Really nice job on this playthrough! I thoroughly enjoyed it, including your final thoughts on the game and OCS. The theme month sounds like an interesting idea, lots of potential. Maybe we can work something out for next year sometime.
A fine presentation, thanks! Note on OCS: There is way too much randomness. Forget about the totally random Initiative rolls, which can easily skew a close campaign by (randomly) inserting a double turn. "Surprise" in OCS is an unnecessary additional random factor operating beneath the level of the game's combat mechanism. It should not constitute a separate die roll. It can be accounted for comparing the Effectiveness/Tactical Rating of the opposing units involved yielding a net die roll modifier, doing away with a pointless procedure (unless perhaps in Overrun situations where the military factor of surprise is half the ballgame). As it is, this may be won or lost and based on a few lucky sixes or unlucky ones. That kind of thing has got to leave a bad taste in your mouth after meticulously counting out supply tokens and mules and trucks every turn. Does Surprise provide enough faux excitement to cancel the logistical tedium?
This is a great question. Kind of a long answer from me, so strap in... From a solo perspective, I like it because it keeps events interesting and dynamic. I think I'd get very bored if there was no surprise mechanic playing by myself. From a face-to-face perspective, it's maybe a little harder to swallow, but I really think that comes down to what you want to get out of the game you're playing. I'm not super competitive necessarily, and I'm not looking for a finely honed tournament game when I play OCS, so it doesn't bother me as much. But I can see where some would find it aggravating. On the whole, if I was given the choice between having random bouts of surprise swing wildly every so often versus a purely deterministic combat system (something I really dislike), I would lean toward the surprise mechanic. Thematically, I do believe that at the operational level there should be room for wild twists of fate. To me, playing OCS is a bit like playing the overall logistics officer or force commander, in that at that level I don't (want to) control the actual tactical decision-making of my forces, so it's to be expected that whoever is leading those divisions and battalions might be unprepared (or a moron). Or an enemy local commander might be a tactical genius. At the operational level, I like having new problems to solve crop up during the proceedings.
Yeah, they’re just generic units used in every game. They might be different colors based on what rules system the game came with (like you can see in these videos with the green and yellow air base markers), but they’re interchangeable.
Own it and haven’t played it yet. Intimidated by it for that exact reason, there’s a lot going on in the game special rules. I might tackle one of the smaller scenarios or the Bulge one at some point. But I’ll be doing stuff from The Third Winter first; looks like it might be in people’s hands soon.
The problem with the naval/landing rules is mostly that they are not at clear as the rest of the rules. Once you figure out the details it's working ok.
