Matrix Games Forums

I understand that after land combat declaration, all the phases are gone through to establish the final combat odds. When the final combat odds are established, the phasing player can then decide which attack he wants to execute first.

I'd like to suggest another approach: After land combat declaration (which implies after all invasions and para drops), the phasing player should immediately be able to decide which combat to prosecute. On the surface, this sounds trivial, but sometimes the other player is not available for immediate input on whether they want to fly air support or such. So the phasing player should be able to advance the other combats first--those combats that do not require input from the non-phasing player. And when it is time to prosecute the ones that do require input from the non-phasing player, it takes less time to do that and advance to the next phase which may or may not require further input.

As part of this, perhaps there could be an indication that a given battle will require non-phasing player input in order to resolve it. Perhaps even detail the steps that may be required, such as whether HQ support or air support or engineer support, etc., will be available. Then as part of their standing instructions, the non-phasing player could give the instruction "if HQ support is all I have available, I will be declining, but if air support is available, I will want to use this or that plane, and I may also want to add HQ support in that case."

As is probably necessary for the purpose of following rules, all combat execution and resolution could still be suspended until after all relevant combat modifiers have been sorted out and applied. And of course that would ensure that (in a hotseat game) the non-phasing player could enjoy being present for all of it at once, and it's probably necessary anyway.

It sounds like a good idea, however it is against the rules of the board game.

Your approach would mean that a player could wait to assign ground support of shore bombardment after seeing what the results of other attacks are. Cooperation from air, naval and ground units together in an attack took a lot of planning and effort from the various command structures and had to be planned in advance. The way the rulebook is written simulates this by forcing players to commit air- and naval units before resolving any land combat...

Not entirely. At first I did word it in a way that would allow some land combat to be resolved prior to other.

But bearing in mind the intention to force players to commit their support prior to any resolutions, the game could save all resolutions until all commitments have been made.

I guess the main purpose for what I'd like to see is that the phasing player would be allowed time to make all commitments for all combats that the non-phasing player would have choices in. For example, if I am attacking and I have various aircraft that can support but the non-phasing player does not, I would like the opportunity to take my time studying the situation for what I want to do about that combat while I'm waiting on responses from the non-phasing player. And then when the non-phasing player was available we could resolve all of the combats.