The City Fight

[Blackcloud6]

I'm starting this thread from something brought up in my CSW blog about "town fighting" and "City Fighting" in PG.

A notion I brought up is that there is a larger battle to city fight than the house to house fighting that a higher resolution game, like ASL, would portray much better than PG. The "grand tactical" or "battle" portion of a city fight could well make for a good PG scenario, as this is a level of fighting that PG does well out.

But given the relatively (as compared to other games) deliberate nature of the assault mechanic in PG, a City fight could be a slow slugfest of hex-to-hex assaults. That may become tedious and boring after a number of turns and may take many turns to play out.

That said, maybe with clever scenario design, good and exciting city fight scenarios could be done. Maybe a fight over a portion of Stalingrad could be made into a series of good PG scenarios; after all, the slugfest at Cassino was made into a good PG module.

So, what are some ideas and concepts that would work? How would you go about design a Stalingrad pack for PG? (Let's focus on "how" and not focus on why we shouldn't)

[beast013]

I like the concept. Possibly a high-level planning/progress map. Each sqaure on this map would equal x number of PG boards. As players fight/clear a grid, they move on to the next grid. This path would require less boards. very possible.

Great idea!

[dmedesha]

I keep thinking area movement boards are the answer to city fights and dense jungle, maybe even forest, ala Finland, the Ardenne, etc. It might not be "pure" PzG but an interesting variant.

All ground movement a single "area," the size based on the density of the terrain - bombed out apartments maybe two counters in size; parks, empty rail yards, other non-vertical features, maybe 6 to 8 counters capacity. Ground LOS and LOF only the next area, but indirect fire based on forward observers.

Also a great opportunity for stunning map art since you really do not need a terrain key, or a very generalized one.

(I've been lurking around since pg-hq started. This topic has gotten me motivated, a little. - Doug)

[vince hughes]

Fred,

I think City fighting probably also comes out best in a 2 player situation. One of my favourite scenarios played was "The Iron Line South" from Fall of France. At one point, we had 14-18 assaults going on in town hexes. Now I can see in a solo game this would become very laborious to play out. But in our game, it had us both cogitating of which one to reinforce, which one just to place 'enough' holding forces and hope to cling on, which one to activate first etc. etc.

I do have ideas for city fighting, but it involved bigger hexes with sub-hexes with differing terrain within the town. Didn't get much support as an idea though ... so my idea was pretty rubbish :-)

[Matt W]

Also, the basic concept of a campaign has been developed and used in the Cassino, Ivy Division and Panzer Lehr campaigns.

[campsawyer]

Also, the basic concept of a campaign has been developed and used in the Cassino, Ivy Division and Panzer Lehr campaigns.

You are right on Matt. The campaign structure exists and works quite well. I could see some sort of city attack with Stalingrad, Berlin, etc. Just need someone to put the story together.

[larry marak]

Definitely, Stalingrad, Manilla, Berlin.

[campsawyer]

Definitely, Stalingrad, Manilla, Berlin.

Is Manilla like Vanilla?

[tanzerleader]

milli vanilli? i think we've gone off topic gents

[campsawyer]

milli vanilli? i think we've gone off topic gents

SOP for forums like this.

Back to the point, who wants to start designing a campaign for this? If you want it you will need to design it. As I posted earlier, the framework is there with campaigns, someone needs to do the design.