3 things I'm tired of

[Kool Kat]

Gents:

To EA or not to EA? That is the question?

My apologies to Shakespeare... as I butcher one of his famous lines! ;)

I'll throw my into this discussion too!

IMO, EA is a situational optional rule. It "breaks" many "pre-EA" designed scenarios and unbalances many "classical" ones. It's fine for scenarios designed with EA in mind.

And in terms of scenario design, EA is sometimes the "only" method available to the designer, to achieve balance. For example, in my Rising Sun "The Battle of Manila" scenario under going testing in the H2H Section; I originally designed it without using EA. Unfortunately, in repeated test games, the Americans were able to steamroll the defending Japanese and essentially win the game halfway through the 20 turn scenario. For a battle that historians have described as the "worst urban warfare in the Pacific theater," my scenario was pretty much an American "cake walk" without using EA. :)

However, in an ideal JTCS world, I would like to see a close assault rule that eliminated and voided the "disrupt-surround-destroy" tactics... but took it a step down from current EA game mechanics. IMO, EA essentially decreases and in some cases, eliminates the option for players to actually use close assault - even when preceding assaults with the recommended "softening up" by massive amounts of direct and indirect fire into enemy held areas. This restriction on close assault is especially true when attacking entrenched defenders in built up areas like suburbs and city hexes.

NET: I think EA went a little too far to the "Extreme" side of close assault... and if it could be "moved" a little more to the "less-Extreme" side... it would be an acceptable compromise for more players.

Hopefully, we are not with rolling out another EA discussion?