Has anyone played Herbstnebel?

[techumseh]

It's Darth Veda's mega-game of the Battle of the Bulge, released a few years ago. For some reason, I never tried more than a turn or two at the time.

Once you get past the first couple of turns moving long columns of German tanks along roads towards uncertain objuctives, it's really rather good. I expecially like the night turns, as the graphics are quite striking.

He's really put a lot of work into this. Has anyone played it recently? Any strategies I should know?

http://www.darthveda.com/

[Boco]

Only play-tested an earlier version. He really rewards good tactics: using city captures to heal units, investigating cities before capturing them, covering potential guerrilla spawn sites before city capture, letting the US spend itself in attacks against strong positions, then mopping up, micromanaging 'supply' cities, etc.

He changed the geography since the play-test , so I have no useful tips about routes.
I'm not much of a WWII panzer fan , but this one was a blast! Very well done. His razed city terrain under cities was a nice touch.

Btw, you influenced the design. In the play-test, I suggested using crippled spies (kubelwagon?) for recon after seeing it in one of yours. He added it in the next version.

[our_man]

I only got around to playing v1.0. I tried a few turns of v2.0 but never had the time to get into it. Herbstnebel is a true successor to the epic war scenarios of Red Front & 2nd Front - you could almost swear Nemo did Herbstnebel too (hopefully that's perceived as a compliment)!

I still remember looking at my units stats at the start of the scenario and imaging what a cakewalk it would be. That was... naive. I struggled to a stalemate.

It really is a stunning piece of work. Weather and night conditions make it an almost unique experience. It makes it even more of a shame that he never got around to his Korean War scenario.

[kobayashi]

I agree with the comments above...

You'll like it, especially if you enjoy high difficulty games.

[techumseh]

I've found a frustrating design element. It's the fortresses in towns. They are pretty much invulnerable, as DV says in the Readme. Many are based in Liege, which has a fort unit that's based in Namur. You CAN get into Namur, but it's the most distant major objective. All of which really shuts down your options, except trying to take Namur.

[curtsibling]

The support documents and levels of scenario preparation are astounding.

I think this one will be on the list for reviews!

A few games are in order to re-aquaint myself with Herbstnebel first.

[Boco]

Originally posted by techumseh
I've found a frustrating design element. It's the fortresses in towns. They are pretty much invulnerable, as DV says in the Readme. Many are based in Liege, which has a fort unit that's based in Namur. You CAN get into Namur, but it's the most distant major objective. All of which really shuts down your options, except trying to take Namur.

If the scenario has an Achilles heal, it is the fortresses. DV felt that the Germans should follow the historical route. He actually increased the fortress stats after the playtest.

Programming the AI to anticipate other routes is a tough challenge. It's a straightforward method to funnel the player, but there are other more player-friendly ones that could have been used as well. I feel he did a great job on geography in the anticipated area of play. If that attention was extended to the flanking regions, the scenario might not need to rely so much on fortresses. Likewise a few events covering human incursions into nonhistorical paths could have helped. That's a lot easier said than done, and I have no idea what his remaining stack space is.

Tech, do you see many parallels in the challenges to the designer between Herbstnebel and Market-Garden?

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Boco

If the scenario has an Achilles heal, it is the fortresses. DV felt that the Germans should follow the historical route. He actually increased the fortress stats after the playtest.

Programming the AI to anticipate other routes is a tough challenge. It's a straightforward method to funnel the player, but there are other more player-friendly ones that could have been used as well. I feel he did a great job on geography in the anticipated area of play. If that attention was extended to the flanking regions, the scenario might not need to rely so much on fortresses. Likewise a few events covering human incursions into nonhistorical paths could have helped. That's a lot easier said than done, and I have no idea what his remaining stack space is.

Tech, do you see many parallels in the challenges to the designer between Herbstnebel and Market-Garden?

I didn't want so much to make wide changes to the German strategy which the huge map might have made possible, eg: attacking north towards Aachen. I wanted to take Spa, which is just outside the historical line of advance and where the American fuel dumps were historically.

(I did this because I misinterpreted an "Operations Report" saying my fuel supplies were low and I needed to capture some from the Americans. The message turned out to be just historical filler, but that's another story.)

But Spa has a fort unit homed to Liege, which has a fort unit homed to Namur. So as far as I can see, the whole thing hinged on capturing Namur, at the far end of the map.

The game puts you in the position of retracing the steps of the German attack very closely. Almost all of the events represent historical events - in great detail. Having said that, it's very well done and quite challenging - the Americans are hard to kill and very dangerous.

[techumseh]

As far as parallels with OMG, I think there are some. Both are a race against time, with resistance to be overcome, river barriers to be crossed and counter-attacks to be fended off.

I used unattackable fort units as well, but only 3. Their function was less to channel the advance as much as it was to protect the spawning areas for the German reinforcements along the edge of the map.

Alternate routes for the allied advance were found and exploited by Fairline during playtesting. With ToT, I had enough events power to set up alternative German counterattacks which made the original route preferable, though not mandatory.

Darth Veda's choice of a massive map combined with the less powerful MGE vehicle tended to limit his options. Without event flags and multiple triggers, it's more difficult to respond to alternative strategies on the part of the human player.

With a small map, the AI can handle more, and fewer events are needed to respond to moves by the human player.

[Boco]

Herbstnebel's map is pretty big. That often does make spawns and goto's more local in nature. I've got to look at flags in OMG!

Originally posted by techumseh
Alternate routes for the allied advance were found and exploited by Fairline during playtesting. With ToT, I had enough events power to set up alternative German counterattacks which made the original route preferable, though not mandatory.

Didn't Agricola whip the AI with an unusual strategy as well?

[techumseh]

As a matter of fact, yes he did. His playtest was after the changes I made in reponse to Fairline's playtest. He took the standard route, using superior tactics rather than a new strategy. Since he based his game on a detailed analysis of the scenario and since it represented the highest level of play, I thought it was unnecessary to make further changes. If you can play like John, you deserve to win!

[Boco]

Ever try your hand at Herbstnebel, Agricola? I'd say I have a dim recollection that you did, but most of my dim recollections turn out to be fiction.

[AGRICOLA]

@techumseh



I'd like to repeat what I've posted before: Market Garden is one of the few scens that I have played where there is both scope for innovative play and where such play is amply rewarded. The only other one that comes to mind is Red Front 1.4, especially during the summer and fall of '41.

M-G is a very fine scen indeed.

@Boco

No, I haven't tried it, but Lafayette did a very good job playing it.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105479&highlight=scenarios+from+the+community

[DarthVeda]

Heh... two years after the fact isn't too terribly late to respond, eh?

As for alternate routes: I was really pressed for events space.

Why MGE? Most people playing were still using MGE at the time. Don't get me wrong I'd have loved to use ToT but it didn't justify the work if only 25% of the community could play it.

[McMonkey]

Hello Mr Veda, or can I call you Darth?

Slightly off topic but I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your Sengoku Jidai scenario. We have recently started a seven player PBEM game at Civ Webring and it is going very well. We decided to make a house rule forbidding the use of Daimyo's for attacking for the first eight turns. This was designed to avoid giving the players at the beginning of the play order from wiping out their unfortunate neighbours in turn 1.

I have heard rumours of a ToT conversion which would eliminate the tech problem when you kill an enemy unit.

Have not played Herbstnebel yet but after reading the old posts I will give it a go!