Battlelines® A Review: Part II By Jay Wissmann
Probabilities, statistical analysis and standard deviations…
Is not what this part of the review is all about. If you want that, go find a mathematician, or talk to Jeff Billings; I did. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the subject and I felt my eyes glazing over, so good luck. He did explain some of how the unit decks are balanced and of how each card adds an element of statistical balance to the whole. Fascinating stuff as he gets into the subject, but make sure you have plenty of caffeine in your system so you can keep up with him.
No, this part of the review is not going to lead the reader down the dark and twisting paths of statistical analysis. Instead I wish to speak on some basic manifestations of the probabilities, and how to use them. That means not only trying to put the probabilities to your advantage, but also to avoid some probability pitfalls that were designed into the game.
Some of the "biggies" that jump out at you when you examine the cards and play the game are:
- "missing" values on some cards,
- a trend with a predictable range of values on certain cards or types of cards,
- a tremendous disparity between the different units decks in the results (we would expect this in the unit composition between a German Panzer Division and a Russian Rifle Division and maybe even in the combat values, but the combat chance checks and the hit results were a bit of a surprise), and
- the designers "attraction" (some might call it an obsession!) with a bell curve.
One of the first things you discover as you play the game is that not all cards have a Shock Attack chance check. Basically, this means that if you toss that Stuka card on the defenders location, and it is not trumped by a Russian Interceptor card, and it survives any anti-aircraft fire, it still may produce a no result—because the combat chance check that you draw has NO Shock Attack chance check on it. Bummer. {remember what I said at the end of the first part of this review—planning?} This varies from unit deck to unit deck—the 100th Jäger Division is in the best shape with only! 24 of the 55 cards in the deck having no value in this area; the 18th Tank Corps, however, has a whopping 39!!! Of its 55 cards with no value in the Shock Attack chance check. Moral of the story—do not bet the success of your operation on having an airstrike blow away a particular defending unit (unless you have "planned" your card draw properly).
The second thing that struck me was the concentration of certain Chance values
on certain cards or rather types of cards. Look at the 9th Panzer Division
deck. It has two cards with a Chance Check of ‘1’—the 9th Motorized Schützen
(Rifle) Brigade Headquarters and the ‘Cross of Iron’ Leader card. There are
four cards with a Chance Check of ‘2’—33rd Pz Regt HQ, 11th MR Regt HQ, the
‘Captain Kiel’ Leader card, and the Panzer IIIj Company card. Then there are
four cards each that have ‘6’ or ‘7’ for their Chance Check. The 10th MR Regt
HQ and the ‘LtGen Frankewitz’ Leader card have the ‘6’s. The 9th Pz Div HQ and
the ‘Marder’ Company card have the ‘7’s. What’s all this mean? Quite simply, if
you have all five of the Headquarters, three of the four Leaders, and both
Companies on the map, there is NO possibility of you surviving a combat result
of ‘Hold on Chance’ of ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘6’ or ‘7’. By the way, there are 56
possibilities (out of 109 total—roughly half) of drawing a card that has one of
the combat results. Most of the cards have multiple chance results for the
‘Hold’ text. That means that any card that says ‘Hold on chance 1’ (or ‘2’ or
‘6’ or ‘7’ or combinations of just those values) is going to be an automatic
retreat result. Any card that has, for instance, ‘Hold on Chance 1,4,7’ becomes
a ‘Hold on chance 4’ for you. This ultimately forces the player to forgo some
of the most powerful cards in the deck—the Headquarters and Leaders with their
attendant force multiplier effect. Again, going back to my Planning mantra—plan
which ONE Regimental grouping you want to execute the current mission and keep
the rest of the HQ cards in the deck for Chance Checks.
The surprise that hit me was the disparity in the combat check numbers. I was expecting the variation in the combat modifiers, that is historically accurate; but the combat checks? For example, the 100th Jgr Div deck has the highest soft target direct fire combat check average at 5.3636. Combine that its, again, highest soft target direct fire combat modifier average of 3.2778 and you have a situation wherein opposing soft target type units are in for world of hurt.
Finally in this edition of the review concerns the use of the "bell curve". Almost all analyses of the chance checks areas of the cards show varying degrees of adherence to bell curves. Some, like the die roll chance check in the 18th Tank Corps deck read straight out of a probability text book—the respective values for the chance checks of One through Seven are 2, 4, 8, 27, 8, 4, and 2. Others show some variation, but understanding the "intended most probable value" goes a long way towards an appreciation of what you can reasonable expect the next card to hold for you.
There still remains one part to this "review"—just how does one put all this info together and make some reasonable choices?
