Bush Artillery Library Convention

[triangular_cube]

I've been planning out how to best wrap my Afrika Korps playthrough, and I've noticed in our Library we don't seem to have a consistent convention for how to treat the Bush Artillery. In some scenarios where they are called for, the Library lists an Italian piece, in others it lists an Australian piece 

Neither is "wrong" but do we have any interest in determining which is "more correct"? Ideally these would be treated uniformly throughout the library.

[triangular_cube]

Replying to my own thread. 

Normally I am in favor of logging the scenarios literally. If the scenario calls for 47mm (it) in the Australian OOB it should be reflected as such, with an Italian piece. 

When it comes to proxy units, where the special rules actually say use X counter to represent Y unit instead, I could go either way. I just prefer that whatever way we go, we be consistent with. 

I know Peter and I discussed a similar issue in the past with Arctic Front's (and LoF) proxy T-34/85 units, where they similarly are treated differently in different library entries, but I don't think we ever reached an understanding on what we were talking about there and I dropped it. 

I'm probably the only crabby person who cares though. 

[rerathbun]

I've tried to be consistent in how I enter them in the scenario OOBs.  If the piece is in the appropriate country colors (like the Australian M13/40), I put it in with the owning nation for that scenario.  In cases like the casemates in Peace in Our Time Scenario 6, I keep the piece's original nationality and add a note in the "Additional Notes" section.  I do that mostly so that we don't wind up with pieces from other countries in the Units page for each nation. 

Either approach can be misleading.  Peace in Our Time 6 winds up listing France among the (three) nations in the battle, despite the casemates actually being Czech.

[plloyd1010]

I know Peter and I discussed a similar issue in the past with Arctic Front's (and LoF) proxy T-34/85 units, where they similarly are treated differently in different library entries, but I don't think we ever reached an understanding on what we were talking about there and I dropped it. 

I'm probably the only crabby person who cares though. 

Not exactly, but I understand a little of how it got that way. You know it's about counter limits, right? Apparently Afrike Korps didn't have enough space for the 4 additional count4ers required to cover the bush artillery (not to mention the 17 civilian counters needed. It seems that Desert Rats did, plus room for an AB40 and a Semovente 90. In the library the counters from DR are used. Images from the Italians in desert scheme could be used, but that might be a little confusing. If 47mm, 65/17 and 77mm are taken from the Italian in the library, that gets even more confusing as they wouldn't appear with the Australians. (Think of The Vengeful Halftrack from Winter Soldiers.)

My vote would be to use the Australian versions of the bush artillery. There should be something in the unit notes about them being bush artillery. If in Ak or DR scenario pages Italian units appear where that should be Australian, it should referred to E&O.

[triangular_cube]

If we are going to use the Australian units (again I have no objections based on the circumstances), below are my suggestions for updating the library. Hopefully this spares me from sending in a bunch of tickets.

AK #20 Remove Italian 77mm, add Australian 77mm
AK #24 Remove Italian 65mm, add Australian 65mm
AK #38 Remove Italian 47mm, add Australian 47mm

Looks like it was roughly split 2/3 using the Australian convention and 1/3 using the Italian convention when it was originally logged.

My quibble to Peter about the T-34 came from Arctic Front #17. There is a scenario special rule "Treat the Soviet T-34/76a and T34/76b tanks as T-34/85s with an anti tank value of 7-8". The same rule appears in #18 & 19, as well as Lions of Finland but that ones tucked away in storage right now so I dont have the scenario #. For 18 & 19 the units are entered into the Library as 85s, for #17 they are entered as 76s (in appropriate colors for Guards/RKKA). These modules of course were released prior to the T-34 85 seeing print in the series, hence the special rules.

Seems to me that using the proxy unit convention we are using with the Bush artillery, AF #17 could be updated as well to have the 85s represented?

[plloyd1010]

My quibble to Peter about the T-34 came from Arctic Front #17. There is a scenario special rule "Treat the Soviet T-34/76a and T34/76b tanks as T-34/85s with an anti tank value of 7-8". The same rule appears in #18 & 19, as well as Lions of Finland but that ones tucked away in storage right now so I dont have the scenario #. For 18 & 19 the units are entered into the Library as 85s, for #17 they are entered as 76s (in appropriate colors for Guards/RKKA). These modules of course were released prior to the T-34 85 seeing print in the series, hence the special rules.

Seems to me that using the proxy unit convention we are using with the Bush artillery, AF #17 could be updated as well to have the 85s represented?

The issue AF/LoF is that they predate Road to Berlin, hence there are no t-34/85s to draw from. It also doesn't much matter because there are no armored targets to shoot at. Should the T-34/76a and T34/76b tanks be replaced with a T-34/85 reference? Not unreasonable, but also to me, not worth the effort.

[triangular_cube]

My quibble to Peter about the T-34 came from Arctic Front #17. There is a scenario special rule "Treat the Soviet T-34/76a and T34/76b tanks as T-34/85s with an anti tank value of 7-8". The same rule appears in #18 & 19, as well as Lions of Finland but that ones tucked away in storage right now so I dont have the scenario #. For 18 & 19 the units are entered into the Library as 85s, for #17 they are entered as 76s (in appropriate colors for Guards/RKKA). These modules of course were released prior to the T-34 85 seeing print in the series, hence the special rules.

Seems to me that using the proxy unit convention we are using with the Bush artillery, AF #17 could be updated as well to have the 85s represented?

The issue AF/LoF is that they predate Road to Berlin, hence there are no t-34/85s to draw from. It also doesn't much matter because there are no armored targets to shoot at. Should the T-34/76a and T34/76b tanks be replaced with a T-34/85 reference? Not unreasonable, but also to me, not worth the effort.

It all goes back to treating library entries consistently. Either #17 should be updated to list 85s instead of 76s, or 18 and 19 should be updated to show 76s instead of 85s.

[plloyd1010]

It all goes back to treating library entries consistently. Either #17 should be updated to list 85s instead of 76s, or 18 and 19 should be updated to show 76s instead of 85s.

I still don't have a consensus on that point. Should it be T-34/85 as which the tanks are representative of, or T-34/76s which were available in the games of the time?

[goosebrown]

I still don't have a consensus on that point. Should it be T-34/85 as which the tanks are representative of, or T-34/76s which were available in the games of the time?

I think that they should be corrected to T34/85s. In cases where there are "hacks" due to one thing or another, the primary source of truth should be the intention of the scenario/game not to reproduce the hack literally. But, that is just me.

[triangular_cube]

I still don't have a consensus on that point. Should it be T-34/85 as which the tanks are representative of, or T-34/76s which were available in the games of the time?

I think that they should be corrected to T34/85s. In cases where there are "hacks" due to one thing or another, the primary source of truth should be the intention of the scenario/game not to reproduce the hack literally. But, that is just me.

Limiting my opinion narrowly to circumstances addressed here where the module rules (Bush Artillery), or scenario rules (Arctic T34s) specifically say X is Y, and we now have Y, I tend to agree. 

More broadly, I think the Library's ultimate goal should be to reflect the scenario as it is published, and not redesign it. When the rules tell me X is Y, that's part of the scenario and is fine. We are just more accurately translating that data into the library. 

My opinion changes if we were, for example, swapping out PzG Original units to more historically accurate ones that were not included in the counter mix (PzIIIfs becoming Pz38ts in some cases as was done with EFD). In that case we would not be translating the scenario as published, we would be redesigning it.

I'm certainly not trying to open up the can of worms to the latter which I am opposed to, just trying to illustrate where I draw the line. 

At the end of the day though, consistency makes me happy.