Covering fire

@Audacity:

My understanding is that airplane facing is important for a number of things such as returnng fire from the bround in the advanced rules but dog fighting in the air between planes has no facing.

Actually it was the optional rulesetcalled the “Expanded Rules” that uses aircraft facing, and that ruleset was not widely accepted by the masses, and at the very least is not used in the official WotC tournement rules.

But yes, they made it more difficult to aircraft from the ground unless it was facing you.

Dismounting into the same hex as the vehicles will not trigger DF, and you covered why in your descussion very well.

@Half-Track:

Mot no mention of anything useful on the back of the checklist.

If there is no special treatment of these units in the rules then they are not affected by Disruption in any additional ways beyond the effects it has on all units.

Mot

Currently there is nothing that can benefit from the SS-HSF having a face-up disrupted counter between the casualty phase and the beginning of the SS-HSF player’s movement phase, so it doesn’t matter as much as the SS-HSF ignores it so can defencive-fire, etc, still.

However, I usually leave it on anyway then remove it at the beginning of my movement phase like your supposed to since that is the rule; and who knows in future sets there might be something that can effect it.

And really, it’s not like it’s a lot of effort either way.

@Rikolus:

That’s funny Grim, because our group has also been playing that the attacker has to roll 4+ afterwards to destroy the transported unit.  However, if it survives, we do put an immediate face-up Disruption marker on that unit (which gets removed of course at end of the turn if he’s still around…)    But we were not aware of the HHR you mention.
    Is it one composite set of suggested optional rules?    If so, could you post where the HHR would be found?

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

@Rikolus:

1)  Hidden Deployment.  After agreeing on the map and Objective hex, we put a divider through the middle and set up forces having no idea what the opponent will select or where he’ll deploy.

We used to do that for Warhammer and Flames of War, but now we use pennies we painted white and marked with the name of the unit underneath. This is so that we can play with a Fog of War sometimes as well, since we can move them around the board and the enemy still not know what’s there until LoS is determined. It’s cool for night battles too (or a good ol’ fashioned “dawn raid”).

@Rikolus:

2)  Four Hexes In, instead of Five.  Seems rather small and innocuous, but after a couple plays, everyone agrees that the advance into combat is more strategic and interesting with that two extra hex separation.  To make up for it, we play you can win on Turn 7, but game ends after T 11 (instead of 10).

We play on 8 maps (I bought a second starter just for more maps) and up to 3 hexes in. The tactical maneuvers before any shots are fired are way more complex than the 5 hexes on 4 map pieces. Blegh.

@Rikolus:

3)  Paratroopers cannot land in Forest Hexes.

We play with a rule that a Paratrooper must “target” a hex. On a 4+ he lands in the hex he wanted to land in. On a 1-6 he lands in an adjacent hex (it’s a hex and the game uses a d6, so it’s easy to determine where he lands). If he lands in a forest he lands disrupted. If he lands in a lake he’s removed from the game.

-=Grim=-

I’ve been toying with the idea of introducing soft cover and hard cover as game concepts for A&AM, and I’m looking for some feedback or ideas (and hopefully others might try it and tell me how it worked for them). Yes, they’re based on gross oversimplifications, but the whole game is based on such, so I don’t see this as a problem.

Soft Cover: Forests - Cover Rolls have a -1 to them, meaning that Soldiers have a 5+ cover save, and vehicles need a 6.

Hard Cover: Towns, Hills -  Normal cover rolls as per the rulebook.

Erm. Yea, I’ll explain more in a bit. I have to log offline ASAP. But I see this as being a bit more realistic and tactical without overcomplicating things. I might give the standard infantry of each nation a “foxhole” ability one of these years too, one that allows them to treat soft cover as hard cover if they didn’t move in the movement phase that turn. I dunno yet.

-=Grim=-

right you are

Here is the rule as reinforced by Avalon Hill.

The Tiger immediately disrupts a soldier unit upon entering the hex (face-up counter).  This happens before defensive force occurs in that hex.  Units with face-up disrupted counters cannot perform defensive fire.

So, in order to stop the Tiger tank from using its special ability (remember- special abilities trump the rules, as explained at the back of the starter set rule book), a soldier unit must employ its defensive fire while the Tiger is in the adjacent hex.  Most soldier units don’t have enough attack dice to equal the Tiger’s frontal defense of 7, so the Tiger will have no problem moving into the hex.