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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

Interesting topic!

I'm going to answer from a KOG light standpoint, noting that the map scales to a "standard" (for KL) 3' x 4' battlefield. At first glance, the map appears to be "close" to the 1/144 nominal scale for KL, so contact is <200 yards, so the basic "unlimited" (max) range assumption of KL holds. In addition, the overall terrain density looks good, so the TLOS assumption also holds.

Shooting-wise, Attacker and Defender can both engage whatever they see, so it's a very dangerous approach down the road.

Scenario-wise, I'm going to assume that the Attacker simply needs to get multiple units into Werba. Urban fighting could get very ugly!

Position-wise, the Defenders start massed at A, where they have cover and can target units crossing the bridge; however, they are vulnerable to being flanked from the southern approach, and should spread out to create interlocking fire lines. If A has Infantry, they should definitely get some of them up in the tower to provide FO for any IF weapons.

Movement-wise, units cover 8-12" per turn flat out, assuming open ground. 4-6" in difficult ground (e.g. woods). It's a lot of ground to cover, especially if under fire. Visually, I'd want some patches of felt to denote difficult ground, as movement is going to matter a lot here!

On net, this looks very much like the sort of scenario setting that KL is supposed to play.

An application to a specific game is awesome.

Do you think that once the defenders spread out to cover the south (and thus create lanes of fire into the dead ground behind the trees in the north) that things might become static?

With attackers in the marshy forest shooting at targets in the south diagonally across the table waiting until enough damage has been done to push with the other forces that might be in the south or zip across to the trees in the north? Or do you think enough force can be brought to bear in the south that the diagonal fire from the north will mean the defenders are likely going to have major difficulty and the attackers will get moving?

With the movement of units being what they are, I guess the attackers are going to have no problem doing short leap frog advances from terrain to terrain. They're never going to be caught in the open between turns unless they want to be.

As for infantry in the tower spotting, how would you handle building destruction? How would you determine if the attacker can detect the spotter? Or is it just a "he's spotting, so he's poking out enough that he can be attacked" sort of a thing?

The Defender would like it to be static, bogging down the Attacker, but KL is a very lethal (and mobile) system, so stalemates won't last very long...

Making predictions is a little bit difficult, as there's quite a lot of flexibility in the forces and weapons that can be selected. If we look at it as canonical German Defender vs Russian Attacker, then the Germans can leverage excellent powersuit infantry as FO and strong IF in their Tigers... Kampfer troopers and Panthers work the buildings as regular urban combat.

OTOH, the Russian Frames are very fast, very deadly. One on one, they are "better". If they bring a Tank, it's really powerful and hard to take out.

Really, this is the sort of thing that would be fun to play out as an advanced KL scenario. I think the key is that the Germans need some IF/FO capability to put the Russians on a clock.

The Frames should be able to leapfrog to cover, but multiple German spotters and units are going to allow some shots to be taken.

I don't incorporate building destruction, as it is too easy, and tends to have players blowing things up vs playing the objectives or targeting the enemy. I see it as an undesirable distraction to the core game.

Also, there is no such thing as an invisible spotter in KOG light. If you can see them, they can see you; if they can see you, then can (and may well) shoot you... The spotter might have Cover, but they can definitely be taken out. That's risk/reward of being in a position with good visibility.