Tea breaks, Turn cards and reinforcements....

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dsenebrecht
Posts: 101
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:13 pm
Location: South Burlington, Vermont

Tea breaks, Turn cards and reinforcements....

Post by dsenebrecht »

Hello all: was wondering if you can share your ideas on how to deal with reinforcement issues and when they come on as well as how Tea Break cards and Turn cards interact with each other.

Was playing Royal Tanks scenario from EPSOM Skirmish Campaigns book.
-Rolled a D4+1 for when my halftracks would enter, resulting in a "enter on Turn 2."
-Started game with just two blind cards and no tea breaks nor any turn card. After both teams's blinds cards had been pulled, the units started to see each other and we thus put in the two tea break cards and the turn card.
-we then had several firefights take place and 2-3 cycles of both tea-breaks before the Turn card showed up thus declaring that Turn 1 had been completed.

So, Turn 2 is officially happening.
-We played several cards however the German blind card did not get pulled and therefore the Halftracks did not enter ( I had them as on a blind as they were entering with bocage screening them. Then two tea breaks finally happened (and I said this isn't right).... and then I put in a separate card for the Halftracks which then finally got pulled and we were on the board.

Has anybody come up with ideas for how to handle reinforcements or delayed entry? The deeper one goes into a game, the more cards get in the deck and therefore it gets harder for them to enter......
Should reinforcements get their own card? If so, when?
Can reinforcements automatically enter at the start of the Turn they are designated to come in on?
At some point, how many cycles of the one/two Tea Break cards does one say........okay, that counts as a Turn......

Thanks, Dan
Archdukek
Posts: 5742
Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:49 pm
Location: Linlithgow, West Lothian, UK

Re: Tea breaks, Turn cards and reinforcements....

Post by Archdukek »

Dan,
Basically those are decisions you need to make it advance as part of your scenario preparation. There is no specific formula of how many Tea Breaks equate to a Turn, it all depends on when the Turn card is drawn. You might expect the reinforcements to come in on Turn 2 but maybe they got lost. :-)

John
dsenebrecht
Posts: 101
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:13 pm
Location: South Burlington, Vermont

Re: Tea breaks, Turn cards and reinforcements....

Post by dsenebrecht »

Thanks.

1) I am mistaken, or don't some IABSM-specific scenario books specify putting in a Turn card to mark the passage of Turns?
2) In normal IABSM parlance,.......If each Tea Break represents a "turn", then at the start of (and early into) he game there might only two blind cards and just a few activated cards, "turns" are much more likely to occur faster....whereas later in the game...with more cards in the deck.........turns take longer and thus reinforcements come in after more units activate......with decreasing chance of Tea Break being drawn.
3) for the various Scenario books from TFL, what is the standard rule used by most gaming clubs? Each TB represents the end of a given Turn?.... every two TBs equals one Turn? Use a Turn card only? Use a Turn card as a marker plus every third TB also equals a Turn?
JimLeCat
Posts: 888
Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2013 8:57 pm
Location: Durham, England

Re: Tea breaks, Turn cards and reinforcements....

Post by JimLeCat »

Hi,

You are not mistaken, that is exactly what John was referring to. There is, however, no fixed formula, the number of times the Turn card is drawn before an event such as reinforcements arriving depends entirely on the scenario.

The usual approach would be to use a Turn card for uncertain events (like reinforcements arriving) and a count of Tea Breaks for more certain events (say the arrival order of the initial forces in an attack).

Note that the number of cards in the deck has no bearing on whether a given card is drawn in a turn. If you have one Tea Break it's 50/50, or 2/3 with two Tea Breaks. A large number of cards mean more individual actions are likely to take place in a given turn, and make it more likely that *something* will happen before a given card is drawn, but don't change that statistic.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Jim
Archdukek
Posts: 5742
Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:49 pm
Location: Linlithgow, West Lothian, UK

Re: Tea breaks, Turn cards and reinforcements....

Post by Archdukek »

Hi Dan,
I've been having a further think about your question and the situation in your scenario.

As Jim says, the chance of any individual card emerging before the Tea Break card remains constant irrespective of how many cards are in the deck. However, for units on table there is a better chance of getting them to do something in the Turn because there is usually both a Big Man card and the Platoon card in the deck. If either is drawn then some or all of the unit can act. The odds reduce to a 25% chance of neither card emerging so nothing can happen if one Tea Break card is used.

For your scenario you might want to include both the specific reinforcement card and the blinds card in the deck at the start of Turn 2 allowing the unit to activate on either. If on the blind card it will need to be spotted by the enemy, on its own card you would put it on the table representing the fact that they had rushed to the scene and foregone the benefits of a more concealed approach.

Might make the reinforcements arrival a bit more predictable for you. :-)

John
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