Extended Assault in PG (M) v. PG

[plloyd1010]

This is going to sound paternalistic, but here goes. One needs to be very careful when extending the efficiency rating beyond the double-shot for tanks. The first thing players seem to want is split-move and fire, especially with armor. The arguments usually revolve around superior early training of German tank crews, gyro stabilization coming into widespread use in American tank, the stop-n-go drills of British tankers and a couple others. I try to tamp down that excitement, not because I see it as unrealistic, but because I've found most players in Igo-Ugo games don't really know what to do with or against such capabilities. If they insist, I suggest we do a couple of experimental games. If it still goes to jumping into a full game, I hand them their ass on a smokey silver platter. If an academic like me has delivered such trouncings, imagine what the actual takers here would do to those players. So, in a general sense, be careful what you wish for.

Infantry are less of a problem when it comes to game play. This is because of that seriously corrective +2 modifier for being adjacent and the high probability of getting less lethal results. With AT, the probability is 1 in 6 chance of a kill (all else being equal), with the probability at the high end of a bell curve. Direct fire probabilities are much more spread out. Still there are problems. Mostly in that efficient vs. inefficiency is going to exacerbate the morale advantage. Another problem is the spottiness of retro fitting efficient infantry.

Extended assault in PG Modern is better defined than in the 4th Ed options. Kind of odd when one considers that the optionals grew out PG Modern and other GSR's. In general I like it. I wonder how one squares that rule with assault being a fire activation, and the ruling that assaulting APC's cannot unload without taking a move activation. (Considering that Marshall's Infantry in Battle, published in 1920, talks about motor infantry assault, it looks like a badly written rule.) I think the PG Modern rule should be adopted over the 4th optional rule. I think it would also help clarify helicopter usage in Secret Weapons and Grossdeutschland '46.