Road control and towns

[joe_oppenheimer]

Purely my interpretation, but I think the rule about towns not being roads is specific to movement. For victory conditions it seems obvious to me that you'd need a contiguous path.

[Shad]

If you delete the town from the map, you'd have 2 road segments. Therefore, you need to connect them "under" the town. Pick whatever path you want through it, but you need one continuous road aka one continuous path of adjacent hexes.

[Philippe]

So Peter.....
Does the final interpretation come down to:
A) Roads are Roads and Towns are Towns....
thus, the ROAD based VC do not count in the Town (the road effectively disappears as it passes through the town)...

Except in Road to Berlin where, by module special rule, adjacent towns hexs are connected by road.

[plloyd1010]

The appearance with the rules as written is that towns do not make part of the roads. While the logical conclusion is that towns should make up part of "the road", it is not specified as a standard rule anywhere. Has anyone found a rule that defines a "road" in victory conditions outside of SSRs? If town hexes are specified as a component of a road in a SSR that again implies that, outside of such a scenario, they are not part of the road consideration.

So it would seem that my and Craig's views are flipping as we discuss this. I started out as a contiguous line of town hexes would be part of "the road", but I am not seeing it in the technical game sense. Craig J started on the other side. What a difference a week can make.

[triangular_cube]

I know I've already added layers and layers of confusion pulling away from the original question, but having considered this more, the way I feel is that:

RAW 3rd edition controlling the road must include controlling the town hexes joining the road hexes. There is no special wording saying that roads do not exist in towns even when depicted on the map, nor does the annotation(no doubt added after semi official errata) say that these roads do not exist. In fact they say the opposite, that a unit can be moving along the road within a town, just that it pays the town movement rate. 

RAW 4th edition says explicitly that roads do not extend into towns, thus controlling the road does not require control of the town. 

BUT the added line in 4th adding this exception is talking about movement cost. Therefore it is my OPINION that the author's intent was to include the errata that resulted in the annotation to 3rd being added but went one step further when writing it without considering the impact to a VC requiring control of an entire road. 

Therefore in my games, solo that they are, I will play such a VC as requiring control of the towns between the road hexes under the understanding that they include roads that give no movement benefit over town movement. I feel my interpretation is RAW for 3rd, but RAI for 4th. 

Your interpretations of course are free to differ.

[joe_oppenheimer]

Getting away from a legalistic interpretation of the rules...

It just seems to me if your objective is to control a road across the map than you're not going to want a bunch of enemy troops sitting in a town along that road.

[cjsiam]

I think we should (your mileage may vary...) consider the intent and reality---along the lines of Joe...

The intention is for the Germans to be able to have clear road movement along that road--what must include using towns--to satisfy the victory conditions.

So any contiguous path through the town that connects the roads and is German controlled would seem to satisfy the VC.

I think that is legit....

[plloyd1010]

When it comes to intent, Dr. Mike, Matt W. and Daniel R. have not commented. Thus, any statement of intent is conjecture.

Reality? I thought this was a question of where the goal posts we set. Reality is far more nuanced than any victory conditions or objective set in the game's framework.

The real (game) question was, should 3 town hexes be the difference between a Soviet and German victory? Should 4 hexes then be be the difference between a minor and major German victory. Or should the minor to major victory difference be 0 and 7 town hexes. The forces are very much on the regimental level in FitS 40.

So far we've been playing to the consensus position, but that doesn't create definition. More so when considering that road and town control are separate in the text. Many other scenarios call for a continuous path or route. Hence the whole reason for this thread.

[treadasaurusrex]

Hmm, seems like we are making this harder than it need be.

 If road control is part of the VCs, then one must control the road AND all the towns that it passes through. 

 If the VC requires one to control a town, then to heck with the darn roads, just make sure you are in control of the town at the end of the scenario.

 This is submitted for what it's worth. Hope that it is helpful.

[triangular_cube]

Hmm, seems like we are making this harder than it need be.

 If road control is part of the VCs, then one must control the road AND all the towns that it passes through. 

 If the VC requires one to control a town, then to heck with the darn roads, just make sure you are in control of the town at the end of the scenario.

 This is submitted for what it's worth. Hope that it is helpful.

" control the road AND all the towns that it passes through"

Thats the crux of it all. Does the road pass through the town? Seems to depend on the rules version, RAW at the very least. 

No offense to anyone here, but I think we are all just talking past each other on this. 

I'm no sure what more can be said on it.