the future (should you genuinely suspect your friend is cheating at this casual game with no stakes, its another story if something is actually on the line), or at least reasonably complain in good spirits that youre being unlucky (everyone gets unlucky sometimes as the significance level shows). Like I said I only really calculated the probabilities because I was curious, and I fully agree that 6 or even 10 games arent enough to accuse your friend. It might be enough for you to get suspicious about your friend, if you deem their character or the circumstances to be compatible with cheating, and make you pay close(r) attention in the future, but thats about it.
Yes, that is to do with a fundamental problem with the thresholds for statistical significance. By definition applying a 5% threshold will get you the 'wrong' answer 5% of the time - which is why statistical significance is only a good heuristic in certain circumstances (and why publication bias is such an issue). Unfortunately statistical significance is a widely misunderstood concept even amongst people who engage in professional research, so its not surprising it gets misunderstood in wider contexts.
5:39 Not quite true, 1.5% is the chance that you get a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 5 and a 6, not the expected result, which would be the sum of 21, which can be reached in other combinations, such as 3 fours and 3 threes. The chance of getting 21 as a sum from 6d6 is roughly 9.3% according to anydice.
depends on if you are looking at the expected faces, or the expected value. imagine the faces are random arbitrary symbols and not digits, do you still think that three wugs and three forps is equivalent to one roll of each?
Thank you.
reminds me of a game of Catan my family had recently where we had like six turns in a row where none of my dad's settlements produced resources and then later we got two 7s in a row and everyone thought that was remarkable, luckily noöne thought it was rigged :)
"The internet. has not helped with the number of liars or idiots" is my new sentence of the week.
its actually the reason i stopped watching the video. insulting people for not agreeing with you is never a good look. it wont convince anyone to come to your side, and i dont believe someone who has been lied to is an idiot.
@@arcanealchemist3190 That is true...but people should be more concerned about being wrong than about not being insulted. If I tell anyone my theory how I think Baseball works..everyone who actually understand the game will probably think. I'am an idiot and maybe even tell me...especially if I come from a position that all the people who claim that Baseball doesn't work like I think it does are payed liars. And If I listen to them I might actually learn how it works..and If I don't I stay ignorant. I agree that insulting people isn't. helpful...but it also isn't helpful to pretend someone is smart or has a good point or understands something if he clearly doesn't.
@@arcanealchemist3190 The interenet has not helped with the number of insults either. Its good and healthy that you turned off at that point. But some people enjoy a well time piece of vitriol and see the humour in it, and RUclips likes divisive content, so I'm going to be content with my self-restraint that 90% of my content is not tempted by the algorithm.
Very surprised that this has so few views, and I'm glad that the algorithm decided to give this a chance, because I really enjoyed this! If you're looking to grow an audience, this is definitely the direction to keep going
Good stuff
Again very good video and i have some thoughs to share about it. 1) What means procent, we can see in Leauge Standing? 2) There is another major chance in diplomacy, if you active vichy countries, by diplomacy, they won't collapse. This seem to be secondary change, but it allows, to have an strategy of gaining vichy France very interesting(they have two armies and surface action, and what more important, that not open new front. 3) I think popularity of historic opening in first round of new diplomacy rules is simple, it is because there are also changing in soviet collapse rules and people want to play something with almost only diplomacy changing and something they played, the most times. But i thing in potential next round will be more eastern first games. (Mabay do you want to play with me soviet first opening(me as axis)?). 4) I think, now conquering Poland in first round is not so valuable. Firstly, toy can wait to time of Yugoslavia joing axis. I believe, after it you can gain axis marker on Romania. Secondary you can gain Poland as Axis allied. It was very rarely, but i see same potential in it after changes. 5) Hungary are not good allied in my opinion. Yugoslavia is far better. I like conquering Hungary in first turn, even on cost, of not conquering Poland. 6) About air in the west. I think you can move air from Aalborg to Dusseldorf or one hex above it. After it air units are out of the range of British air and France air is not enough to make problems to Germans. 7) I like your approach to defense France. I use it too. The most important think about France defense is not to defense France, but to not allow German to prepare see Lion on Great Britain. 8) When i get politic success, by western, I prefer giving politic success on Spain not on Italy. It is some very interesting trick, if you get two politic success on Spain, you can declare war on Portugal and gain Spain in any moment of war, by conquering Portugal. This is one of the reasons, why i will lose my game with CornetHorse in League. Sorry, for any possible language mistakes, feel free to correct me. One more time thank you for your job. wksp
1) That is the percentage of wins IF you pretend the player also lost one game, so number of wins/number of games+1. The reason for the +1 is so that winning consistently matters more if you have played more games 2) I have not seen a Vichy activation yet so that change had not really registered with me, yes, a potentially interesting idea. 3) I think you might be right. My schedule is a little full at the moment but I will take you up on that offer at some point. I found our games very fruitful for developing opening strategy with the previous version. 4) I played going for a Poland activation under the old rules but have not tried under the new ones. I think it definitely has potential. 5) Agreed. 6) Yes, as long as Belgium is neutral withdrawing a little to Dusseldorf will usually protect the Luftwaffe units. 7) I've not had an opponent execute a successful Sealion against me. I don't think it has much chance unless the Allied player diverts units to another theatre (like North Africa). 8) That is a really clever idea I had not considered. The change allowing conquests to activate countries has turned out to quite significant in subtle ways.
You can also place the marker from Poland conquest in Lithuania
Yes, I've never seen much utility to it though because activation would trigger East Invaded if you deployed the unit.
@@Lessons_from_the_front The IDea is to activate and not place the unit, you change the "front line" for the Soviet Defense
have there been any improvements on the opening rules, etc. that you mentioned as downsides to this game?
There have been quite significant changes to the opening rules which are still a little in flux. A lot of small changes to the diplomacy make it less swingy and changes to the way the Moscow treaty works to stop exploits (which I discuss in the video on openings ruclips.net/video/jpSFcjEicWY/видео.html). Its still fundamentally the same game so some issues remain (the problem of the Axis essentially controlling the shape of the game) but at some point I really should do a video on the differences between 2.5 and 2.
Really impressed with your videos. Do you have any suggestion for how a newb can learn to play? I have a good amount of experience with board games but now war games.
I was in similar situation about 3 or 4 year ago, when i started playing USE. First is good to know basic concept, about moving, combat and zones of control, you don't have to know them precisely, only some simplest thinks. I think it is good to play some basic scenarios (Poland 39', France 40', Rus 41' and Med 40-42 in this order). Also in the best scenario with somebody, who known the game(to help you). After it you can play full scenario. The most important think is to have a fun, so don't bother about not knowing everything. If you watch Robert's videos i think you should know most basics. And if you have any questions, you can ask me, i will be happy to help.
I would strongly recommend Board Game Arena. Play the Poland 1939 scenario solo to get used to the basic rules (if you have some patience play some of the other scenarios solo), try to read the rules. Find an opponent and play the USSR 1941 scenario a few times. Play turn based and look up rules as you go. After USSR 1941 you should play Main Event 1944. You can try other scenarios but those will give you enough to tackle the full game. There are active players on BGG boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/61487/unconditional-surrender-world-war-2-in-europe who will help or offer games if you want.
In addition to what others have said, the Playbook has a Training Scenarios method for learning the game. You start with small scenarios and each one tells you which rules to read and play with. It allows you to ingest the rules in small chunks.
@@lordvasta I did quite a bit of solo play with the BGA module - the North Africa scenario is particularly useful for understanding the naval supply rules. But, while it is very useful it is very much down to your individual patience, some people want to leap in and get playing.
@@Lessons_from_the_front For those new to the game, that would be the Mediterranean scenario rather than the French North Africa one.
2:54 I think it is. What is a better strategic level WW2 game with the same scope?
Great video. Where did you get those Command tokens?
Unfortunately I made them myself. I don't know of anyone making them.
dire, and massively unqualified
Thank you! More! 😂
I'm revisiting this to help coach a player who is new to playing Germany in the Main Event. It's an excellent analysis but it could use an update discussing the effect of the rule changes which have been made since. They make the recruitment of Axis allies more complex and difficult. In particular, you need an extra diplomatic shift to recruit Italy and this dominated my thinking when I played Germany in our last Main Event. The adjacency rule also makes the domino effect of taking minor countries more limited and I'd like to hear your views on the options now.
Yes, I definitely need to revisit this. I'm not sure when I will get the chance (I'd played all of the openings multiple times when I did this, and I have not done that yet with the 2.5 rules, which have shifted a little as well so are not completely stable - in fact at the moment I have only played East First openings and Historical defences). I think the new rules have increased the importance of Yugoslavia. They tend to stop dramatic cascades, which is broadly a good thing, and they do tend to focus you on Italy (I can't decide in the historical if you are better off trying to activate Italy with the French collapse, something I toyed with in the older version but never really pressed for).
I've been playing wargames since the 70's and follow wargame internet culture. Philip Sabine made a lot of big promises about an elegant system that models ancient conquest and battle distilled to its common cores. He turned a lot of heads and got people interested. But after his package (Book and Game) was received, it turned out to be all sizzle and no steak and faded into oblivion.
thank you so much
Great video! Looking forward to the next!
Smart movements!
I'm waiting for the next episode. Well done. Thanks.
Great job, thx👍👍👍
thanks so much😀
Hello, I have difrent approach to resignation. I think if there was an equal match and you knew you lose, I prefer to play to the end. To my it simple funnier to win normally, that, by somebody's resignation. But i also understand your point, why it make sense. Very important is to knew, how tie break worked, so good job pointing this issue. About USE, i will say you should never surrender, from one other issue, even fast ending, can help you understand, how to defend in endgame (which is always happened, if you played axis) or how to destroy German lines. I would say, also in most of my games in 42 i can say, if i will win, or lose, we can talk about it, if you want. Thank you for your job!
I think USE is a very different game. In principle it is possible to win from almost any position as the Axis (just keep rolling 6's). There is no real equivalent to the moment in a Memoir '44 match when a win (other than under time control) is impossible for one side. And, of course, the endgame in USE is complex and quite different to opening and midgame play, so you have a lot more to learn from playing it out. I still think there are resignable positions in USE - but it almost has the opposite problem, with players mistakenly believing a position is lost when it is comfortably winnable. Understanding that is equally valuable in USE for the same reasons - at its heart its about understanding *why* positions are won or lost.
"promosm"
War by numbers, I'm listening...
And another Noob question, but why not just attack Antwerp directly with a Surprise marker/landing? Same weak Garrison units
03:10 If I land directly on to a garrison then a bad roll bounces the attack and prevents the unit getting ashore (note that I cannot use the airdrop because Antwerp is more than 3 hexes from my air units and Antwerp has air support). If I landed west of Antwerp and dislodged the garrison and then launched another a surprise attack into the city the second unit would have to attack NE because it is in a ZOC, which is over a river and into a city. If that attack failed I would not be able to bring a third unit into the city. So, Antwerp is, despite superficial appearances a much stronger position, there is a lot more that can go wrong. I sum up the general principle in amphibious landings as get ashore - get off the beaches. If you have a weaker target you generally take that over a stronger but more valuable one (like Antwerp) because the key thing is to get ashore.
What is your BGA Username?
Its RobertBr on BGA. The league is at boardgamearena.com/group?id=10555035
Looking forward to seeing the next videos on memoir 44
So if the Axis wins on both fronts and gets Germany's NW to 99 is there any point in playing it to the bitter end?
Of course (from a victory point of view, there is much reason to play other than victory). The game's victory conditions are calibrated around major Axis success. If the Axis do not outperform their historical counterparts on either the eastern front or in Africa they are usually in a lost position. In the Long Opening (and East First twice) the Axis have to collapse both the Russians AND French or they are in a lost position. Assuming experienced players - the game is, as all games are with beginners.
Great analysis, as always.
there's also Android app of this game called "Operation Typhoon Wargame" by "Lance Craner" (only hotseat, no ai) both in the app and on the website, I keep blitzkrieg-ing through first line of defence app version adds couple units and absence of existing breakthrough to rectify largest weaknesses (and even increases soviet income to 6), but it doesn't seem enough I love this game more than Battle for France version, because this has attack phase before movement, so it more nicely simulates defender advantage and breakthrough power
Pointless discussion including trying to compare spear lengths on various Greek Hoplite figures - Anyone with a basic knowledge will know that there are always variations in the scale within a “15mm -18mm” sculptured range of wargame figures. Must be a better way to spend some time…..
As someone who just discovered the Lost Battles system about a week ago and has been using it to try to "game out" fictional battles (I like creative writing and military fiction), I have my own fair share of observations about the system: My biggest observation is that it tries to keep armies at 20 units each, but this means it's very hard to simulate hypothetical battles where one side has a very significant numerical advantage (without there the smaller army also being qualitiatively superior; I'm not talking about 20 veteran units versus 20 levy units), since it means you have to fix the unit scale to either the larger army or the smaller army. If the "~20 units per army" ideal is fixed to the smaller army, then this means the larger army has way too many playing pieces. A hypothetical battle between 50,000 and 10,000 troops could need over 100 pieces! On the other hand, if you pin the 20 unit ideal scale to the larger army, it means the smaller army has too few units available to make tactical decisions, even if they could be realistically split up. I.e. say the smaller army has 500 heavy cavalry. Realistically they could be split into 2 250-horse wings, but if the game's scale sets cavalry units at 500, you have to leave one flank undefended. You can't make a special exception to split them up either, because LB's system is based on a fundamental rule where every unit has roughly equivalent fighting power, and different units simply represent different types and numbers of soldiers. Veteran heavy cavalry can hit their opponents as often as levy infantry, it's just that veteran cavalry represents 1/8 as many troops. I suppose you could create a house rule for "split units" or "detachments" that have a lower chance to hit their enemies than normal units, and to be fair I did have an interesting battle where I pitted 50,000 troops against 10,000, represented by 18 and 8 counters respectively, but it's clear this isn't what the simulation was meant to do. The system worked at that scale, but it was a bit of a headache to translate the battle in my head into the counters and figure out the ideal unit scale. It has to be big enough that the pieces for the larger army are kept manageable, but also small enough that the smaller army has enough tactically distinct pieces to give it some maneuver and disposition options.
Its a genuine simulation problem you have encountered. Miniature wargames tend to adopt one of two approaches. Either units are of fixed size, so a small battle (like Peipus at say aprox. 6000) might be just 6 units, while a large battle (like Philippi at say aprox. 200000) might be 200 units. This tends to create problems as rule systems often break if too many or too few units are employed. The alternative approach, often accompanied by an argument that commanders tended to subdivide their command in similar fashion regardless of size, is to fix one of the sides, so that is always has X units, and then only the opposed side varies in size, relative to the standard size. Some systems just struggle with giving two sides disparate for want of a better term 'units of maneuvre'). Field of Glory clearly has issues in this regard as do a couple of other modern sets which work hard to assume similarly sized opposing armies. There are a few rules sets that take alternative approaches. Ironically Kings of War: Historical, which is otherwise (obviously, because it is a fantasy set) at terrible set of historical rules, has different sizes of units - so a historical battle could be arranged with both sides having a similar number of units but the larger siding having larger units.
@@Lessons_from_the_front or you could just line up even numbers of DBM elements
This is written 9 ,months later but... 10,000 Vs 50,000 is a bit much. Unless you have a very restricted front, the overlap would be very large. However, lets look a 10,000 man army of veterans split into 20 units of 500 men each and a couple of great generals. Now let us compare it to a completely levy force of 50,000 men split into units of 2,000 men yielding 25 units with a poor general. In Lost Battles this might be considered an pretty even fight. As in numbers alone in the rules a unit of 500 veteran infantry is a normal sized unit with 2,000 levies. A veteran unit is assumed to be 1/2 the size of a average unit and a levy unit contains twice as many men as an average unit. So a veteran unit is 1/4 the size of a levy unit. So 10,000 men facing 50,000 men with around 20 units can work out. Additionally the veterans would have a fighting power of at least double that of the levies. More likelihood of acting during the game. So the veterans should actually be stronger.
This reminds me of someone who proudly claims he just knows what is right and doesn't need to be told by anyone who applies scientific methods to prove him wrong. Didactic in the most pompous and arrogant way, historical as opposed to fantasy wargamers do not necessarily want to be historians but generally have a interest in history. Cherry picking what you know from limited research to prove an argument only you are interested in. Too much thinking what others think when you haven't a clue. You are misquoting the book because it clearly states where data was found and possible errors in the data sources and on what basis he chose to accept the data. You must be a bundle of laughs for your family and friends, all I , boring, factually talk bollocks and have a small closed mind.
Yep brilliant statement - check out the guys post asking how players deal with shooting in the DBM gaming system, some one asks (being helpful) if he has seen a questions and answers page, this arrogant narrow minded individual comes straight back and says that’s a strange question, the guy says why is it strange I don’t know what you may or may not have seen. A genuine attempt to be helpful is rebuffed with a stupid post re comparing walking into a car dealership and looking at a cars steering wheel. The post attacking lost battles is a dam right self righteousness piece of crap, written by someone who has not taken the time to play or fully read let alone understand the design basics.
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God this is boring