Rommel Rules (Sam Mustafa)

[chamberlain]

I've retyped this post four times now.  It's hard to say negative things about a game without feeling the need to over explain.  I've also noticed that as I retyped things to be more clear, I'm also getting more forceful, which isn't ideal.

My basic criticism of the game is that I think the decision making you are engaged in is very artificial and is about managing ops points and pressing the right tactics or event button at just the right time.  And at times you'll jump down to the company level to make decisions (like when to use molotov cocktails) and even once per game you can jump down to the company level to make a decision for an enemy company (apparently intercepting signals means you can send a unit off to where it never would have gone).

Hopefully that doesn't overstate things.  I feel like you're not really making decisions about the operation but about the special effects if the operation was a movie.  Like you don't decide on a plan for your assets, you simply press the asset button the moment you'd like them to show up in that instant.  Not for everything, but an awful lot of stuff is contained in the tactic and events you can choose to trigger.

[fred]

I Like everything but the squares and the stacking limit which feels very artificial. The squares Make it feel too cold and clinical. 

What kind of ratio did you have to the size of the square to the size of the models within it?

We've played with 12cm squares, and 5x3cm based models, and the models nicely fill the square, which means you don't really think you want to get more troops involved, because there isn't much space for them.

Occasionally when you attack from multiple directions, you feel you could get more troops involved. But that is quite uncommon.

I feel like you're not really making decisions about the operation but about the special effects if the operation was a movie.  Like you don't decide on a plan for your assets, you simply press the asset button the moment you'd like them to show up in that instant.

Interesting view - and I can see why you could think that. But its not something I have felt while playing. Its the problem of abstraction and playability. Yes you get the tactic or event when you want it, but you can only play a limited number per turn, and you can only play them a limited number of times before needing to reset. All of these actions cost you Ops points. Yes its abstract, and perhaps it would be more realistic if you planned in your artillery support a turn or two before. But ultimately this would slow the game down, and require a lot more record keeping.

As a group we are really enjoying Rommel, and getting lots of toys on the table that have been in the cupboard far too long.

[chamberlain]

Interesting view - and I can see why you could think that. But its not something I have felt while playing. Its the problem of abstraction and playability. Yes you get the tactic or event when you want it, but you can only play a limited number per turn, and you can only play them a limited number of times before needing to reset. All of these actions cost you Ops points. Yes its abstract, and perhaps it would be more realistic if you planned in your artillery support a turn or two before. But ultimately this would slow the game down, and require a lot more record keeping.

I totally agree.  Everything is trade offs.  And different people are going to care about different things in a game.  It's just what stuck out to me.  Like I was deciding when to have the results rather than when to do the thing that causes them.

What Rommel has done is gotten me interested in larger scope games.  Both in terms of rules and reading more about divisional and corps level officers and operational staff and the like.

[MartinR]

Tbh, that sort of abstract decision making is a feature of all  command point type C3  systems, you are making decisions about where to locate command effort, which can lead to disjointed actions on the tabletop. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Sam had stuck with his original idea of modelling the events as cards, as it produces much the same effect, but feels more real in some wierd  way.

We were just aying the new AIW command and Colours game last night which has separate combat cards, with things analagous to Rommel "events" and it worked really well.

I am slightly dreading trying Rommel with one of our more analytical players, he is gong to blow a mental gasket when faced with twenty different ways to spend his ops each and every turn...  he spent long enough agonising over half a dozen cards yesterday.

[fred]

On the Honor forums someone has re-jigged the Command Posts as cards - so if you want to try with cards its fairly easy.

While there are a lot of ways to spend Ops, the key decision is how many you need for tactical phases. Then you probably don't have that many left, so if you want a couple of key attacking or defending tactics, then you have very few left for Events.

[MartinR]

Oooh, I'll have a look at the cards version.

The dynamic of Ops use are quite clever though, as they the replicate the difference between hasty and prepared attacks and defence. If you want to go swanning off all over the table, you aren't going to be taking any well defended positions.

[fred]

The dynamic of Ops use are quite clever though, as they the replicate the difference between hasty and prepared attacks and defence. If you want to go swanning off all over the table, you aren't going to be taking any well defended positions.

I agree, we have very much found this in our games. If units go off on their own, they rapidly become isolated and become a drain on your Ops Pool. Planning 1 or 2 reinforced attacks works better, but is a bit slower.

Once you have ground down the defences, if you can feed fresh units in, they can suddenly smash through the enemy.

But you can't do this with a quick smash and grab raid, which all feels very appropriate for the scale of the game.

[MartinR]

Thanks for the pointer to the command cards, they really are excellent. Far more flexible and easy to use than scattering dice all over a piece of paper.

[fred]

Glad you found the cards, and like the look of them. We've not tried them, we moved to dry wipe markers on a laminated sheet within a couple of turns of out first game.

We found with a multi player game that you want to move the command post around a bit to see what tactics and events you have available. Which with dice balanced on a sheet is a problem.

I can see from a logistics point of view why Sam went with the command posts, rather than cards.