Bad scenario design

[larry marak]

Just looking for your favorite bad scenarios. I'll start it off with Scenario 20 "Insanity Laughs" from Iron Curtain. This represents the meeting of U.S. and U.S.S.R. forces embracing at the Elbe river, and one idiot on the American side decides to open fire. Historically it captures the moment (always a PG plus) but the order of battle is 16 inf and 2 mg with officers vs 16 inf and 2 mg with officers, no oba (again this makes sense) on one map. It is as vanilla a force mix as humanly possible.

[Hugmenot]

I would have expected a scenario which shows 12 victories for the British versus none for the Germans to be rated pretty low. But if you take away my "1" rating its rating is 3.08 (12 votes), just slightly below the global average.

I am looking at you, St. Manvieu Counterattack!

Other players liked it while I found it to be so unbalanced I consider it broken. So who's right?

I am very careful about qualifying a design as good or bad because it's more often or not a matter of preferences.

[larry marak]

True Hugmenot, as Cicero said "de gustibus non est disputatem". In favor of IC 20 you have perfect o.b. balance, and since combat begins when either the American player decides to initiate combat or when two platoons become adjacent for the handshake at the Elbe, there is quite a variety of initial unit placement options.

Still, we all have scenarios we figure were a waste of paper, and I think it would be interesting to see fellow players' least favorite scenarios.

[campsawyer]

Other players liked it while I found it to be so unbalanced I consider it broken. So who's right?

It will also depend upon whether they are solo or two-person played. Some scenarios play quite fine solo if you are the attacker, but are bad if played with two people. There are the ones where one player bangs up against the other with some bad VC's while the defender just "pass" or take important shots. From a solo perspective, one might like it for historical or for learning the game, but for the two players it just might be boring for them and get a lower rating. Point being is that Hugmenot's question is valid, who is right? The solo player that liked it or the head to head players that didn't. The ratings, although not perfect, give the first indication, but then I read on to the AAR's to find out the details.

[J6A]

The 1st scenario of A:IE is pretty bad. I mean, you learn how to maneuver units, and you're firing on the 1st and 2nd column and basically nothing happens. Actually, there are several bad scenarios in A:IE.

[Hugmenot]

I too gave A:IE #1 a "1" and thought there was no point to it.

[waynebaumber]

Here is my hall of shame. (all rated 1)
Africa Korps #2. Boring
Airborne # 16 Silly scenario rules make playing pointless
Airborne # 6. Boring as a two player game
Airborne # 4 Boring and unbalanced
Battle of the Bulge # 6 Unbalanced 16 German wins 0 U.S. wins

I will stop there but there a few more, there are also a couple
lue of other scenario that deserve a mention but I rated higher than 1.These were scenarios which so poorly edited that work was needed to make them playable
AFrica Korps 33 & Tank Battles 22
All these were ftf games