Wargamers and RPers

[Spiderfish]

One thing that annoyed me about Striker was having to design my vehicles most of the time.

How many armour officers actually have to design their tank? Not too many I bet. Though sometimes it was cool building a custom super grav tank.

Nothing wrong with "real" Games Workshop players lads just the annoying five foot two inch tall kids with spiky hair and baggy jeans who cause problems.

Hordes of them in my local store listening to their "Nu-Metal" with their badly painted models and their poor attempts at power gaming. And the staff are always playing with them even when i'm queing up to buy something on my own.

In the words of James Hetfield in MTVs Celebrity Deatmatch "What is this Shrimp Bizkit crap?!"

 

[PBI]

Originally posted by Spiderfish:


How many armour officers actually have to design their tank? Not too many I bet.

Before the Israelis deployed the Merkava, they actually went to their armour crews and asked them what the crews wanted in a tank

 

[Spiderfish]

Yes but they didnt get the company commander to map out the exact size and type of engine did they or what type of toilet they want.

And you didnt say how many...

 

[propjockey]

I wish to prequalify this by stating that all my players, for either rpg's or wargames, were a bit left of center to begin with, every manjack of 'em.

One lad tended to make dramatic frontal assaults, not unlike the banzai charges of old, whether it was one sleeping security guard or a heavy tank division. He simply knew no other way, nor seemed interested in bending his mind around anything else.

I am not sure that the game medium makes much of a difference as to whether a player is more knowledgeable, nor if educational or intellectual background tends a player to one type of gaming over another.
I am sure that the trained usually succeed in their missions, though sometimes with little drama, and the untrained often make very dramatic and colorful - though short lived - entertainment.
Still, the whole idea is to have fun, right?

 

[PBI]

Originally posted by Spiderfish:
Yes but they didnt get the company commander to map out the exact size and type of engine did they or what type of toilet they want.

And you didnt say how many...

Actually, yeah, they more or less did. From what I gather (not having been a tanker myself), the Merkava is one of the more comfortable tanks to ride and fight in, because the crews told the engineers what really worked and what didn't, regardless of what looked good on paper.

And what difference does it make if every crew member was consulted or not? When Canada adopted the C7, we gave the US model to an infantry battalion and took comments from each and every soldier, made changes based on that (some of which the US army picked up as well) and the resulting weapon is, while not perfect, definitely shows the little things that only an operator would think of.

 

[Spiderfish]

The troops were consulted they did not actually design it. I dont care all that much about who actually designed the Merkava.

The same as when I give Suzuki feedback i'm not actually designing a completely nex GSXR100 (though if they are interested...)

 

[Michael Taylor]

We have a group of young players playing CDIII and the phrase "subtle play" is not in their vocab yet. Fresh from the slaughterhouses of their 40k warhammer games, last week they approached a copse filled with a company of Tiger Is and a mortar platoon without conducting recon first.

They in fact used a sherman company for Recon, having sacrificed their entire recon assets (5 M8 Greyhounds and 5 recon jeeps) in futile charges up the table in the first 2 turns.

Moments later the entire Sherman company is a mangled wreck from point-blank fire from my Tiger company and they are laughing their heads off at the carnage.

I would have hated to have been a tanker in one of those shermans though. Perhaps older gamers have more appreciation of just what happens when a Sherman ronsons and cooks people inside.

 

[The Oz]

When I'm wargaming, I always try to think of what those minis or counters actually represent. In a way, it's a weakness as I spend too much time minimizing my own losses instead of maximizing my opponent's.

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by The Oz:
When I'm wargaming, I always try to think of what those minis or counters actually represent. In a way, it's a weakness as I spend too much time minimizing my own losses instead of maximizing my opponent's.

My main weakness is my allergy to tanks. I rarely use them in games.

It means that my forces tend to be slow moving, and occasionally susceptible to being overrun by my opponents' tanks.

On the other hand, my forces rarely take massive casualties, since headlong rushes tend to be bloodier than slow, methodical attacks, and I'll usually run away from armoured attacks that I can't stop, even though I technically lose games as a result.

But as for the munchkin kids and their armoured banzai charges: have you read much about how British armour used to operate in north Africa? The heirs of the Light Brigade were in full flight there...

 

[PBI]

This is nothing new to me I play board wargames almost exclusively, though I do own Warhammer 40K and Battletech. Never got into the mini side because of the cost. Still, mini or board, the princiuples remain the same. Just takes a while to learn them. You should have seen me in my early days

The younger players will either learn and become better players, or remain stagnant and move on to 'better' games. Either way, it's win-win for the experienced gamers

I never give much consideration to what the counters or minis mean; I focus totally on the objective. Sure, I try to minimize losses, but not to the extent that that becomes my primary objective