Hello all, I have an LOS question. In the attached image, I believe the circled US stack (halftracks buried below the infantry) can fire on the Luftwaffe infantry in 0914 because according to 8.31 slope hexes are considered the full elevation throughout the hex for LOS purposes. My opponent feels that because I'm on the lee side of the hill, the peak of the slope lies between my units and their targets. What do y'all think? Thanks!
You do have LOS on the German unit from the hex indicated This assumes you are not playing with some house rule, like my presumed crest rule. The rule out of the 4th Ed rulebook is:
LOS is BLOCKED if both the spotting and target hex are on DIFFERENT elevations, and... one or more slope hexes of the same elevation as the higher unit lies between the two hexes and the slope hex is closer (not equidistant) to the lower unit than the higher one.
As the slope hex in question would be 0712, which is 1 hex away from the observing unit, and the Germans are 3 hexes from that slope, they are visible under the rule.
Good question. It comes up from time to time because it's one of the places where the rules most diverge from the real world. Chrome versus playability concession.
Exactly how I played it. The rule does not mention it specifically, but it does make sence. I aways envision a slight "rise" between the "back" slope and the "front" slope. I suspect for simplicity's sake it is not mentioned in the rule.
This is a really stupid and unrealistic rule.
Unless they are an Amba (that's a Mesa or Plateau, here in Arizona) nearly all hills have a crest. Peter's house rule that accounts for reverse slopes behind hill crests is the way to go, and should be included in the 5.0 version of the PG rules.
I'll tell you what we should do . . .
We should threaten an insurgency if APL doesn't fix the darn rules, or at least rewrite the confusing LOS rules, and give us better examples.
(05-27-2023, 06:53 AM)ACav Wrote: I'll tell you what we should do . . .
We should threaten an insurgency if APL doesn't fix the darn rules, or at least rewrite the confusing LOS rules, and give us better examples.
There is always the option for house rules. Here is my rewrite. Check the presumed crest rule. Still not perfect, but better than what APL did. You just have to get your opponent to agree to playing with any RaW deviations.
User Experience begins with You...
Always looking for people to play PzGdr, Napoleonic Games, and Great War at Sea
(the Vassal for GWAS Mediterranean specifically).
There is nothing wrong with the rule as written. It was a deliberate design choice likely to assume where the crest line is on that hilltop, nor having to figure out what the angle of slope actually is. The designer decided to say that the majority of the soldiers in that hex are not in a position to fire on the enemy because they are on the down slope of the other side of the hill. It is simple to understand and adjudicate.
Changing the rule to be what you want it to drastically changes the nature of the game in this case.
Furthermore, the rule actually allows one to use reverse slope tactics which is a very realistic and important tactic in tactical games of this scale.
Almost all design choices are tradeoffs in complexity vs. simplicity vs. realism interpretation and "design for effect." It could very well be that the designer of the rule decided that ability to conduct reverse slope defenses was more desirable than allowing units to see from behind a notional and undefined crest line.
