Cretinous rules interpretations?

[Ivan Sorensen]

Let’s share some war stories.

What examples do you have of guys (or gals, it’s the modern age after all) making a mockery of a rule to get some sort of advantage?

Whether its creative interpretations, omitting details or other scoundrel-like behavior.

[Phil Dutré]

Many decades ago, when we were still high on Avalon Hill games, we played Air Assault on Crete.

That game has one side deploy its counters upside-down, including a number of dummy counters. The idea is that the opponent doesn’t know where units are deployed. The dummy counters were bright yellow ( see here: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1254589/air-assault-creteinvasion-malta-1942 ). It turned out to be that when you looked at a certain angle at the board, you could see a yellow shine coming from underneath the counter.

So, my opponent was looking almost parallel to the board, to know where my dummy counters were placed. I complained it was not fair. He answered that the rules didn’t specify at what angle you had to look at the board, so it was fair game.

 

[Ivan Sorensen]

That is wonderful 🙂

[Les Hammond]

Phil, I think I would have walked out.

6mm France 1940

http://les1940.blogspot.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/386297688467965/

[John D Salt]

The classic I recall being reported for the old S&T game “Grunt” (a brilliant game, later modernised as “Search and Destroy”) was the player who, insisting that there was no rule saying that the six-strong squads had to be removed from play after six KIA or WIA had been inflicted on them, proceeded to surround an enemy squad and inflict 36 casualties on it, all worth victory points. I imagine that this sort of thing is what inspired later SPI rules writers to stipulate things like the expenditure of movement points entitling a unit to move from one hex to an *adjacent* hex, rather than just “another hex”.

“Grunt” also had a scenario that the US player could win by declaring, by turn 4, that this was the “day-to-day” scenario, and no enemy were present. Unfortunately the number of counters in the NLF order of battle was different for each scenario, so it was possible to tell this rather easily just by counting the number of enemy units on the map. Easy enough to fix by making all the NLF orbats up to the same number with dummies, of course. Several other games have “broken” scenarios — SPI’s “Raid!” and VG’s “Panzer Command” both include scenarios that, if one bothers with a little simple time-and-distance analysis, one side cannot possibly win if their opponent knows what they are doing.

A rule interpretation that annoyed me was one a friend of mine made in a game of SPI’s excellent “Fighting Sail”. He used a “wear ship” maneouvre counter to put himself in an advantageous position, and I pointed out that he hadn’t put the stern of his ship through the wind. He (being a better rules lawyer than sailor) maintained that he didn’t have to. We checked the rules, and he appeared to be right! One hopes it was picked up in errata eventually.

Not an interpretation, but the rules themselves — I wish I could remember which set of naval rules stated that ships could never increase or decrease speed by more than half their current speed. It sounds as if it might be a sensible rule, until you realise that it means that ships in motion can never stop, and stopped ships can never move.

And then there are the weird torpedo rules in “Submarine” that meant that there were numerous pairs of points on the sea surface that could not be connected by a straight line…

All the best,

John.

[Phil Dutré]

Les Hammond wrote:

Phil, I think I would have walked out.

We were teenagers back then. That explains something.

It was also the time when we kept a tally of how many rules mistakes were made during a game. Since English was/is not our first language, we sometimes argued a lot about the specific phrasing of a rule – esp in AH games. So when we found out someone had made a mistake, it was ok when he “was behind in the count”, just to make sure things were fair. 😉

[PatG]

DBA wherein the tactique de jour was jockeying to get your base a fraction of a millimeter behind that of an enemy base so that it would be destroyed rather than simply recoiling.

[willz]

I was playing a “Rapid Fire” game several years ago and my opponent insisted that he could crawl an entire battalion of infantry over open ground and that I could not see them as they were in soft cover.  I pointed out that 600+ men crawling through a field would be visible even to the most inept soldier.  To solve the problem I just drove a couple of tanks over them, he then claimed that I could not advance within 6 inches as they were not supported, I pointed out that he claimed I could not see them.  At this point I moved up my supporting infantry and proceed to shell and shot them to pieces.  Never played with him again for some reason.

[General Slade]

When I was very young I once played an American Civil War game against a guy I didn’t know very well or like very much (he was the son of friends of my parents and they were staying for the weekend so we had to attempt to get along). I don’t remember what rules we were using but they required you to write orders for every unit at the beginning of each turn (back then I liked writing orders – it made it all seem very realistic and grown up).

Anyway, despite never having played a wargame before, my opponent totally outmanoeuvred me.   Everything I did he seemed to have second guessed.  He won easily and then proceeded to gloat about ‘beating me at my own game’.  Once the weekend was over and I was clearing the troops and terrain away I found his order sheet.  Next to each unit he had neatly printed his orders for every turn.  And every order was exactly the same:

DO WHAT YOU LIKE

DO WHAT YOU LIKE

DO WHAT YOU LIKE

DO WHAT YOU LIKE …

[Prince Rhys]

Back when I was a young man – a teenager, I had a regular DBM opponent at the local club – he was in his forties and helped and taught me to play DBM with my medieval armies. I never actually beat him but came close a few times. And on a couple of occasions I couldn’t work out how I had lost. As I grew up and became much more familiar with the rules I realised he taken advantage of my ignorance of the rules and cheated me out of a couple of victories. I couldn’t believe it!

[Shahbahraz]

Not sure if it counts, but a set of Napoleonic Naval rules (for simplicity one assumes) assigned the weather gauge to whichever side had the ship closest to the wind. Which simply meant that you sent a corvette or similar to sit at the very edge of the table, and the rest of your ships could be wherever they pleased. Thanks Warhammer, Trafalgar not the best set of naval rules ever.

Another beauty I saw, but didn’t get the full details of was a competition Warhammer game where one player had what looked like a delayed deployment for his supertroops, and his opponent simply sent single models to line the baseline at the appropriate intervals, so he could never come on. Much squealing..  umpire unimpressed.

Many, Many Many More…

--An occasional wargames blog: http://aleadodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/ --

[James Manto]

Asking for road movement bonus for a helicopter following the road.

[DM]

Shahbahraz wrote:

Another beauty I saw, but didn’t get the full details of was a competition Warhammer game where one player had what looked like a delayed deployment for his supertroops, and his opponent simply sent single models to line the baseline at the appropriate intervals, so he could never come on. Much squealing.. umpire unimpressed. Many, Many Many More…

This game?

Can’t Cheese a Cheeser (Warhammer)

[Mr. Average]

The reason I don’t play with power gamers or rules lawyers. What a mess of jerks trying to out-jerk each other.

[Shahbahraz]

Different one I think, happened in Australia at Cancon, and that is not Cancon. Probably around 2000. But that’s pretty much an identical story.

--An occasional wargames blog: http://aleadodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/ --

[Guy Farrish]

Possibly an Urban (Wargaming) Myth?

If so it’s a great one .

Sounds like an ideal start for a bit of postgrad research:

‘Mythic Creation and Development in the Social Construction of Unrealities: A Postructural Analysis of Wargame Tall Tales.’

Excuse me, I’m off to write a funding application.

[Noel]

I guess the lesson here is never to play with anyone from Crete.

 

[Phil Dutré]

Shahbahraz wrote:

Not sure if it counts, but a set of Napoleonic Naval rules (for simplicity one assumes) assigned the weather gauge to whichever side had the ship closest to the wind. Which simply meant that you sent a corvette or similar to sit at the very edge of the table, and the rest of your ships could be wherever they pleased. Thanks Warhammer, Trafalgar not the best set of naval rules ever.

Really? I played quite some Trafalgar games, but don’t remember this at all … ?

[Etranger]

John D Salt wrote:

The classic I recall being reported for the old S&T game “Grunt” (a brilliant game, later modernised as “Search and Destroy”) was the player who, insisting that there was no rule saying that the six-strong squads had to be removed from play after six KIA or WIA had been inflicted on them, proceeded to surround an enemy squad and inflict 36 casualties on it, all worth victory points. ….

Perfectly accurate for Vietnam of course if he was using the Westmoreland Body Count method of scoring….

[Author]

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