Gamey or Not?

[Jzanes]

I'm the allies and it's May 1942. For the last few weeks, I've suspected my PBEM opponent plans to attack Russia. On the latest turn, I spotted a japanese TF sailing up the river towards Komsomolsk. The soviets are still not active. There is a soviet base with a CD fort at Nikolaevsk guarding the mouth of the river. My opponent confirms that his intention is to land at Komsomolsk on D-day as part of his surprise attack.

My opponent and I are bouncing emails back and forth regarding whether this is gamey or not. This discussion is very cordial and I'm sure we'll work it out without too much bloodshed. But anyways, What do you think? Gamey or ok and why?

[mike scholl 1]

Not just "gamey"..., it's totally idiotic.  Makes no more sense than the British allowing the Germans to sail up the Thames to invade London..., or the Germans to allow the Allies to begin Operation Overlord by landing in Paris.  Pure "exploitation" of a loophole in the programming.  [8|][8|][8|]

[AW1Steve]

For what it's worth , I don't think it's gamey , but I am surprise that entering Russian inland water didn't automatically trip Russian entry into the war. [:)]

[AcePylut]

Gamey - that Russian CD fort would be blasting away at the first sight of the Japanese.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Gamey - that Russian CD fort would be blasting away at the first sight of the Japanese.

I agree. By 1942, the SOV and JAP had had many border squabbles up to division sized. The SOV would never have allowed a JAP convoy to sail upriver during this time. On the other hand, I wish you were doing an AAR as I would love to see the outcome of this. I look at the force analysis and it looks as though attacking SOV is a kamikaze stroke at best. If your opponent is going to activate the SOV for you I would find that game VERY interesting to watch.

Might you consider to open this up to an AAR? Please?

[AcePylut]

Good point... are those invasion ships going to be get "out" of the river without getting blasted by the CD fort?

[PresterJohn001]

maybe a bit gamey but hell if he wants to attack Russia in May '42 let him.

Just think of the Japanese fleet as a large diplomatic party with escort...

[Canoerebel]

Come on - this is really, really, really silly.

[Dili]

If the river is the border and his ships are okay for the river size then it is not gamey. Unless there was some sort of river demilitarization agreement between both countries. It is bit silly because ships are highly vulnerable in rivers.

[dasboot1960]

river doesnt look like much of a border with soviet bases on both sides.....

But if such gameyness will bring the Bear in early - gamey on!

[Alfred]

Jzanes,

Your opponent is engaging in totally unacceptable behaviour and you should both go back to an earlier save.

Komsomolsk lies on the Amur River, well over 200 miles from the Sea of Okhovtsk. Komsomolsk is well within Soviet (nowadays Russian) national territory, and quite far from any international border. Not until much further upriver does the Amur form the international border with China/Manchukuo. In real life there is absolutely no way that the Soviets would not have attacked a Japanese invasion fleet at the mouth of the river - does your opponent not know history and what happened in 1938 and 1939. His action is akin to the Kriegsmarine (or the IJN, in both cases using suitably sized ships) in September 1941 sailing up the Mississippi River, past New Orleans to land at Vicksburg.

Let him go up the Amur after the Soviets are activated, when the invasion fleet has to run the gauntlet of Soviet airpower, artillery and troop transfers along internal railway lines. To be able to move upriver without activating the Soviets is out an out exploitation of the game engine and a most significant bug.

Alfred

[SuluSea]

Gamey to the 10th power.

[Rob Brennan UK]

Definateley Gamey , but its your game and IF your happy with it then go ahead by all means. Also one more here for you to do an AAR of this invasion. Your opponent is being extremely creative doing this. In addition i wonder how many of his ships will get back out past the now active CD guns. Looks like a one way trip to me.

Game on !

[Jzanes]

Thank you everyone for the feedback.

It looks as though we will be going back a couple turns and my opponent will have to activate the russians first before trying to run past the CD guns. I believe he conceded that sailing up the river without activating the russians was gamey but was trying to argue that he could rush/bluff/confuse his way past the CD guns on the turn he attacked russia and thus get by without facing the CD fire. Whether or not this would be historically possible seemed like a non-issue to me. In the end, it just doesn't seem fair and a little too gamey for me.

It just so happens that there is an AAR of this game and I will be sure to update it with all the results of the russian adventure as soon as we get going again. Here's the link to the first (12/7/41) entry if you wanna get caught up;

tm.asp?m=2347310

[USS Henrico]

It looks gamey to me despite the tendency of the Russians to constantly be caught by surprise historically.

It assumes that Geisha girls were supplied to Nikolaevsk garrison for the evening and the girls drugged the Russians so that no response was made to the Japanese TF. On second thought, I've seen far worse movies than that, so maybe that could have happened. [:)]

Anyway, I wouldn't want to be discouraging the Japanese player from letting you have all those AV and aircraft in May 42. And you might be able to pump some supplies into China overland to hit the Japanese from two directions. Hope you've had the Soviet units replacements on and been training their pilots.

Go for it!

[rader]

Though I would jump in here with a couple of comments because I'm the Japanese player.

I thought for context, I should paste in my "thinking out loud email" (see below). Note that the original plan was to land on the CD guns at the same time as running past them to simulate a surpise landing/forcing of the river.

***Important: After some testing, I have determined that the CD guns will not fire at any passing ships, even if the Soviets are fully activated in a previous turn. This is probably not WAD, as I imagine that the river mouth was supposed to be designated as a strait (but was not for whatever reason).***


////

I think there are several issues at play here.

1. Is it gamey to sail far up the Amur without triggering a Russian activation?

Probably is, I'll give you that. I can't imagine a fleet sailing up there not triggering some kind of reaction.

2. Is it gamey to be able to sail past without the CD guns firing during a surprise attack?

Maybe, maybe not - this is far less clear to me. It depends on how much authority the local commanders had, and even if they had it, whether they used it. I'll give you that the Russians and Japanese were probably on alert. However, remember that the Russians at the start of Barbarossa had explicit orders not to fire back even if fired upon, lest they provide a pretext for war. The Russians were in no mood to get embroiled in a war with Japan anytime from June 22, 1941 to early 1945, and may have taken extreme steps to avoid it. There are tons of examples in history of fleets sailing past defenses or escaping because the defenders were unprepared to stop them. For example, the Goeben was allowed to escape by its British pursuers because the DOw had not come into play. I honestly don't know if this is gamey or not.

3.) Is it reasonable that a landing party of sufficient AV could supress the CD guns for a fleet to go past?

Again, I could see this either way. This kind of thing has certainly happened in history both ways.

4.) Should it be illegal to perform an action that is not dissallowed by the actual game rules or by house rules?

I'm not really sure how I feel about gaminess, but I guess I could sumarize my thoughts by saying that I generally believe that the game does have some limitations, and it is in the realm of house rules to prevent or limit gaminess. Some kind of HR on this moving upriver issue is probably a good idea (but I wasn't even aware of the possibility of this at the start of the game). If there are loopholes, the rules should change to close them - or in the case of WITP, this often means that house rules should be agreed upon (either ahead of time or when we discover a particular failing of the system). Now, I don't think this necessarily gives the players carte blanche to do anything that the system allows. In fact, I considered port striking San Diego on Dec 7 to bag the Saratoga, asked the forum about it, and decided it was too gamey. But I felt that even mentioning anything on the subject of Russia would very much let the cat out of the bag. In this case it does mean from my perspective that you are asking for a house rule. I guess it depends on how much of a game vs. simulation you consider it. I don't mind a little gaminess that is allowed by the rules provided it dosen't bother either player. But this apparently dosen't fall into that category.

I'm not really proposing anything specific here, just thinking out loud. The main concern I have is that whatever we decide may impact how I feel about the whole Russian adventure, which has been occupying my planning for pretty much the whole game. If I have to make big changes on what's allowed at this point, it might bring the whole structure down. I'll have to think some more about it. For starters, I have no idea what the CD guns would do to a fleet sailing past. But I will say that the whole attack on Russia is based on the navigability of the Amur and being able to land at Komsomolsk sooner rather than later. Without that, I never would have considered attacking Russia in the first place.


///

[Jzanes]

Rader (my opponent) and I had a good talk and further sorted this out. He did some testing and it seems as though no matter what he tried, the CD guns wouldn't fire at ships passing by anyways. We agree this has something to do with the fact that the hex isn't coded as a "strait" and that CD guns only fire at ships passing through a strait. He agreed to activate the russians with a landing in the night phase and then sail through in the day phase. It's not his fault that the CD guns don't fire so this seems fair to me. At least he won't be landing several hundred miles up the river on D-day.

[CapAndGown]

Well, my main reaction to this was to laugh. The things players will come up with! No wonder bugs show up: we constantly do things that the programmers never thought about. A creative ploy. Though why one would want to activate the Soviets is beyond me. Guess rader is going for the auto-victory.

[witpqs]

Mine the river.

[:D]

[akdreemer]

Gamey as 2 day old road kill. Any entry into the Amur River should have triggered Soviet Activation.