early war escalation

[Colonel Voss]

Since when have I been a power gamer? You just gave me an idea to kill two birds with one stone and an ability to really mix things up and keep you guessing; all on the cheap side of things.

[job]

It is always good to keep things flexible in a list. I can guess at what you are writing about and if it is that it is a good idea.

There has always been a debate in my last group what was the best way to prepare for a game and write a list. Should you prepare lists for a certain opponent? For a certain mission? Or play an all comers list?

My thoughts are that you should have an idea what kind of opponent you face (which is inevitable when playing some people anyways), but because of the various missions (12 in the new book) you have to create a rounded force for both attack and defense.

[Colonel Voss]

I think it just depends. Tailoring an army against an opponent usually ends up being a one sided affair especially if they don't have the flexibility to adapt. On the other hand, for our little games, I'll be defending the Metaxas line against your Gibers so a certain tailoring due to the scenario we are playing is fine.

As for general list building, I am an advocate of building the list to what you are more comfortable with. I'd rather have a list that I know the ins and outs of and can work with very well and suffer the disadvantage in certain situations than a perfectly rounded list that I am not comfortable with. After all, most generals don't get all the things they wanted either and had to make due with what they got.

[job]

The nice thing about FOW is that part of the game is just tactical challenges. Not every unit fits every situation and sometimes you have to make do and improvise. An example might be the last game I played with MtP. He was forced to attack in Fighting Withdrawl with both 88s and Pak 40s. He made the best use of them but it was challenging. If I had lost the roll off and I'd been attacking those guns would have made it hard for me to use my Stuarts.

Part of FOW should just be seen as a game if tactical challenges where we try to do the best we can in a competitive situation. The missions arent necessarily balanced. (For example HtL has a 40-60 split between attacker and defender. It is much harder for infantry then armored atackers too.) In that same vein I think it is good fun to use units that are either historical or different from our usual styles. Winning and losing shouldn't be considered everything and winning isn't even the hallmark of good tactics necessarily.