Indeed. It would be a very short game. ;)

I'm boycotting this scenario, it's a nightmare to comprehend. :)

play ss and stall forever you'll automatically win.

Reading the whole dang scenario made my head hurt.

I'll pass on this one.

WTF are they smoking?

No; "at least" -> "not less than" -> "greater than or equal to".

Actually, only the first sentence alone is needed for the loophole: have only units whose point value is at least 200. Then no units will defect. The second sentence is there to help mitigate the effects of the defection; if you don't have any big units, you'll only lose the smallest unit(s).

This thing is a stupid senario plain and simple. Who ever dreamed it up should be killed, shot, dragged down main street or dropped down a long dark hole.

Man! What do you do when they forget to give you the king-size fries at Hardee's?:cool:

I see your point...

The first sentance leaves a loop hole alright... its obvious. And the logical thing people expect is for the second sentence to close or atleast restrict the use of that loop hole, but instead it talks about something else entirely. In my mind its a second loop hole because its another way to remove the randomness (your description is also correct about mitigating the worry over larger units defecting).

The problem is the ease with which this can be misread by someone who has the very logical expectation that sentence #2 will close sentence #1's loop hole.

But it simply doesn't.

This would have made sense if it read like this:

"The Swordsworn player randomly determines a unit to defect to the Liao player, using only units with point values of 200 or less. If there are no units worth 200 points or less, the unit with the lowest point value automatically defects to the Liao player."

There, isn't that clear?

The Swordsworn player now takes three 200-250 point 'Mechs and a peasant company. The peasant company will be the only unit that defects, providing it lives long enough. If it dies before the defections, you're going to lose the cheapest one of those big 'Mechs.

It's pretty obvious to me that that's how they intended the rules to read. Now we just wait for the second clarification. Hopefully it'll also clarify the unit's locations (I expect they won't move, but clearly some people are confused on this), tokens clearing (why would they?), etc.

-= Lunatic

"Random" means you bring your d20s with you to the scenario. ;)

Ah lunatic u got it :)

but.. if i have 6 pesant comp ? and scater it trough the table *with infiltrate*
how do you planing to kill all in 4 turn ? :)
*not talking BR one*

Lunatic - I agree that's what they meant, and hopefully that's what we will end up with. But I have a plan if the rules stay as is too.

Hi all

I like the scenario rules, even though they do need a second read to get the gist of them :-) I see it playing out that the SS player will try for 3 mechs of 200+ value, using them to cause as much damage as possible. Maybe even 2 mechs of 300? The rest of the force would be a grab bag of generic low cost units, something like two or three 30 point vehicles as harrassers. These units would be obviously what will defect, which then absolves the SS player of needing to worry about losing too big a chunk of their force.

In return, the Liao player will be able to predict this and will likely go for a high speed force that can hunt down these minor units before they defect, thus meaning they can focus on getting a major mech to defect to their cause. All in all, this would make for an interestingly contested maneuvering and high engagement scenario in my opinion :-)

Cheers

Tramapolean

They might have meant what they said when the posted the rules. Maybe those loop holes are suppose to be there.

First loop hole:
If the SS brings 3 200+ mechs, they don't defect. But he has no support units. VTOL's can move and shoot them. Infantry swarms can base them. They can be tank dropped. Arty can shell them. So it's not all in favour of the SS. But it would be fun to actually use 3 200+ mechs in game for once.

Second loop hole:
If all your units are below 200 points, cheapest units defect. This helps even out the game. It's 800 points vs 550, so make sure the SS don't lose their best units. Also, it's a challenged in that the Liao player will try to kill the weakest SS units early in order to get the better SS units.

Not quite, Myoga.
With 3 x 230 mechs, you have spent only 690, leaving 60 points for support. Not a lot of points, but with it the SS player can make a wall of 15 peasants until they all defect, then hunts them down for 60 points of cheap kills, especially if they happened to be pushing already. You now have 690 vs 600, in favour of SS, which closes out your second loop hole.

Anyway, just some thoughts :-)

Tramapolean