What is your opinion of the WADBAG Manoeuvre ratings?

Nice posts Primuspilus.
I’ll try and respond as best I can.

1. You said: “All of a BUA (including Edifice) must be placed within 6 BW of two adjacent board edges.”
As Martin said, you’re wrong I’m afraid. Read the rules. See page 7, paragraph 1, second sentence:-
“...except that all of a city or fort must be within 6 BW of 2 battlefield edges.”
A Edifice or Hamlet has no such restriction, and can be placed anywhere.

2. My map: I thought you would have realized that the road would be going over any hills placed in quarters 2 & 3.
My fault for not making that clear (and I spent a long time drawing that map as well).
So here are two clearer versions.
In this first one a hill has been placed in quarter number 2:-

…and here a hill has been placed in quarter number 3:-

(I’m not bothered where the other hill goes…maybe it was discarded, or maybe it’s in quarter number 4, doesn’t matter)
By the way, this is assuming an Arable defender. A hilly, forest, or tropical defender is much better off.
They would have 4 pieces of bad going (2 compulsory, 2 optional, and a road), making it easier to form the 'Maginot Line'.

3. My Camp: this not inside the Edifice…it’s not allowed.
The Edifice is too large to be a camp, and as you say, camps must be placed along a back edge (see the FAQ).

4. You do realize that the defender moves first don’t you.
So who is it that is going to be zooming along the road to take possession of the hill? Why, it’s the defender.
Now I assume that in the first picture above the invader will take the north as his deployment area.
In the second picture the invader could take either end of the road to deploy in.
It doesn’t matter…the defender moves along the road first (assuming he has enough PIP’s, but that applies to both parties).
To avoid the risk of PIP shortage, the defender could always use woods instead of difficult hills, then no one is uphill.

5. Your Road Torpedo: this is going to run smack into an Ax that is uphill of it, as the defender has moved first.
It will have a combat factor of 4, while your Sp has a combat factor of 2 (page 6, very last sentence: “Combat (on a road) is in the going it is passing through). You’d be better off using Bd, but it will still be 4 vs 3.
And if you’re not careful, your road column will be entirely pinned by X-ray Threat Zones.

6. Surrounding: How? Your ‘Road Torpedo’ has hit a roadblock.
The only way through this wall of terrain is to attack frontally, in bad going, against an enemy uphill of you.
The Threat Zones generated by defenders hiding inside the bad going prevents you from going around them.

7. You say: “I believe your 75% claim has not been thoroughly battle-tested.”
Oh, I can assure you that it has…and it works only too well.
It’s why I introduced the random terrain generator in the first place, to reduce the likelihood of it happening.
Still, instead of just speculating, why don’t you give it a try yourself?
No need to do a full battle, just roll a die and place an Edifice, two difficult hills, and a road, and see what you get.

As for reality and historical examples…we could argue until the sun grows cold.
Suffice it to say that if the Persians, being the defenders, have to attack, how come it was Alex the Great that did the storming across the Granicus and Issus rivers? According to you he needn’t have bothered. He should have waited for the Persians to attack him. And did Caesar march into Gaul and wait for them to come to him, or did he spend 8 years actively advancing, storming towns and settlements, and attacking and subjugating one tribe after another?
Would you have the Spartans losing if they don’t attack the Persians at Thermopylae?
As for Hannibal, the Romans eventually used the same tactics that the allies used against Napoleon in 1814.
If Napoleon is present, leave him alone and defend. If one of his marshals is present, attack them.
Likewise, if Hannibal is present leave him alone and defend. If one of his allies or subordinates is present, attack them.

I fully agree that routing the invader is the desired goal. But delaying the invader is better than being routed by him. That’s why the “Mapless Wars” mini campaign system gives 2 ‘Strategic Points’ for defeating your opponent, but only 1 point for defending and surviving till nightfall…and the defender must still possess their camp.



Some potentially useful player aids can be found here, including the latest June 2017 FAQ and the Quick Reference Sheets from the Society of Ancients:-
fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reference_sheets_and_epitomes

Funny, both the Napoleon example and the Hannibal example show about a decade of mercilessly attacking the invader, before finally switching to delaying. Would Russia have defeated Napoleon if they hadn't first fought hard at Smolensk and Borodino? Would the War of Nations in 1814 have been successful without first subjecting Napoleon to almost a decade of "softening up"? The invader will NOT become war weary unless you give him war. That is a fact. If you run, he simply grabs it all, plunders your cities, and sells your women and children into slavery. A tidy, massive payoff for your trouble. Sorry, not buying it.

Strangely enough, you and your group seem to be in the minority when it comes to suffering from a plethora of stalemated games.

You know, come to think of it, the rules in DBA do not prevent you from setting up your entire army facing away from the enemy, against your back edge, and simply agreeing to have your army commit mass, ritual suicide by doing nothing while the enemy rush forward and pin you against the board edge, say. Seriously, nothing stops that. You could say "'tis the season for giving" or some such.

In other words, you can always, in DBA, carry on like a total doofus, and nothing in the rules is going to say "Step 1. Switch off the car. Step 2. Get out and enter Stevie's house. Step 3. mind the cat/dog/kids (fill in the blanks). Step 4. refrain from grabbing all of Stevie's supply of Scotch in one go..." etc.

Now I maintain that your terrain setup is NOT bullet proof. Problematic, yes, but while I review your deployment, as a bad going army, requiring you to attack a Sp and Cv heavy army seems to me to have been the perfect ambush. You laid the trap to sucker the invader into this God-awful valley. Your troops expect you to now put up or shut up. There's killing of invading to scum to be done, before they start raping my wife and babies!

It helps if you fought some of the dirty frontline colonial brush-fire wars in the third world last century to really know how it feels to be invaded, and to consider avoiding battle while the enemy close in on your farms, towns and Missions... Sorry, when it comes to the psychology of war, it is far, far easier for keyboard and tabletop warriors to have fantasies about delaying and guerrilla tactics against an invader than to suffer the rape and slaughter of your entire village while you are out humping a backpack through the hills. On this, I am right, having lived that firsthand, and seen what it did to comrades and to army morale.

By the way, the Persians attacked/advanced at Issus with Cavalry - they knew their horse (but for the Companions) outnumbered and outclassed Alexander's. And Alexander was actually deployed in a very awkward position, and his troops were in danger of being gunned down by Persian bowfire (Arrian). (So I am in favour of allowing Persian Takabara to have bowfire (+2/+3), but to fight CC as 3Ax... )

So what I have done, by forcing YOU to have to win, is to deploy terrain that will assist YOU in attacking ME. Otherwise, in your example you gave, simply declare that you are refusing battle, and we go to a siege-type campaign subjugation roll.

Cheers, mate!
PP

I would just add, for those who have just lost loved ones in it, war is ALWAYS personal...

My point was, twofold:

1. In ancient warfare the cases where the defender was forced to fight outweigh (in my view statistically significantly) the cases where the defenders were able to avoid battle. Wargamers typically aren't leaders of men in war in real life, most have never been generals (I am friends with a retired admiral, and have known two generals) and have little understanding of the politics of war, in my view. Political and popular pressure to attack by the invaded party is sometimes overwhelming, and for good reason. It ins't the invader's farms and villages being burned. As a thought experiment, try to imagine what would have happened to an invading army that crossed the Great Khan's borders. Exactly. If Kublai or Ginghiz had simply sat there and not attacked, he would have been knifed by his political enemies as a weak man...

2. my mechanic is cleaner and simpler than additional rules overhead of scouting, or inventing new terrain for an "equitable" terrain setup.

By the way, my campaigns work great. The side that has "won" the right to deploy the battlefield is under pressure to show results for having forced his army to march through the night. No only that, but your Borodino example is interesting. If, having deployed the army, the French had refused to attack, would the Czar have just sat there? Really? Seriously? And basically just ceded the occupied territory to France, who would have rapidly been able to fully absorb into the French sphere. Napoleon need not have attacked at Borodino. The Russians would have been forced to throw him out, or cede territory to French Dukes. And attack him they did. Mercilessly. All winter. 

I don't care if the defending army exists, but is hiding. Neither did Alexander. But by the arguments here, the right play for Darius after Gaugamela was to head into the hills, and wait for Alexander to get tired, and go home. Oh wait, he (Darius) tried just that. We know how that worked out. He was knifed by his own guards, eager to cut a deal with Alexander, and thrown in the dirt to die...

Stevie, you are not considering other terrain configurations that the Ax/Ps army can use to attack the Good Going armies. With faster moves through bad and rough going, you can place a large BUA as hamlet (5x4 BW, say), (this slows the GGo army, and also removes QKs on light troops, and isn't a lost element if taken), as well as placing smaller pieces of additional terrain. You can fit two 3x1.5 BW pieces in a single quarter. He has to defend his camp. You can outmaneuver him round the RGo, BGo combos. I m not saying it is easy. I am not even saying it is an even fight. But is not impossible to win if you set up the terrain in a favourable way.

It is better than it used to be.

So why is your Time of Day display any better?

I just think the side that sets up the board (i.e. controls terrain) should pay for their choices. I have provided ample historical evidence and argument in favour of requiring the defender to press the issue. In a historical/campaign setting, I have the mechanics of evasion (light-troop-dominant armies can be made to evade more easily) and siege/subjugation, but at potentially significant cost to the defender. If the defender "offers" battle, he must fight. He is losing territory, supplies and civilians on a daily basis. The invader is not.

You are obviously not providing enough flagons of mead before and during your games to whip up the battle lust!


Hic!

Simon

 

What? You incentivized cowardice in your armies, Stevie! Sacrilege! The Gods of War are most displeased...

I just believe we as tabletop generals do not have to sleep in tents not too far from disgruntled lieutenants, whose only likely economic compensation for the catastrophic costs of war is whatever they can scrounge from dead enemies. Assuming we win. It is fine to wish to deny the enemy your mead supply, Stevie. But to deny it to your own men... oi, oi, oi....

Also, by the way, the blockading tactics you speak of are (a) very difficult in real life, and (b) what I would call at DBA campaign scale, "standing siege" in that battle space...