[SG2] PBEM AAR - Valley of Death - PBEM Rules - 2 of 5

SPOTTING

The game was played blind, which meant there were no counters on the
"table".
This resulted in some special PBEM rules.

A unit was hidden if it was out of line-of-sight (LOS). A unit was
hidden if it was under cover. A unit was hidden if it moved into cover and was
not seen moving into that position.

The case of a unit moving within cover was a special case, such as a unit
moving to the edge of some woods from deep within the woods. Any enemy within
LOS of the unit received an automatic and free -- i.e. it didn't cost an
action -- spotting attempt. This attempt was exactly like that found in
the rulebook, except that it was done automatically and the spotting player
wasn't informed of anything if the test failed. If a "minor success" result
occurred, the spotting player was told there was a hidden unit and where, but
nothing more about it. This was rare, as there was usually more than one unit
within LOS, thus increasing the chances of a "major success". Only units that
actually fully spotted the unit (i.e. a major success) were allowed to fire on
the target with opportunity fire or overwatch for full effect. Units that
scored a minor success could still fire on the spotted target, but they did so
using the "spotting by fire" rules.

When a unit was spotted, the spotting player was told pretty much the same
information as would be seen in a regular Stargrunt II game: number of
figures, composition of weapons, wounded status, number of medics, etc. They
were not told the unit's leadership rating, quality rating, or where it was in
the organization. This hidden information was part of the appeal of a blind
game. I had to make a spot decision about suppression markers. I decided that
a player would know the number of suppression markers on an enemy whenever
they suppressed it. If a unit has 1 suppression and the opponent dropped
another suppression marker on the unit, the opponent would be told the unit
now had 2 suppressions. I figured that it was important for both players to
know when a unit hit the magic 3 suppressions, though an argument could be
made for making suppression completely blind. Either player could keep track
(on paper) of the results against the opposing target and get a reasonable
idea of the suppression status. I thought I'd let them skip this work. Also,
I'm not exactly sure what is represented by suppression as far as what is
visible within a 2 to 5 minute time span. My feeling is that a unit would get
an idea of how well they suppressed their opponent based on the volume of
return fire (in real life). This idea, and my main rule of "when in doubt,
keep to the regular Stargrunt II rules" led me to this decision.

Spotting was conducted against areas of the board instead of against hidden
counters. If a unit was in LOS and not in cover, or if a unit was under cover
but doing something to make its presence known (like moving or firing), it was
spotted automatically. A player could attempt to spot units in a given area of
the board by expending an action to spot or "spot by fire". I kept area
"loosely defined" (i.e. I winged it) but for the most part a 6" diameter area
was my criteria. This meant that if units were tightly packed, a single
spotting attempt could discover more than one unit, though this was offset by
those occasions where spotting attempts were made against areas where there
were absolutely no units.

Note that this is different from regular Stargrunt II rules. The rules state
that once a unit does some sort of action, its dummy marker is removed and it
is placed on the table top. (Most players allow Transfer Actions and
communication attempts to not affect a unit's hidden status). That means that
a unit out of LOS is known to the other player. Since I was the referee, I
could allow a unit to go back into hidden status.

EW proved to be a pain. EW rules in Stargrunt II allow for remote spotting,
but they are based on counters on the board. What's more, whenever anyone
attempts an EW function they get to counter with an EW chit of their own. I
came up with the following EW rules for use with spotting:

REMOTE EW SPOTTING

Remote spotting, like other EW functions (except detection of a set going
active; more on this later) requires the EW set to be active. Remote spotting
with EW works in the usual way except that instead of selecting an inverted
counter, a hidden unit is chosen at random by the referee. The hidden unit
rolls a D4 if in the open and a D6 if in cover. The die is shifted up one if
there is no unit within LOS of the hidden unit (that is, there is no spotting
unit that would see the hidden unit if it were no longer hidden, such as if it
was doing something like firing or moving). The dice are rolled, and if the
hidden unit is spotted the player conducting the spotting "sees" the unit.

If the hidden unit's EW set is active, that player will be told that his
opponent is attempting to spot hidden units. The hidden (i.e. defender) player
will be given the chance to spend EW counters. Likewise, the spotting
(i.e.
attacking) player will be able to spend EW counters to thwart the defender.
The defending player will be told if the attempt was successful or not, but if
successful the player will not be told which unit was compromised.

If the hidden unit's EW set is inactive, the player will only be told that an
attempt was made to spot a hidden unit, but will not be told if it was
successful or not.

If one side has no EW unit, then it will not even be told that an attempt to
spot hidden units was made.

Note that "hidden units" include mines, booby traps, and units that are off
board (such as artillery units). If an off board unit is detected, the player
will only be told what the unit is and that it is offboard.

Units will be detected for the duration of the game (exception: see beow).

There were two new EW functions available.

1) Instead of attempting to find hidden enemy units, the EW unit may attempt
to find out which of his own units have been spotted (by all means). The
attempt is the same as for spotting remotely, except that if the "attacking"
player is successful he will be told which of his units are spotted by the
enemy (but not how they were spotted). The "defending" EW player, if active,
will be told that an attempt "penetrate network security" has occurred. He
will not be told if the attempt was successful or not.

2) A player may attempt to hide all units not within LOS of an enemy. This is
equivalent to changing radio frequencies, switching to new encryption
algorithms, etc. A regular EW versus EW roll is made, as usual. EW counters
can be spent as usual. If successful, all of the players units that are out of
LOS of the enemy are re-hidden.

Note: players may want to attempt 2 and 1 in that order. This would, if both
are successful, tell the player which of his units have been visually spotted
by enemy units.

In retrospect, the blind rules were a pain to handle. The EW rules in
particular were a bit cumbersome, though they did seem to work. I could have
given every hidden unit two dummy counters, plus give some additional dummy
counters for minefields, etc. I would then have allowed players to activate
and move hidden unit "counters" and dummy "counters". This would clutter up
the board, but it meant that the rules would be -- more or less -- left
intact with regard to spotting.

Another simplification would be to just eliminate EW from PBEM games. I'm
leaning towards playing blind games just as I did this time, but with some
modifications. See "Notes" at the end of this e-mail.

I could have also introduced more advanced and realistic spotting rules, but I
decided to keep it closer to Stargrunt II for the sake of simplicity,
workload, and my sanity.

ACTIVATIONS

The problem with a blind game of Stargrunt II is that activating units gives
away some information. Players could readily figure out how many units their
opponent had by the number of activations done per turn.

To keep things blind I gave each player a set number of activations. For this
scenario each player received 24. This meant that each player had more than he
needed to activate all his units. This was important so that neither player
was sure of the size of the opposing force. If, for instance, the largest
force had the maximum number of activations that player could have surmised
that his opponent had the same number or fewer.

A player could activate a unit or pass during his activation. If the players
received a "nothing noticeable" response from me to something their opponent
did, they wouldn't know if their opponent activated a unit out of LOS,
activated a unit within LOS that did something covert (such as calling in an
artillery strike), or passed.

The IF player had the first activation of the first turn, then after that I
rolled the Quality Die of the leader, the highest roll getting the first
activation.