So I marked up a map from Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine:
The letter A is a position of some sort of defender. The red lines represent the areas of dead ground that defender cannot see or does not have
LOS to. The hill, swamp and river are sort of grey areas based on different rules, as well the bridge could be low and flat and not block line of sight at all. The blue circles are arbitrary ranges. As you can probably tell I didn't even bother making sure the circles were properly centred on A, but I think they still show a bunch of ranges.
So how is a game where an attacker coming from the east and a defender at A going to turn out based on different weapon ranges based on the map being a table top? Well, you'd simply use the blue circles as connecting points to the red lines and figure out where one player can go with no fear of being shot at by the defender. If the first or second blue ring is the maximum effective range of the unit at A, then most of the table is irrelevant. Turn after turn could go by with no contact with the enemy. Perhaps even the unit at A might be better off making a break for the house at the base of the hill and put their cirlce of influence over more of the map. The third blue line is a bit more interesting but still leaves half of the table irrelevant. The fourth line would still give the opponent a staging area and an area where they can shift their angle of attack north or south, while still making any advance up the road potentially dangerous. The last blue line basically leaves the attacker deploying under fire unless the player wants to start a unit off north or south behind tress or the hill.
Now imagine a player is free to move A. Perhaps they might start down in the sourthern side of Werba. Or in the trees north east of A. Each combination of defender position and effective weapon range will produce a different outline of where the attacker can move while not under fire. As well as where forces can be put on the table with or without committing them to a particular line of approach. If you add in things like mortar delivered smoke and units that can be harmed to a different degree by A's attacks, you'll quickly end up with a very different set of decisions to be made by the attacker.
So what do you want the player of the attacker's to actually do during the scenario? Is the game supposed to be looking at the table and seeing that the approach through the terrain won't be under fire and thus simply go through the motions of plodding through it over a number of turns? What about if you gave the attacker weapons capable of harming A at long range while A does not have those same long range weapons? Then you'd basically be asking the player to put some stuff on the road and blast away at A while the rest of the attacking force moves towards it through the terrain in order to close to shorter range for their weapons. What about if you give the defending further positions like B or C in different places on the map?
What movement rates do your units have? Do they change based on whether or not they come under fire? If the move too quickly they could advance right down the road before A has enough opportunities to fire with any sort of effect. Taking half the shots because you close the gap so fast is like having a cover save that works twice as effectively. (3+ vs 5+ on a
d6).
What means does the attacker have to reduce the effectiveness of A's fire? Pinning? Smoke? Something else?
How do you deal with the northern approach and the potential darting from the trees by the river into the dead ground behind the other trees? Do your rules allow A an opportunity to fire there, or do the attackers end one turn out of
LOS and then move and end their next turn out of
LOS? How will your turn structure effect when a given target can be fired upon and when it can't given the weapon ranges, terrain and how fast it moves? Is there an overwatch or opportunity fire mechanic? If so, how much does the size of space covered by such a mechanic matter? Does how long a given target is in the open matter? Is there enough time to identify the target as a threat and to bring weapons to bear?
What about spotting? Is it assumed that all models are aware of the positions of all others at all times? Are there assumptions made about the open ground on the table top? Is it not really open? Is it assumed that the ground, despite looking clear between A and the bridge, is actually undulating and full of ridges and places to hide? How do the rules handle an advance under fire in such a case? When do the attackers count as being in open? Why? How do you tell?
When the attacker does something (say, splits their force between a north and south advance while keeping the long range weaponry at the bridge to attack A, what options are available to A? Can A relocate to a different defensive position? In terms of the scenario rules (is there some rule saying forces must remain within a certain distance of an objective to count as holding it?) and defacto implications of movement rates, weapon ranges and terrain. If the weapons on the bridge will tear A apart if the defender sends forces to the forest northeast of A in order to take up a defensive position against the northern advance, then the defender doesn't necessarily have that option.
When you think about it, it's actually surprising just how much the average wargame rules set leaves all this to chance. You take whatever army you want out of whatever army list you want and your opponent does the same thing. Both of you will show up and maybe randomly roll on a list of scenarios and get this one or a completely different one. The terrain layout might even be random or done in some sort of alternating placement. The objective point for the attacker can even be variable. I wonder how many instance of a player finding their opponent's army to be
OP or broken in a given ruleset are actually about how the totally up to chance approach to actually playing the game is what causes the problem. Just what situation is the default approach that a points system is based on? Is it fair to expect them to work at all when you play in a way anything other than that assumption? I wonder how much dissatisfying play results from no thought given to the connection between the different parts of setting up a game.
I know this point is a whole lot of questions and not a lot of concrete procedures to answer them, but hopefully it's been useful in terms of a thought exercise.
Automatically Appended Next Post: For anyone who wants to see how this magazine scenario played out on the table, here's a blog post from Keith's Wargaming:
http://keefsblog.blogspot.ca/2016/03/battlegroup-blitzkrieg-polish-counter.html