Terrain mod question

[Blackcloud6]

I've set up and played a turn of 1967: SoI Scenario 18.  This is a pursuit scenario and thus movement is crucial.  The scenario converts all roads to tracks, and all towns to Sand Dunes.  This results in all the tracks being broken up by the dunes and therefor slows movement considerably.  But I wonder if the intent was to have the tracks go through the dunes.  By PG concepts there are no roads in towns, so I started playing that the tracks do not extend to the dune hexes.  Also, to back that up, I've always played that a conversion completely changes that hex to the converted terrain and none of the printed terrain is carried over to the new hex unless the scenario says so such as: "treat all town hexes as sand downs, but the printed road exists in the hex."  The scenario does not say this so I am assuming the towns are dunes and that the road/track does not exist in those hexes.  is that how you would play?  Thoughts?

[plloyd1010]

I agree with your conclusion. There is nothing in the rules that say that tracks or roads would extend through dunes, and the amorphous nature of sand dunes would suggest that any track/road through a dune would be short lived.

[Blackcloud6]

I agree with your conclusion. There is nothing in the rules that say that tracks or roads would extend through dunes, and the amorphous nature of sand dunes would suggest that any track/road through a dune would be short lived.

This is the way I'll play it. Your point on the dunes covering the tracks is a good one.

[Blackcloud6]

On CSW, Jay Townsend answered the question: "The tracks should be continuous. I can't remember where, but this question came up years ago."

Unfortunately, I'm halfway through the scenario playing the other way.  However, with track going through the dunes, the Israelis arrive too fast and with the dune blocking the tracks, the Egyptians move too slow.  This could be a great maneuver scenario, but the lack of development and playtesting rears its ugly head once again.  Hopefully, it will be fixed in the new edition.

[joe_oppenheimer]

I think the answer is in 16.1 in the Modern rules:

"Tracks do not negate the effect of terrain on movement, but units that stay on the track for their whole move receive one additional MP."

So I'd play that the track does run through the dunes, but the dunes will still slow you down.

[Blackcloud6]

But, in strict technical reading of the rules, 16.1 says "Roads do not pass through towns; pay the town movement costs."  Therefore, there are no roads in towns to convert to tracks.  Which is further confused by the depiction of roads in towns on the map.  There is no official rules definition of what the road artwork is in a town.  Frankly, this is sloppy rules writing and thus the scenario designer may have intended one thing but did not grasp that the interpretation of RAW would cause a problem.  A developer or play-tester should have caught this.

Here's another problem with "Roads do not pass through towns.  An AFV unit in a town departs the town and enters a clear hex with a road that butts up to the hex side being crossed; what is the MP cost?  2 for clear or 1/2 for road?  There is no provision in the PG (M) rules or the TEC to cover this.

One may argue that 16.1 does say "To obtain the movement benefit of road and tracks, movement must follow the road/track across a hexside containing the road/track, not just into or out of a road/track hex..." and argue that since the artwork crosses the hexside, the cost is 1/2.   But we don't really know what the intent here is with a befuddlement of this "Roads do not pass through towns," and the artwork actually crossing into and going through the town hex.  If the intent was to allow the unit to exit a town on a road hex at 1/2 MP but pay the cost of a town a similar statement as the track/dune would have been written like this: " Roads extend into and out of town/village hexes but units pay the cost of the town hex not the road cost when moving in towns and villages."  This clears up everything.