Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War Summer Tournament

[Tcao]

Oh, so your opponent decided to move Abrams at the beginning of the game and sit on your spawning point?

I took out my opponent HHQ + Arty, but I used a different approach. I had two CFV recon section hold fire, sit on the hill monitoring the valley. After I saw all sixty WP tanks transferred to the right side of the map I initiate my raid. I commit all my Abrams which were hiding in middle section. issue 6 waypoints orders with last two guiding the raiding party back to friendly territories.

I lost two Abrams , wipe out the NVA's HHQ + 18 x 2S1 SPArty, increase the WP's command cycle to astonishing 73min. Then Abrams get into new defense position right before WP side's tank formation started their assault.

[DIVM]

Yes, he moved at least 1x Abrams and 3-4 of the Bradleys to the hills overlooking the spawning area of the arty, it was ready for a butchery. I was lucky that I had sent a group of Tanks that way, and used a couple of my recon with HEAT weapons to present enough of a battle soon enough. At least I keep a full arty and the HQ alived, made the NATO lose over half of theirs between the counter attack and artillery strikes, and eventually won the match.

But again, ideally this wouldn't be even possible. I feel some scenarios should be tweaked for Pbem play.

[Tcao]

yes agree. And I hope in the future the game can allow us to choose where the reinforcement show up on the map

[Argyll]

Thanks for all the feedback, particularly on scenario selection.

These scenarios weren't designed with 'competitive' balanced gameplay in mind from the start, but I'm working on a strategy that we can rapidly generate symmetrical maps and create balanced scenarios that we can deploy for each tournament season. That way, we can mitigate the griefing gameplay, like spawn camping or artillery exploits.

If anyone has ideas for tournament-minded scenarios, please let me know here.

What I'm thinking is a progression of echelons scaling up as you progress:
Scenario 1: Company level skirmish on a small map.
Scenario 2: Combined arms Battalion level battle on a medium map.
Scenario 3: Combined arms Brigade level operation on a large map.

Or maybe we can do a consistent scale as a tournament theme? For example: light infantry company scenario, armored squadron scenario, and mechanized infantry company-plus scenario (with tanks and mortars attached).

[Uberhauskaninichen]

Thanks for hosting the tournament.

The first tournament's scenarios were great being Chance Encounter, Schlacht bei Deimelstadt, and Return to Fulda. From the Southern Storm tournaments Crossing the Waldnaab, The Heilbronn Gambit, Brothers in Arms, and the Great Escape are good tournament scenarios. I haven't played A Final Push in tournament so I'll reserve comment on that one. But the following are exploitable: Lesson of War (race the Soviets to the objectives, shell the roads that the WG will take (but disagree that is an exploit), An Autobahn to Far (WP can race to WG reinforcement area and even smash through the few PzGrens available to send to defend it, in CW the artillery coverage did improve to protect this area compared to SS).
I do like Panzers Forward but it can be argued if it is an exploit that the WGs drive to set up an ambush of the Cz reinforcements. The Armoured Fist and Go West Young Man have been discussed, but for Alamo at Soest, if the Poles attack through the northern riverbank road, not only is it the most protected route, the Texans don't have a lot, even with cross attachment to stop a breakthrough with and are in real trouble when the Poles don't attack in the open. The new scenario EA Knife, also with Texan M60s and the Poles, is a great meeting engagement and I think it will make a fantastic tournament scenario.

Also, any scenario with an immobile FARP setup in one hex only is highly exploitable.