Possible Rules Change

Razor you have a point as far as the map goes between Berlin and Moscow there are 3 territories (about 1150 miles), and between Berlin and Paris there are 4 territories (about 650 miles). The map is purposely distorted for game play though. The territories on the western front are about half the size of those on the eastern front and more urban. You are conquering much smaller chunks of land on the western front because of the dug in trench warfare that the game try’s to simulate. Movement on the eastern front is much better just because it was much more rural, so you can gain/lose much larger land masses or at least can keep larger areas contested.

You do have a valid point though. If there was 1 more territory between Berlin/Vienna to Moscow the leap frogging thing wouldn’t be an issue with the proposed rule change. The map isn’t going to change though, so lets be done with that (at least in this thread).

This whole issue is being caused by Russia holding Poland, they should abandon it on R1 because they might get cut off.

@oztea:

This whole issue is being caused by Russia holding Poland, they should abandon it on R1 because they might get cut off.

There is a lot more to the issue than that, especially on the western front. Poland is just one example.

Regarding James’ post:

Clearly, it is NOT too early for rules changes, since there have already been several, including a MAJOR overhaul of the Russian revolution.

As Krieghund himself has said, the reason for disallowing movement to a friendly territory was to disallow can opening. It seems at the time the designers knew this was a funky rule, but the can opening worry trumped that.

Now, requiring that a unit of the moving power be in the friendly territory removes a lot of the “funkiness,” and still prevents the can opening that was so undesirable. It gives the players the ability to do what they logically should be able to do still without being able to do what the current rule was designed to prevent!

In other words,without the can opening worry, the players would be able to do what I am talking about anyways. Now that a system has been proposed where the can opening worry is eliminated, there’s not much, if anything, left in the way.

Well don’t hold any territory you can get surrounded in. I understand the game rules might change to allow/disallow certain movement in this instance, but from a practical standpoint being farther away from your capital than you need to be is a bad idea anyway.

Even with this rule change I don’t think the issue will come up very often at all.

@Krieghund:

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

Clearly, it is NOT too early for rules changes, since there have already been several, including a MAJOR overhaul of the Russian revolution.

Technically, the only rules change has been to the Russian Revolution rules, and even that was more fleshing out than changing.  The remaining items are all errata and clarifications, most being the latter.

US transports would beg to differ, but I don’t think my debating this will help this thread much unless it becomes the idea that this fleshing out of the movement rule  :wink: is too big of an out-fleshing. If the situations are as rare as some of those who are expressing doubt about this adjustment would suggest, then it is a lot smaller an adjustment than the Russian Revolution out-fleshings.

Perhaps this is a question you can’t answer Krieg for certain reasons, and if it isn’t that’s cool, but if this idea (to allow movement into a friendly territory from a contested if the moving power already had at least one unit there) was thought of (or if it was thought of, considered more) during testing, would it likely already be the case?

It seems to me that if the prohibition on more logical movement was due to the obstacle of fear of can opening, and since the idea on the table avoids that obstacle, there are no more obstacles in the way of more logical movement.

@Krieghund:

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

US transports would beg to differ

I have neither confirmed nor denied that was a change, nor will I.

Sorry about that. It was the only thing other than the Revolution in red and there was no mention of it in the rules, so it seemed to me to be new. I’ll try not to assume next time.

So the US transport thing was changed or wasn’t it?  Is it just under consideration?  I am confused.

Oh okay, got it.  Thanks for the clarification.

vonLettowVorbeck1914 writes:
I think a lot of the posts on this topic come from not knowing why the rules are as they are in the first place regarding movement from contested TT’s to friendly one.

Not sure if you are in a position to answer this one, but what was the rationale behind not allowing Germany to move from a contested territory to an Austrian-controlled territory but allowing them to move from a contested territory to another contested territory that happens to have 1 (or more) German(s) there?

The reason for this rule is unfortunately very fiddly.  It’s there to prevent can openers, which were way too effective against Russia in playtesting.

It needs to be understood that the rule is as it is now because of the can opener worry. It also needs to be understood that the change does not allow that can opener, since an infantry of the moving power would already need to be there at the start of the turn.

A power would have been allowed to move into a friendly if not for the can opener worry. This particular rule change provides a means for allowing such movement without allowing the can opener. Thus, the obstacle to allowing it is gone, and there is not nearly sufficient reason to maintain the illogical rule as it stands.

By the way, there are more examples of this rule in action than just Russia. Refer to the FAQ thread and the rule change thread for some of them. Russia is the example I used most often since it was easy to imagine as it could happen quite early in the game relative to the other examples.

The simplest solution to me would seem to disallow movement from one contested area to another contested area altogether. This is what most wargames do and for good reason.

Exactly like in the other game. You move out of contested area, like ZOC ( they don’t let you move into another ZOC, you must move out first)

Played using this rule this weekend and it worked fine. I would probably refine it to count friendly allied original territories as counting as having a unit in for movement purposes just so allied troops defending home countries have the same rules for retreats, but its not that big a deal.

Our group will continue to to play with Kriegs rule proposal and report back. Out first game it worked very well with no problems.

As for the Russian Revolution, I tend to agree with Krieg that there are still ways to abuse the rule and its optional anyway. We played without using the revolution rules this week end and it was clear that had the rule been used it favors the allies and hurts the Central Powers. Being an optional rule, I would never agree to use it as a Central Power player.

Less so denying the CP a victory city (which it does) is denying them the Russian IPCs for capturing Moscow and the rest of her territories. There are about 12 IPCs that can be captured without using this rule and there simply is no advantage to the Central Powers.

The only way it might help is if Russia retreats to Moscow without fighting any major battles and forces a multi turn battle for Moscow, but even then it would only be a couple turns as she would not be able to hold on long.

My group is working on some Ideas, but for now, we wont be using this optional rule (see my game report).

Kim

I have yet to have any problems with this rule being abused (although since I came up with it I am probably not a good tester as I proposed it because I was already confident there would be no abuse).

We are coming up on two weeks since release, is there a chance of this being made official before the release of the official FAQ?

Another nail in the German coffin.

The only way they can reinforce a defensive western front already is to “ripple” units down from Kiel, each region reinforcing the one to its immediate south.

Not allowing any movement from contested would have to be combined with rail movement.

@Koningstiger:

The simplest solution to me would seem to disallow movement from one contested area to another contested area altogether. This is what most wargames do and for good reason.

We used Krieg’s new and improved movement rules, and had no hitches; in fact, it DID prevent one instance of ‘can-opening’ into Russia.

@MistuhJay:

We used Krieg’s new and improved movement rules, and had no hitches; in fact, it DID prevent one instance of ‘can-opening’ into Russia.

Could you elaborate a bit more? In testing the rule before I proposed it I found that it allowed no more can opening than before, but I didn’t notice too much can opening being prevented.