Playtesters wanted for hypothetical Czechoslovakian mini-campain (October 1938)

[RolandRahn_MatrixForum]

Hi!

I'm working on a mini-campaign with (currently) 11 small scenarios which takes place from October 1st, 1938 to October 3rd, 1938.
The player commands a platoon of 4 Czech vz35's against the German invasion of the Czechoslovakia.
The campaign starts with easy victories (the Germans are marching into the Czechoslovakia without expecting resistance), continues with a doomed effort to reinforce As (a border city that can easily be cut off) and ends with a desperate evacuation back to the Czech lines (after As has been cut off, the fleeing Czech troops make a desperate nightly attempt to cross through German territory - directly through an assembly point of the German army).

I made some experiements (two scenarios enable the player to capture enemy equipment, many scenarios start with the player in close range with the enemy - big Ooops when realizing that the column which you have just joined is an enemy column).

At this point I'm not sure if I should continue the campaign - the successfull evacuation would mark a good ending point, on the other hand I could imagine 20 more scenarios putting the player in defense battles against German troops, with the Czech tanks manouvering between Czech AT-Bunkers against numerically superior German forces, while the alternate history would continue....

Anyone who would like to take a look on this campaign may send me an email (roland.rahn@cityweb.de), the zipped campaing has just a little more than 0.5 MB size.

I would appreciate if we could discuss possible corrections/extensions here within this thread.

At this point, I really want to know if this campaign is worth to be continued or not.

And I think that any campaign that is larger than approx. 10 scenarios risks that players stop playing it at an early stage, therefore I think that it might be the best thing to correct the existing scenarios and than publishing the campaign on a website.

Oh, and one thing:
IT IS NECCEESSARY TO BUY EXACTLY 4 TANKS. OTHERWISE, THE LATER SCENARIOS WILL NOT WORK (THE PLAYER MUST CAPTURE ENEMY VEHICLES, AND THIS ONLY WORKS WITH A CORE FORCE OF ONE HQ AND FOUR ADDITIONAL UNITS)

Regards,
Roland (who thinks that are many countries in the OOB that would deserve at least a small campaign )

[RolandRahn_MatrixForum]

OK, I got two feedbacks about too few points.

I testplayed the campaign with 'True troop cost' on.
With this option, the 270 points where sufficient:
The HQ costs 150 points, leaving 120 points to purchase a tank platoon.
I corrected it to 400 points, there are now enough points to purchase a complete tank platoon even when 'True troop cost' is turned off.

Thanks for the feedback.

PS: There are some horrible spelling errors in the texts and sometimes the text at the end of the scenarios is too long. I'm currently correcting this.

[NaKATPase]

I just played the first scenario of the campaign.

I liked the feel of it... it gave me a good "oh *#$* what's going to happen next?" kind of feeling.

Some more specific thoughts:

1. The ammo dump in the objective hex in the village is really tough... very useful for killing any germans that try to move into the hex. Was this deliberate?

2. The german AI seemed to really bunch up their troops especially just south of the bridge. This made my job easier, since it increased the instance of multple casualties (I think I killed three recon patrols in one shot)? Does this represent the relative untrained nature of the german troops at this time?

Actually both of these things were quite helpful to me, the second one in particular. I got a marginal victory, and I'm not sure I could have had the germans spread out more... as it was, my milita squads at the border got pretty badly cut up by the german firepower.

Overall a fun scenario, can't wait to play the next one

[RolandRahn_MatrixForum]

Well, I must confess that the Germans are shooting blanks in many scenarios of this campaign.
First of all, the German army gained some (not much) experiences in the occupation of the Czechoslovakia in October 1938/March 1939 - you know, formations suddenly running out of fuel and all that stuff.
Please take into consideration that the German army was in a process of a very quick build-up in the mid- and late 30s, so the German army of October 1938 isn't exactly the same battle-experienced force that invaded Benelux in May 1940.
However, the *big* effect in this campaign is that Germany doesn't expect serious resistance at the beginning of this campaign. The UK and France confirmed the German demands in Munich and made it clear that they won't intervene.
There are several points where the Germans made gross errors that could occur when hastly improvising - there is, for example, one scenario that starts with a German airdrop of supplies near a village the player has secured in the scenario before .

And the last scenario is more something like a hollywood-movie-action (after the lines of communications are cut, the player has to cross into German territory, assault a german assembly area and.... )

But I think that I will need a lot of feedback before that scenario is balanced (the first versions were so difficult that I couldn't win despite having the hindsight were what unit was, later versions become too easy and so on).

Oh, and the presence of mutineering troops in the rear areas gives an exuse for the sudden appearence of anything from any direction

The first scenario is the only scenario that had been modifyed since I asked for playtesters, the first version was a little to difficult for the player to win, so the next scenarios might be less fun to play.
The only feedback I gained for the second battle was positive and that I shouldn't change anything.

So, with feedback for every scenario, and a few more adjustments, this might become an enjoyable, funny-to-play mini-campaign (also it surely isn't very realistic - for example, giving the player the opportunity to repair one destroyed tank after each battle wouldn't be possible in real life).

Roland