1914 Valour - FWWC Tournament Round 5

[ComradeP]

I was also thinking in terms of bonus points for every major victory or for none. I think none would be fair, as not all players would gather enough points for full bonus points and it avoids gaming the system through (in this case) waiting before exiting units instead of achieving victory at the earliest opportunity. 

In scenarios without high value objectives or exit objectives, early termination is likely to occur with a limited number of points beyond the major victory limit.

Awarding bonus points based on when it was achieved is, in my opinion, a slippery slope. The focus has been on the end result thus far, not on when it was achieved. A nearly audible ticking clock wouldn't help with the spirit of meeting old and new opponents and playing scenarios you might normally not play. It's a competition, but it's not extremely competitive in terms of how you need to win.

[Ricky B]

Akilpio and I completed the battle. An Early Termination victory for the Allied/Russian forces with 4 turns left. -46 points as concentrated Russian brigades were pushing the Germans back with heavy losses.

[HMCS Rosthern]

I was also thinking in terms of bonus points for every major victory or for none. I think none would be fair, as not all players would gather enough points for full bonus points and it avoids gaming the system through (in this case) waiting before exiting units instead of achieving victory at the earliest opportunity. 

In scenarios without high value objectives or exit objectives, early termination is likely to occur with a limited number of points beyond the major victory limit.

Awarding bonus points based on when it was achieved is, in my opinion, a slippery slope. The focus has been on the end result thus far, not on when it was achieved. A nearly audible ticking clock wouldn't help with the spirit of meeting old and new opponents and playing scenarios you might normally not play. It's a competition, but it's not extremely competitive in terms of how you need to win.

The purpose of the bonus points was to help differentiate entrants with the same number of Major Victories. Without bonus points, it is possible for two or more entrants to score a Major Victory in every tournament game with no way of selecting which entrant is the Tournament winner. One option is to randomly select the Tournament Winner from the winning entrants.

And to be honest, Early Termination was not considered in this bonus point scheme. As per the manual, and some testing,
Early Termination
In some scenarios, the scenario designer has designated the scenario for Early Termination. In these scenarios, if one side or the other gets a Major Victory at the end of any turn in the scenario, then the scenario is automatically stopped at that point and the victory condition determined.
The “*** Scenario has EARLY TERMINATION *** message is displayed for both sides in the Turn 1 Command Report. It is not displayed again in the scenario.

Having considered the comments, I think the simplest solution is that no bonus points are awarded when Early Termination is in affect. This tournament is based on the notion of competing for Tournament Points, where the “winner” of the tournament is the entrant that accumulates the most Tournament Points over n Tournament Rounds. As long as Early Termination is not in effect in most of the Tournament scenarios, the rounds without Early Termination should still provide for sufficient entrant differentiation over the tournament as a whole.

[SvenDuuva]

ComradeP and I finished our battle:
Allied Powers minor victory with 984 points.

[ComradeP]

The cropping of the map and the placement of the exit objectives make this frustrating to play for the Central Powers.  I guess after the frustration in previous rounds for the Entente/Allied player, that might be fair.

Due to the point where the map cuts off, any forces outflanking the Russians need to cross two streams to reach the exit objective. Slightly to the north, they'd only need to cross a single stream. This feels too constrained. There were, as far as I can determine, barely any Russian forces north of here up to the 26th Infantry Division at Glowno (according to Buttar, the 43rd Infantry Division moved there as well, but the military map used by Volcano Man shows the division moving into the Lodz salient and it's present in this scenario).

This is also one of those scenarios where there was a lack of coordination to a lesser (Germans) and greater (Russians) extent historically, whereas the Russians can use all their forces to good effect to delay the Germans. That the Russians only need to hold 15 hexes to win, with 4.5 divisions also doesn't help. There's no incentive for them to close in on the pocket, preventing the Germans from exiting will nearly always result in a minor victory unless they lose a lot of units.

The Russian cavalry isolated my forces for 7 turns, but that wasn't too much of a problem. Aside from the field guns, the Caucasus Cavalry Division was eliminated after that.

My lead unit was 2 hexes from one of the exit hexes at the start of day 3, but chewing through stacks of Russians simply wasn't possible in 6 turns with the forces at hand. I'm surprised I nearly got a Draw. 1004 points on my turn, 984 points by the end of the Russian turn. My losses went up sharply on the final day as 50. RD tried to push back the Russians. Russian losses were even worse.

Well played by my opponent, it's unfortunate that we both felt the scenario was a bit too gimmicky.

[wildb]

Witblitz vs Wildb

CP Minor Victory - 1371 points