Blackcloud's PG Lament

[Tony M]

I don't totally agree with the moans about assault as  I think it reflects how close combat was in certain situations, units in urban combat were often reluctant to fight so as to avoid casualties therefore assaults taking a long time I can live with though they can get tedious.

My complaint is not what is being modeled, it is the tediousness of doing them, especially in scenarios the require many towns to be taken.  And, if you play these types of scenarios i one after another, they can seem the same.  I think it takes some scenarios design creativity to make the "take the town" scenario interesting.

I feel this way about it being impossible to dig out guys from entrenchments and towns.  I play a mix of ftf and solo, mostly solo.  I’ve always been impressed by the pacing of the game.  From everything I’ve read taking a strongly defended location was hard, and did take time.  So, the game does this well.  But, it’s a tedious process.  And like you all said, the early war low firepower troops have problems doing it.  So, a friend of mine playing a ftf game suggested we just double the infantry fp in an assault.  Not the MGs, or tanks, just the infantry.  

And it made a difference.  You still take several turns, unless your lucky, but even early war assaults become manageable.

justification?  The way we looked at it, and he is a combat vet, is that most soldiers didn’t fire all that accurately at range, but were much better at close range.  Since PG has ranges of 200 meters, just being able to distinguish someone at say 4-500 meters away could be problematic, especially if they didn’t want to be seen.  But, within 50 meters or so you start to get in range of grenades, satchel charges etc. that PG doesn’t mention.  So, it made since to boost the fp of infantry units engaged in assault.  

Tanks were never that great at close in melee, they needed infantry to support them.  You could argue that MGs should be doubled, but we didn’t do that.  They have plenty of strength, even in early war scenarios. 

I know it’s an unauthorized mod, but, I’ve been playing it that way for years now.  And it cuts both ways, so, no one side gets all that much of an advantage.

Doubling the FP of intantry units in an assault makes a lot of sense to me. There is a *lot* of dice rolling in PG. I don't mind that, but assaults in particular are really tedious, to the point where I sometimes just stop playing and return to a game the next day when it comes time to process an assault. I think we should consider shortcuts if they do not take us too far from the perception of reality. Markm50's rationale for doubling firepower earns a thumbs up from me.