So I read every review I could and it seemed the game got really positive reviews. A buddy of mine and I where looking for a good 2 player game to fill in when we are short on players for other games in our gaming group. We decided on Tide of Irons and today I pulled the trigger.

Shortly after ordering the game I decided to browse the forums a bit to see what sort of rules questions, answers and such people are talking about to kind of get a jump start on things and low and behold i was very disapointed to hear that the their is a general consensus that the games scenarios are all grossly unbalanced!

Given that I know very little about the game I of course would like to avoid any bad experiances.

The questions.

1. What scenarios do you recommend from the base set or any other available scenarios for two new players going on their first run.

2. What is the best way to fix the out of the box scenarios?

Thanks for any replys.

As most historical games are like this, the fix is to play the scenario from both sides, and count your kills. He with the most kills wins. Its very different from a board game like risk, and I totally feel your pain. I have been in the brundt of a german attack and feel hopeless at times. Some games like Memoir, when Im in this scenario I can turn the tables with a good dice roll or a good card draw, but TOI is very tactical, and difficult to pull in a surprise attack.

Tiger hunt is always good fun, but is kind of jumping into the deep end.

I suggest the "new player scenario" 1 and 2. You can find them here app.fantasyflightgames.com/tideofiron_scenarios.html

Have fun.

hmmm thats odd. Really wasnt the reply's I was expecting.

I understand its a World War II historical game, but at least in my view a game shouldnt be so much about World War II, as it should be about two players playing a game in a quasi relaxed competative atomsphere with an equal chance of winning. From the scenarios it almost seems like the game is rigged to ensure that World War II turns out as it did in real history (aka the Germans ultimatly loosing), which to me is an incredibly boring concept.

Have there been any community members who have created 'balance corrections' for the scenarios to ensure that both the Americans and the Germans have an equal chance of winning the game? I mean I'm certain that if I find any scenario imbalanced we will immediatly make our own adjustments, but I dont always like re-inventing the wheel.

Has any done this and if so, would you be willing to kindly share your house rules, changes etc.. to any given scenarios that have made them more balanced.

Thanks in advance for any replys.

Most scenarios, the community mane ones at least, are so close that you will get good game suspence, even if one side wins consistently. The basic Rulebook ones are not so good. Though I kind of like Stavlot Express.

Two systems you might want to try is:

a. [bidding.] - pick on side, usualy the germans, and then bid Command-points in a standard auction style. The winner gets to play americans, and the germans get the points as additional Command-points during setup.

b. [Tanks.] - up- or downgrade tanks in the scenario.Several members of the community, including myself, have posted links to experimental vehicles/guns.This could even be a bidding war as well.

Also remember that it realy does not matter much how ballanced the first handfull of games are. As with most wargames, you need quite a few games under your belt to get the most out of the forces you get. This alone can sometimes make a scenario more ballanced. Consider the scenarios, first 4 at least, a tutorial for the various game mechanics. A tutorial does not have to be ballanced either. Once you have a firm grip on the rules, dive into the rich source of scenarios this community have dreamed up. There are quite a few gems there, and a few total plonkers too ;-)

Very few games offer even oppotunity to win.

Hefsgaard said:

Thats good advice thank you.

I personally don't expect complete balance, I'm a veteran gamer so I know that in any given game there are things that are off. I got nervous however when I read posts about the scenarios in which people claimed they where statistically impossible to win even if you cheated, it may me kind of scratch my head and wonder why anyone would play a scenario which is designed to ensure that one side looses no matter what they do. I suppose there is a difference between 'an advantage ' and 'outright rigged'. I can understand that one side might have an advantage compared to the other, that I think is ok, after all I love a challenge, but if its just outright rigged... I don't think that would be fun at all knowing that going into a game.

I guess what I'm really after is from a veteran gamers point of view, for the guys that have played this game many times. If you took a scenario like Breaking the Line for example, which is said to be and I'm quoting here 'Impossible to win with the Germans'. What adjustments would you make to the scenario to ensure that the either side had a reasonable chance at winning that scenario. I mean if the community has already established that Breaking The Line is a 'broken scenario' which is not winnable by the German player, it seems to me at least that someone at some point would look at the scenario and say.. ok lets give the German player an extra Machine Gun crew and perhaps 2 more infantry... (not a real suggestion just an example).

I mean I have never played the game and I'm looking at the scenario right now and knowning very little about the game I can already see that quite clearly the Germans are severly outgunned/outnumbered. Grant it the Germans only have to 'stop' the American player, so it makes sense logically to me that having fewer units, but being able to sit on the defensive might balance itself out in some way, but since I already know that 'Germans can't win' even in the hands of veteran players, it seems logical to me to make some small adjustment to the scenario to even things out.

Anywho.. I'm kind of rambling here, certainly I'm no authority on the game so for me to even have an opinion might seem off, but I just found it really odd that someone didn't come forward and say ' Ya you can balance Breaking the Line by adding 1 mortar and 2 infantry to the Germans' or some other such more direct approach to evening a scenario out.

I think the reason that nobody does that is that its quite tricky. You do not have to make many changes and balance all of a sudden shifts to the other side, or you end up with a totaly diffrent scenario. :-)

What I personaly do is look at det interaction of the Strategy decks. Is one of them causing the trouble, then get rid of it, or is one useless then change it. Access to the Commanders from Normandy, might helt the underdog too?

Hefsgaard said:

Yes I can certainly understand that and it does at least on the surface seem like the strategy decks themselves have a fairly wide impact on the scenario so even a single card removed might be enough to give the underdog at least an oppertunity to win. I suppose its also worth mentioning that if you play a game against people with different skill levels that the adjustments you make may result in small or larger advantages depending on whos the better player.

I think what I will do since I bought this game souly to fill the 2 player gap (most of the games we play only play with 4+ players) is just play it out of the box. I'm certain after a couple of plays in any given scenario we will figuire out what the 'problematic' component is and make minor adjustments.

My experiance with Fantasy Flight Games thus far has been that the games are rarely balanced in a *** for tat fashion, using games like Twilight Imperium for example you kind of have to think about the dynamics of who is playing (at what skill level) and then determine what changes you have to make to the game to make the experiance fun for both the newbies and the veterans alike. Also worth saying that in most cases the games dont require rule changes, or addition, but rather to simply remove some defining component from the game, in the case of TI3 its usually enough to say, ok the Veteran players pick from these races (weaker ones) and the newbies pick from these races (good ones). I'm big on simple adjustments of that sort.

I'm kind of in the same situation as you Gamer. I have yet to play, I'm a veteran strategy gamer and I was hoping someone had a magic balance formula sitting around.

If the base set of tide of iron is just a tutorial, that's kind of a rip off. :/

CX0427 said:

You know in my experiance Fantasy Flight Games delivers the goods in every respect and the parts they ocassionaly screw up on usually the community comes right around and resolves on their own. Thats why I too was suprised to hear that people felt the scenarios where so grossly unbalanced yet the community had not come up with your usual 'Hey here are some good ways that work to fix it'. Knowing so little about the game, I imagine there are some details Im simply missing, perhaps as someone mentioned already the game is very suseptible to changes (I have seen this in some games where even the slightest adjustment to the rules derails it completetly). Or perhaps as a simulation of historical battles win or loose the game is fun to play so no one has bothered to adjust the balance of any given scenario. That would make sense to me as well, I mean I have played Warhammer table top games and the sort of abstract rules and balances there usually resulted in my gaming group knowing who would win or loose in any given battle, but we where no less eager to fight it, as it wasnt the victory but the gameplay itself that was exciting ... Yet even with that said, I always felt like even in a loosing situation that there was hope, which in the case of Tide Irons it doesnt seem there is... I mean people have been pretty adiment about saying 'Hey there is NO WAY the germans can win' with no oppossing voice.

Remains to be seen, in either case I should have my game by Friday which is my next game night, so looking forward to it.

Gamer4Life said:

The problem with so-called balanced scenarios is that they are tilted in favor of the more skillful player. That's why there used to be the schoolyard taunt of 'with one arm tired behind my back'. Not every scenario is meant to be balanced, otherwise the veteren would always be at an advantage over the newbie. ToI is a 'sandbox' game, which is why there are so many fan scenarios, most of which have never been submitted to FFG. There are so many ways to adjust a scenario to change it a little or a lot: add an extra squad or two of varying strength, add a fortification at a key point, add some terrain, add a tank, change the start positions, add some specialization tokens, adjust the strategy cards, add or adjust the value of command objective markers, etc. Be imaginative!

longagoigo said:

I couldn't agree more with the above statement, very well said.

longagoigo said:

You make very good points and I certainly have little to stand on but my experiance with other games as Im yet to play Tides of Iron. I can only use Twilight Imperium 3rd edition as an example but in that game I spent a great deal of time (early on in my experiance with the game) arguing that the imperial strategy card was in fact a balanced and good card to play with ( as it speeded up the game and sort of forced people to make their plays earlier in the game) ... this probobly only make sense if you play Twilight Imperium, but the point here being is that as a newbie,even with a lot of experiance playing board games I still failed to see many of the more detailed aspects of the game because I had not played it often enough. In the case of Twilight Imperium I quickly learned that while the Imperial card speeded up the game, it also in many ways made it predictable and ultimatly less fun (less replayable). I say this because I can only submit to the advice and opinions of the experts, those that have already played the game, and thus I have little to no argument to make.

I suppose the only thing I was trying to say is that if, fantasy flight is going to release a game, during testing they should work under the assumption that whoever is playing the game is of equal skill as this, at least to me seems like the most obvious way to balance the game. It seems odd that they would create scenarios for Tide of Irons with anything but this assumption. I mean using Break the Line as an example, it seems the community out there agrees that its grossly in favor of the Germans. Why create a scenario as an introduction to the game in which one side has a gross advantage (regardless of skil)? wouldnt it make more sense to assume equal skill and create a scenario that at least on some level offes an equal chance for either side to win?

Again Im rambling here but I suppose it just struck me as again ... very odd, that there is any support for the creation of scenarios (at least for the out of the box game) that are grossly unbalanced. I mean I understand the point your maknig about different skill levels and the creation fo scenarios with a few assumptions like (in this scenario the germans should be represented by the player with more experiance).. but again, it seems strange that fantasy flight didnt go through hell and high water to ensure that at least the out of the box scenarios are as equal as they can be made to be. Its actually in particular a suprise for fantasy flight who at least in my opinion has a great reputation as a company that creates really well balanced and fun games.

The other side of the coin is that some of the unbalanced scenarios might play better using one of the commanders.

Know you're playing a losing battle? ask your opponent if (only) you can use a commander. Use Walter Model, and you can pull off some incredibly nasty combos.... Stolen supplies, cut communications, jam communications, sniper attack. The tactician leadership deck has enough cards to completely deny your opponent's command for 2-4 turns if used properly.

Of course, that would require you to have an expansion or two.

Gamer4Life said:

I guess my assumptions of what they were trying to do comes from what they did. On p.3 of the Rules of Play, "Feel free to invent your own scenarios with the components provided with the game." And, p2. of the Scenario Guide, under How to Use This Book, "Feel free to create your own scenarios from the wealth of materials included in the game." A key point to note here is that it is called a Scenario Guide. Calling it a guide, and not a scenario book, certainly gives us a clue as to their intent for their game. A guide is something that illustrates how to do something, so you can do it on your own. At the beginning of each scenario, there is a historical note, that I assume is factual, about the basis of each scenario. If you were to check our own historical record by searching the old forum, you'd find plenty of discussion about the unbalanced nature of historical confrontations. I suppose they could have given us really simplified scenarios with balances forces on both sides over a variety of landscapes on different sized maps, and saved themselves research and playtesting time. Then they would have heard complaints that the scenarios weren't historically accurate, and that we the players could have done the same thing 'using the wealth of materials included in the game.'

longagoigo said:

Well that actually makes a lot of sense. I'm not World War II buff myself, but I can imagine a game like this would attract history buffs who would appriciate the re-creation of battles as oppossed to the forced balancing of them.

In either case I should have my hands on this ktten by Wednesday and making her purr by Friday night. Perhaps I will come back then and post my impressions of the game.

The scenarios from the expansions (Days of the Fox, Normandy and last but certainly not least the Designers series volume 1) are GENERALLY a lot better balanced, although some exceptions can even be found amongst those (e.g. Rat patrol from the designer series which is hopelessly in favour of the Allies). Anyway, I think it'd be a good idea for you to buy the designer series. On the whole those scenarios are very close! (as they should be!)

Kingtiger said:

I generally have a very high opinion of Fantasy Flight Games, thus far they have produced 5 games in my top 10 favorite games to play (Twilight Imperium, Fury of Dracula, Arkham Horror, Descent and StarCraft). One of the things that always jumped out at me about their games is their epic scale, great components and flexible mechanics. I recieved Tide of Iron yesterday and I have to say that so far it has been a pretty disapointing experiance which makes me hesitant to consider expansions at this point for this game.

I'm yet to play the game, so mind you I'm speaking only about the components which I felt where very poor in comparison to most of their other games which is the source of the disapointment. Using FFG games soley as a comparison (as they are generaly in a class of their own) they where definitly below their usual quality and design approach. The soldier Peg thing was pretty poorly thought out as not only are they difficult to get into their pegs because the pegs are a bit too big for the wholes, but the soldiers are so small that they are difficult to hold and put into place without damaging them, not to mention the difficulty in discerning them from each other as their size means you have to play really close to the table with a lot of light to see anything. The way the game was shipped every single barrel of every tank was bent when it came out of the bag showing the 'whited bent marks', which was kind of sad considering its a brand new game as the pieces already look quite used. I also noticed that the boards themselves don't have any ligning, I'm concerned over time they will peel. I also found 2 soldiers and 1 tank with broken off parts right out of the bag (the barrels on guns and one of the pegs on the soliders). I also noticed a number of errors in the scenario book in the first scenario when it came to setting up the board , it was obviously not looked over carefully enough when sent to the printer. I get the feeling this game was rushed or something as it just does not meet the standard FFG has set for their games from the perspective of components.

In any case, I have a game set up for the end of this week. While the components aren't up to par, I'm hoping the game itself makes up for it.

Gamer4Life said:

The peg thing is pretty simple once you realize that, since the peg is in the center, pushing on the soldier doesn't work. You instead need to push on the base directly opposite the peg. I used some angled needle-nosed pliers to push until they had gotten a little use. As to size and recognizability, that doesn't really present a problem once you realize that there are only 5 different figures (3 standing and 2 crouching) with different poses.

Gamer4Life said:

"Whited bent marks" sounds kinda bad, and that's the first I've ever heard or read of it with ToI. Most of my tank barrels were not straight when I got my copy...what was it, like two years ago now? Anyway, having been a former AAM player, I used the tried and true "hot water heat treatment" to straighten out the tank barrels. They've been arrow straight ever since.

Broken parts...I'd contact FFG. I haven't had the need to do so myself, but from what I've read on here, their customer service is quite good.

Mapboards peeling? I grabbed my copy right when the game came out, so it's been like two years or so now, and I've seen no sign of peeling. Warping was the issue I was worried about.

CoH supposedly came with map boards made with a new anti-warp manufacturing technique. They warped.

Maybe it's because the ToI map segments are smaller, but there has been no warping what-so-ever with my map boards. That's from the base game, DotF, Normandy & the map expansion pack. Flat as a pancake, every single one of them.

The peg thing, as mentioned above; while a pain in the rear end at first, is a fairly easily remedied issue. If I remember, I used a 5/64ths drill bit to drill out my bases from the original game, which took about 5 minutes. I had no problem with the expansions.

Good Luck with your game this week! ToI is a super fun game, hope you enjoy it.

Well I ended up having a spontanous game last night, a buddy of mine popped in unexpectadly and insisted that we play immediatly so while I was not entirely prepared we ended up doing the first scenario twice (I forget the name but its the first scenario out of the book where the germans have to take control of yellow bordered areas and hold 3 hexes before 8 rounds is up).

Anywho, for anyone that is interested here is how it went down.

I decided to take the advice of fellow community members and not screw with anything in the scenario and just play it out of the box so we didnt change anything for the first game in this scenario.

Setup took us about 20 minutes and while trying to squeeze the units into the pegs was annoying, the suggestion of using the base to fit into the soliders rather then squeezing the soldiers into the base was a very good one and I recommend it for any new guys coming onboard, it worked quite well.

Since Americans have the initiative in the first scenario and I was playing Germans I felt I kind of had an advantage as the attacker since I got to see his placement of his units. This helped me to plan my strategy a little as he thought I would be coming up the road, but instead I want the other way using the tree's to protect myself. He had a lot of his units on Opertunity Fire in the bunkers along his defensive line, but I was able to use forest as cover on my approach. I pushed my engineers forward and I stuck my only tank in a nice position where I planned (and did as I planned throughout the game) to bombard the crap out of the bunkers as much as I could.

After the first two rounds we where in a pretty even fire fight, but he started using his re-enforcement cards which quickly added to his troop count. Fortunatly in round 3 I was able to deny him the objective point on the hill to the right and I took all the other objectives in the map that where not in his starting area. This in a way gave me the advantage as I was able to claim initiative and keep it for the remainder of the game. In the fourth round I began my assault and was able to take out three full squads in one round, but during the assualt I also lost several units. I used my engineers to build bunkers and moved my machine gunners into them, which really forced a pretty nasty set of exchanges most of which I came out on top. By round 5 though things really started to go down hill for me. While the Panzer was deadly and mostly unstoppable (took minor damage) the end results of the assault was that we lost about an equal amount of units, the problem was that his re-enforcements kept coming and the Germans don't get any. The game was mostly over by round six as I no longer had the troops to successfully continue the assault, I tried anyway and managed to get 1 of the 3 objective points, but it was obvious at that point that the assualt had failed and the Americans would come out on top.

I didn't really feel the objective was unfair, but we did decide that on the next game we would removed the Morale I cards "Taking down the beast" (I think it was called) as the Americans don't have any vehicles in this scenario (nore can they get any as re-enforcements except transports) so the card was a useless draw which hindered me a lot in the game as I drew them both in the openning of the game resulting in me only having 1 useful card at the start of the game "Take Cover". It was also obvious that the Americans re-enforcements where just too good, in particular the card that offered 2 full squads out of one card so to even out the decks we removed 2 of the 3 re-enforcement cards (the 2 squad ones).

Our second game was considerably closer, but it played out in a very similiar fashion in that I approached from the same zone. Although in the second game I put some troops along the road again to draw some of the fire which worked quite well as it distracted two of his squads. In the same game the Americans also took a more active role in trying to take out the tank which he was successful in doing in the last round of the game. The result of that game was that I managed to take 2 of the 3 objective areas and the whole game came down to a single assault fight in which I had to charge a bunker with my squad of elite forces. He took out all 1 of them with oppertunity fire and then he managed to kill the other 3 in the assault resuling in an American victory.

Anyway, all and all it was two really great games. The mechanics where smooth and easy to understand, the simulation of combat was really fun and in the second game when we adjusted the scenario the scenario itself was considerably more balanced, albeit the result was two American victories.

Gamer4Life said:

A well written report of the dynamics of your 2 games. Sounds like you had fun. And had you changed sides for the 2nd match, that too would have helped to balance things out, with a victory each.

longagoigo said:

Ya we had briefly talked about switching sides but I really felt the scenario was winnable by the Germans and wanted to prove, In a way its another positive aspect to the experiance since I didn't feel that the battle was hopeless, but rather a challenge. Its a sign of a good game when both players feel strongly that despite their different starting conditions and mechanics of strategy cards that they can win. From the many forum posts and reviews about the games scenario you almost had the impression that the game was rigged to ensure that in any given scenario the outcome was predictable but I don't think thats the case at all. Even without the adjustments I do believe an experianced player who really knows how to take full advantage of the games units and cards has a shot at it.

I do believe too now that I have had a chance to play the first scenario a couple of times that there is definitly a few other approaches and I'm eager to try again as the Germans. Some of the strategies I have considered implementing are.

• Put a machine gun unit together with two elites, with an engineering specially and put them in a forest outside of the US camp and build a bunker. That way you get the cover bonus of the forest, the bunker and the suppression cover bonus for the elites. Even when firing at long range you would have a good shot at hitting something every round.
• I also planned on sticking the panzer out of range of their mortars and fire long range at the bunkers with a couple of other squads doing long range firing as well.

I think spending 2-4 rounds just laying down heavy fire would result in the American player having to do something more then hide as over time I would eat up his re-enforcement cards and with a little luck take out some of his specialty units (Machine Gunners in particular are a problem in this scenario do to their ability to fire more then once using opertunity fire).

I think its a tough scenario but I'm convinced its winnable with the Germans. I'm going to get my chance again tomorrow to prove it.

Gamer4Life said:

It's not allowed to assign specialization tokens to squads containing heavy weapons (MGs and mortars), so I'm afraid option 1 is out....

If you do manage to win "At the breaking point" being the Germans, you're definitely no New kid on the Block anymore, but absolutely a very experienced and skilled player! (It's really virtually impossible...)