Understanding the counters

[Freddy Fudpucker]

Okay,

So would some kind soul like to explain what the numbers etc mean on the counters? I've never seen the board game or played any game using counters before. Seeing the amount of numbers on each counter is giving me palpatations of how I'm going to ever going to understand them when I finally get to play.

(I'd paste some piccies of them from the unit depiction threads as an example of what I mean, but I'm supposed to be getting back to my work![8|])

[Froonp]

Look here.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/froon/WiF/UnitsD/UD.htm

[Klingon]

Yep... my only real beef (they have a lot of info to show, and very little space to do it in) is that for the most part, they give examples, instead of definitions. Air units being the exception; it says "this one is black, means it's a night fighter; this one is red, means it's a tank-buster.". Makes sense... ok, now looking at the Naval... Ok, *this* is a CL, and *this* one is a CA... how can I tell the difference? Nothing I've seen tells me what *makes* it a CA or a CL; I just have to look at the differences, and guess?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Klingon
Yep... my only real beef (they have a lot of info to show, and very little space to do it in) is that for the most part, they give examples, instead of definitions. Air units being the exception; it says "this one is black, means it's a night fighter; this one is red, means it's a tank-buster.". Makes sense... ok, now looking at the Naval... Ok, *this* is a CL, and *this* one is a CA... how can I tell the difference? Nothing I've seen tells me what *makes* it a CA or a CL; I just have to look at the differences, and guess?

Things are always tough to understand when you start something new. And seem so obvious to the experienced person that they have trouble explaining them. I'll take a crack at this here, but the long term solution is to have excellent tutorials that can be called up during play when you need a question answered.

MWIF comes with 80 optional rules. Try counting slowly to 80 to get a better understanding of what the implications of that are.

Many of the unit types only appear if the corresponding optional rules have been turned on. As you can see in this screen shot from the Start A New Game Form, 24 of the optional rules pertain to adding additional types of units.

When you first play MWIF, a strong recommendation is to only use 3 or 4 of the optional rules - those that make playing the game easier, not harder. That will remove the more esoteric unit types and reduce the number of units with different colored symbols.

Land units have 2 numbers: combat and movement

Air units have 5 numbers: 4 for combat (air-to-air, air-to-sea, tactical and strategic bombing), plus movement; an optional rule is to include carrier based air units which have a 6th number that indicates how big the carriers have to be to hold the air unit (i.e., class of carrier).

Naval units have 6 numbers: 4 for combat (surface attack, surface defense, anti-aircraft, and shore bombardment), and 2 for movement (movement points - time at sea, and range - distance from port). Some ships are limited in how far they can go from a port (range = 2) but can partrol a sea area very effectively (movement = 6). You really need to understand the naval movement and combat rules to get a handle on what the implications are of these numbers during game play. Carriers do not have a shore bombardment capability, so that location on the counter is used instead to denote the carrier's class (i.e., which carrier based aircraft it is capable of carrying).

For land units, standard NATO symbols are used to differentiate infantry, armor, mechanized, engineer, marines, etc.. When the unit size is different enough to affect play (i.e., a division and not a corp/army), color coding is added to make it easy to detect during play.

Naval units are all pretty much the same for movement and combat. The difference between a CA and CL is very slight: CLs are an optional unit type that only appears when using Cruisers in Flames rules, CAs can transport divisional size land units while CLs can not. For the most part, if you understand how one naval unit moves and fights, you know how to do it for all of them. The tricky bit for naval combat is that there are 3 types: surface, air, and ASW/submarine. But that is another whole discussion.

Air units come in 4 flavors: fighters, land bombers, naval bombers, and transports. How the bitmaps are drawn lets you identify an air unit's type at a glance. There are screen shots else where in this forum that should provide enough examples. Or go to the reference Patrice provided a couple of posts above.

If it hasn't already become obvious, a newcomer to WIF is not going to be able to understand very much about how to play MWIF without going through the tutorials.

As in a lot of things in life, Strengths are Weaknesses. WIF provides a fairly detailed simulation of WW II with excellent interaction between air, land, and naval forces and a reasonable simulation of the logistic and production side of the war as well. But there is a price to pay. The game has a lot of details for a player to learn and the most difficult areas to master are exactly where WIF has the most to offer: the interactions between air, land, and naval forces.

[Froonp]

Naval units are all pretty much the same for movement and combat. The difference between a CA and CL is very slight: CLs are an optional unit type that only appears when using Cruisers in Flames rules, CAs can transport divisional size land units while CLs can not.

I believe that this is wrong. CLs can carry DIV as CAs can. 22.4.6 Light Cruiser does not mention an exception to the 11.4.5 optional rule 25 SCS transport who says that SCS can load divisions. CLs are SCS as CAs are.

The difference, in WiF the cardboard game can be viewed by looking at the back of the counter.
A BB will have another name on the back (WiF BBs), or will have a black large ship silhouette, and be worth 2 BP for the first cycle to build (SiF BBs).
A CA will have a black ship silhouette on the back and will cost 1 BP for the first cycle (SiF CA).
A CL will have a grey ship silhouette on the back and will cost 1 BP for the first cycle (CLiF CL).

[stretch]

see, I told you guys we needed to have the backs of the counters in the game [;)]

[Freddy Fudpucker]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Look here.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/froon/WiF/UnitsD/UD.htm

Thanks. This was excellent.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

the long term solution is to have excellent tutorials that can be called up during play when you need a question answered.

Thnks for the reply Steve. The above quote sounds particlularly intrruiging for a novice like me.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: stretch
see, I told you guys we needed to have the backs of the counters in the game [;)]

Not at all [:D]
MWiF writes CL, CA, BB, on the ship counter front face [:D]