Reflections from Lancaster

One thought I had after having run Grey Day (bn level SG2) and having
previously run 3-4 company sized SG2 games at Autumn Assault and other
places. I'll share it FWIW.

Time to play:
Very Small Conflict - a couple of squads each side -    an hour or 90
minutes
Small Conflict - a platoon each side, not much support - two hours to
2.5 hours
Medium Conflict - platoon each side, plus attachments and vehicles - 4
hours or so
Somewhat Big Conflict - two platoons per side, plus attachments and
vehicles
- 5-6 hours or so
Big Conflict - Company per side, plus attachments and vehicles - 7-9
hours
Muy Macho Conflict - 2-4 Companies in aggregate size plus attachments
and a
bunch of vehicles - 12-18 hours

Now, things like hidden movement, spotting, recce, IPB, etc all take extra
time. Every extra manoevre unit takes time, and fighting on a large contiguous
battlefield makes it harder to break apart the large games into smaller
asynchronous games.

Each level has different lessons to teach and different flavour and
requirements out of the players. I wouldn't want to do "Grey Days" every day,
but it was a wonderful experience and the players were quite fascinating to
watch.

Someone suggested a Battalion Sized FMA game.... I cringed at the
thought....

Relating to game balance: The big secret to balance in SG2 is thought. If
cover is not dense, squads will take fire in the open very often. Green
squads, smaller squads, etc. will break easily in such a setting. Vets and
Elite can take abuse for long time! Firepower is an issue two. A force with
ten man squads with three SAWs and 7 AARs with GLs is going to be rather
revolting in its FP. And vehicles
are inately unpredictable - GZGverse armour rules equate to Achilles
Best...
rolling a 1 on an armour check on your class 5 armoured grav tank can let a
GMS/P take you down. Same with heavy weapons - rolling 3-4 dice can net
you a 4 or a 48 for impact. And armour against a force without enough AA
weapons
is B-A-D. And a thought many people don't keep in mind is the advantages
of quantity! More activations. More fire actions. Potentially more
suppressions on target units which make their higher quality less relevant.
Someone suggested that when viewing differentials, keep in mind the squares
law
-
however you rate two forces, the real difference between them is the square of
the difference. What that means is it doesn't take long for a small gap in
firepower, unit numbers, unit quality, etc to result in a huge imbalance. Plus
you can't ever account for tactics. But in general a scenario is well balanced
if two forces led by moderate leadership without making many mistakes can both
have some chance of achieving their disparate victory conditions. If you have
a scenario you feel is tougher for one side than the other, give the tough
side to the best player as a challenge. And keep in
mind the effects of the map - never design forces for a scenario without
consideration. Give one side armour, but no place to manoeuvre and it isn't
that useful. Give one side lots of weapons effective at long range and provide
and open table and they have a huge advantage.

Another Topic: Someone brought up SG2 scenarios for a repository. I currently
have four or five moderate sized ones (some with nicely done out squad cards
even!) but
I'm wondering if there is interest - my scenarios tend to focus on a
particular situation, rather than being generic. They may provide an example
of what balance might be and they could provide a template for others to basis
from, but I would doubt strict recreation was likely. Having said that, I'm
more than willing to provide them if the people interested in this information
contact me OFF LIST about it. I want to talk about formats etc. with them and
that is not meat for on list discussions.

Have a good evening all.