A PBEM Made of Cheese

[PimpYourAFV]

I thought this game would be excellent for human vs human cause it isn't filled with cheesy exploits but alas... I learned the hard way this is not true.

Russia (me) vs Romanian cheese artist 1941
1500 points

After a struggle almost as long and grim as the fight for Stalingrad itself, I finally found someone who wanted to play a PBEM game. I was further astonished that not only did he want to play PBEM, but he even changed his multimod version and patch to match mine. Thankful for the offer and his efforts to make it happen, I requested a meeting engagement and agreed to his option settings but he snuck in one extra nasty twist without telling me. [:@] Already dark clouds were forming and vultures gathered.

He set the visibility to one (visibility 2 but all forest which reduced visibility to 1) with reduced spotting chance. Then he bought a company of flamethrower engineers, flame tanks and artillery. That is, nothing but flame and arty. [8|]

Anyways, I bought a mix of different infantry types, cavalry, AT guns, motorbikes, a scout car platoon and 2 sections of light tanks (one section flame) as I'm not a big user of armor.

Here's how the 'battle' went... I dropped paratroopers between him and the middle objectives of which a couple landed near his horde of flamers and they were barbequed as he went first. So i moved up my units to try and locate him over the next 4 turns and was continually ambushed and torched as I couldn't see anything at all. Apparently he wasn't moving any units at all and simply waited for me to get ambushed. I'm not a camper [>:] so I had to move. I managed to push his flamers back a ways but he used arty to take advantage of my inability to unsuppress my earlywar russian blokes. The pattern was... he camped, I got ambushed, he moved his flamers away, artied to suppress, then came back and finished off my units with more flame. Over and over. He lost some flamers due purely to the grit of my sooty troops but this is no way to conduct a battle.

He seemed to be enjoying it as his emails were full of bragging. On turn 4, I told him I was quitting cause the game was so unrealistic with nothing but flamethrowers and blindness and he actually wanted to play me again. I told him to find a mouse to play with who can enjoy his cheese.

With no one responding to my pbem thread and more than a little disappointed with this exploit used against me, I decided to hang up my PBEM gloves and stick to single player. Many thanks to Wild Bill for providing fun, challenging battles to make up for the total lack of human opponents for this game. [&o]

[Alby]

Visibilty to 1 and all arty and flamers...LOL
thats about as gamey as it gets!! [:@]
dont let this one guy turn you off from PBEM!!!
what pbem thread BTW???
[&:]

[PimpYourAFV]

My PBEM thread is in the 'Opponent Wanted' forum.

[azraelck]

All I can say is damn. When he insisted on such a poor visibility I would be leery. Heck, just for him being willing to downgrade his version an remove any mods; I would be thinking something's up.

I personally don't play PBEM anymore. I got burnt out playing an AoW game that lasted two years. So now I stick to SP. At least SPWaW has AI capable of giving a fight; unlike AoW.

[sabrejack]

Don't judge all PBEM-ers by that particular opponent! Lots of us manage to have really fun games on a regular basis. My problem is that I don't have time for all the people who are lining up to kick my backside... [:D]

If you want a decent meeting engagement, 20 - 25 visibility etc in either 8.3, 8.403 or H2Hfr I'm sure I could squeeze in a small game in the near future? What kind of size are you talking about? I don't have a lot of time at the moment, so big games are out. Maybe something around 2000 points?

If you're interested, send me a PM or an email to:

sabrejack@spwaw.com

[PimpYourAFV]

The nice people always get beat up the worst. [:D]

I prefer in the 1500 to 2000 point range cause its a little more tactical. Though I wouldn't mind trying a big Somme-style battle with someone sometime if they don't mind mowing down a lot of my blokes. I sent you a pm sabrejack.

[PimpYourAFV]

I forgot to mention in the above story that my units never ambushed his units so he most probably was also redoing his turns once he found out where my units were. [:D][8|]

[Colonel von Blitz]

Oh...that just sucks! But like sabrejack said, don't judge all PBEM-ers by that one opponent. There's large PBEM community that does not cheat.

What's the point of cheating in SPWaW anyway, since it like cheating in solitaire? You can cheat the victory, but that way you'll never learn anything about tactics or the finesse of the game itself. IMO that learning part is the best part of the game: I've been playing against human opponents since the first SP, but still I consider myself barely average player and notice that after every game, I've learned something new...there is no other game that has given me this feeling and that's the reason I still consider SP to be the best tactical level wargame ever made!

-Colonel von Blitz-

[Korpraali V]

Deleted

[Alby]

ORIGINAL: TokyoBoyTensai


I forgot to mention in the above story that my units never ambushed his units so he most probably was also redoing his turns once he found out where my units were. [:D][8|]

There is a way to check ow many times your opponent has loaded the game, I forgot how at the moment...however, this function does not prove the turn has been replayed.

[JEB Davis]

TBT,

I'm sorry to hear what happened to you, it was not fair. Don't let it kill your obvious enthusiasm for this great game. When I get into PBEMs (hopefully not too long from now), I hope that type of junk isn't what I encounter.

JEB

[IBTyrone]

One of my biggest beefs with PBEM is trust. There is no place in PBEM for gameyness, and especially taunting when playing with a newbie. Possibly taunting might be acceptable if you've played someone many times before, but NOT in the first game. [:-]

That just is not right. The end result is one new promising player becomes disillusioned with what was a great game because of another player taking advantage of the new players naivete just so they can feel good about themselves. Because they were gamey. Riiight. [&:]

TokyoBoy, I've never played a PBEM, but I'd be willing to try one in your case just so you don't end up souring on the game just because of the ego issues of one player. [:@]

Most folks who play PBEM will treat you honorably. I apologize on behalf of the community to you.

[Riun T]

One of my close buddies and I have what u could call extremely gamey battles and pride ourselves on how rediculous some of our purchases and equipment turns out to be [X(] He's a fantacy gamer by preferance with no military background and very parttime real history reader so I 'm not really suprised, BUT WE'VE known and fought for years. Point being neither of us would ever do that to a novice[:-] RT

[Afrika Korps]

Lame. [:-]

[pbhawkin1]

Hi
Just to let you know I have started a DAR report on an Aussie Vs Japanese PBEM b/w myself and TBT.
20 turns
jungle
1500 points

[PimpYourAFV]

I just discovered we can use custom maps for PBEM instead of the random generated maps for PBEM are just a rectangular block of one terrain type. It should be a lot more interesting and tactical to use those custom maps I think. I'd love to do a fight in a town or an assault on a heavily defended beach. Something about charging along the sand into a hail of machinegun fire coming from the trees makes my heart sing. [:D]

[PimpYourAFV]

ORIGINAL: IBTyrone

TokyoBoy, I've never played a PBEM, but I'd be willing to try one in your case just so you don't end up souring on the game just because of the ego issues of one player. [:@]

IBTyrone, I'm sure you'd be an excellent and trustworthy PBEM player. I started a PBEM now with pbhawkins which is going fine (except I regret not using one of the custom maps I just discovered). I will start another with anyone who's interested if we can get past the version mismatches.

[pbhawkin1]

Hi TBT
am at work now and wll do my first turn later today.

[PimpYourAFV]

That's cool pbhawkins. What a drag having to work on a Saturday morning. [:(] What do you think of using a custom map if we are up for a rematch after this battle?

[pbhawkin1]

sounds good. the generated maps can be a pain and unrealstic but then the custom maps can be unfair if one person is very familiar with it and the other not.