Just played Scenario 2A and I have a great concern about the victory conditions.

Reading them carefully they essentially say you get a victory point each round for each unit leader within range of an objective token one of which is placed by the attacker. It can’t be in his set up zone but it can be placed just outside of range two.

A slick attacker, if he has one more unit than the defender, can just get close to “his” objective and camp there. The defender would then need to come across and become the attacker which is completely against the theme set up in the operation.

Sure, it wouldn’t be very nice for a player to do this and stand things on their head but many of these operations are used for tournaments and the like, and in that setting with prizes or advancement in the balance, I could easily imagine a player doing what he needed to do to win

Perhaps a solution would be to allow both sides to score some end of scenario points for being in the defender’s set up area, thus penalizing a sit and do nothing approach by the attacker.

Has anybody else run across this issue?

I definitely noticed this issue when I played. It turned into a standstill dice rolling competition.

I just played the scenario against the best player in our Legion group, and probably the best player in the State of Maryland.

I was the attacker, and I believe the designer of the scenario intended to have the attackers go retake the mine, so that's what I tried to do. Were I faced with this scenario in an important, prize-laden tournament, I don't think I would have done that.

On 9/8/2018 at 7:21 PM, kac said:

Just played Scenario 2A and I have a great concern about the victory conditions.

A slick attacker, if he has one more unit than the defender, can just get close to “his” objective and camp there. The defender would then need to come across and become the attacker which is completely against the theme set up in the operation.

Perhaps a solution would be to allow both sides to score some end of scenario points for being in the defender’s set up area, thus penalizing a sit and do nothing approach by the attacker.

Has anybody else run across this issue?

I am looking at preparing to run 2B next week. The Imperial player took the mine for the first game, so I expect that the Rebels as attacker will be easily able to muster an activation advantage and be able to game it.

(We are playing informally so we are not forcing the same list between games, and I want to give Imperials access to Scouts and Boba, but I do want some list consistency. I was thinking to ask players to take at least one of the same commanders and/or 50% of the same list in points.)

That said I wonder if this issue can be avoided if the TO plans the terrain well, or players use competitive placement rules.

I plotted the legal area that can hold objectives on the card above, and overlaid range 1-3 bands for weapons.

Notably the defender can bring all of the legal token placements under fire without having to move from the deployment zone. Only a few small corners are out of range 2 fire.

Considering those as the ideal possible token placements for the attacker, I drew 3 dashed blue circles showing where unit leaders had to be to score against those locations. For 2 of those placements almost that entire region can be fired upon from the Defender's deployment zone at range 3. The notable exception is the bottom left.

So, if there is heavy cover near the edges of the defender's deployment zones, putting down hurt on a 'camping' attacker from relative safety seems quite doable. Further more, if the lower left position is left exposed through either TO design or competitive placement, the attacker 'advantage' is reduced further.

Now obviously other LOS blocking terrain could change what an attacker considers the 'ideal' position for their token, but any alternate positions will only bring them closer to the defender.

Given that the defender gets either barricades to place (ideally within one move of their deployment positions and bringing all three circles under fire - or long range commlinks to try and flank an attacker, it seems like the Defender might have an extra boost to try to pry loose that camping Attacker.

You certainly have some good thoughts here. My only concern is that when I design scenarios, I would want them to stand on their own rather than rely on a smart TO doing his part.

UNLESS, of course, I was strictly prescribing required terrain.

In either case, there are flaws in this (and other scenarios I've pointed out) that need to be fixed. Frankly, I'm curious about doing this with NO attacker placed token, and simply giving attacker 100 extra points and seeing how that would go.

Yeah, I will play it today.

Still am concerned that with activation advantage the defender basically has to kill more attacker units every round than vice versa, and not let their back court get weak. Seems tough, but I am game for the challenge, am taking this as best case scenario of preparedness.

A simpler solution (if needed) could be just to make the valid zone for token placement range 3 from the attacker deployment. That should more than solve it I wager.

I've played this scenario as attacker and defender, and observed another match. In all 3 games, the defender quickly accumulated an insurmountable VP advantage. The defender should be gaining 8-10 VP per turn; there's no way the attacker can compete.

So when I played it, it seemed like the Defender was in good shape (and won), but actually if the Attacker had rushed my base instead of fighting over the tokens I think I'd have been crushed!