Wednesday 17 December 2008

Play the game as written

I have been a gamer for decades and have never found a gaming system that has completely satisfied me, but I have refrained (for a long while) from changing rules to suit my purposes. I used to do it all the time and over the years I learned why you shouldn't 'house rule'; read make shit up.

When you change something, you never know how that is going to affect the game down the road. It may have no effect, or at least no immediate effect, but for the most part, the rules are all interconnected.

Last night Martin and I played a 1000 point Flames of War battle and I slaughtered him. I won convincingly, mostly because we made up our own scenario on the fly, rather than following the approved ones from the rule book. The scenario we played, forced Martin to move forward while I waited in cover from which I could hammer him at my leisure.

It was still good fun though. My highlight was my command Stug IV being hit by three Sherman tanks and 2 PIATs and not even being scratched.