The Commander Series Forum

Been playing the odd solo game recently after finding a Printer with good ratio over ink volume to cost of cartridges, allowing me to print off vast armies of counters for various nations from the rulebook. Been mainly playing Assault-based games but it got me thinking that I'm primarily playing against a "lifeless" enemy, which is funny considering I'm playing a solitaire game.

Just wondering what the best way is to "live up" the enemy and I thought about three ways to do it; Reactive Move/Fire, Normal Orders, Card-Based, or a Planned way of thinking.

Normal Orders would follow the same procedures laid out in the game but it kind of gets me thinking I'm playing myself and not another army, if you know what I mean. Far more involving but less efficient for an NPC enemy.

Planned would be a procedural way of thinking the enemy has, such as IF enemy unit moves here THEN does this/that. HAS enemy fired, YES; fire back, NO; fire first if within range, etc. Might add a more structure to my solo games but would require research for each nation and tactics during specific times of the army lists.

Card Based, I got the idea from Memoir '44 where cards determine what strategic decisions you can make, and I even tried it out by splitting a 6'x4' battlefield into 1 central area, and a left and right flank. Using the cards for the enemy primarily, I managed to have a fruitful game playing with equal forces but the doctrines determined how many cards could be played per turn; Rigid=1, Normal=2, Flexible=3. Couldn't find a way to work out Guerilla doctrine effectively. The game was close and I lost a good many units on the right flank and many suppressed in the centre but was able to get units from the left flank to support and finish off the enemy.

Reactive Move/Fire is essentially the Initiative phase but instead of the enemy having a turn it is always the player's turn with the enemy reacting to the player's orders. However the player only has a set number failed commands they can have before the game is classed as failed. I used 50% of a CO or HQs Command Value. With a +1, +2, and +3 depending on the Doctrine the army has.

Just wondering the extent some of you folks have gone to spice up solitaire gaming or have you stuck with the rules in the rulebook?

I always play both sides but have a set of home made chance cards, one drawn before each turn, to add a few suprises. I use these instead of mine fields, off table guns, air strikes etc. They include "Heroic Action"- a unit gets multiple turns, "infiltration"-an inf unit can move 3 times normal distance, low ammo, weapon jams, and so on. As I think of new events I add a new card and each event card also adds a blank card to the pack so that some moves nothing special happens.

I play most of my games solo, and sometimes, for the sake of speed, I make what I believe is the most logical decision. But there are plenty of times when it's not clear, or I want to make sure I'm not unduly influencing the enemy (i.e., playing against myself), or I want to give an opportunity for something unexpected to happen, so I use a 'decision matrix."

I use a D10 thusly:
1-3 = Most dangerous course of action.
3-9 = Most likely course of action.
10 = Goofiest, craziest, dumbest, most different course of action.

Example: An enemy infantry unit is sitting dug-in, with two of my infantry units not far from it, and one of my tank units behind them.

I would probably set it up like this:

Most likely is, the enemy team stays in its hole and fires its weapons at my rifle teams.

Most dangerous is, the enemy moves from its holes (hvy cover) to its right, behind lt cover, but then takes an AT shot at the flank of my tank. This assumes my rifle teams can't just gun them down as soon as they move. And for folks thinking this should be 'most likely,' I disagree, must guys don't want to move with enemy nearby, unless it's backwards.

Goofiest/craziest/etc... could be, they get heroic and decide to leave the cover of their holes and charge into close combat with my rifle teams; or, they're in a decent position, but get a little flustered and decide to bug out, that is, leave the holes by falling back out of LOS to my units.

The key is to figure out your three options before you roll, and stick to it! It's not perfect, but it works pretty well for me.

Like you, I also have Memoir '44 and I keep finding myself staring at those damned cards, trying to figure out a way to use them in solo gaming. The best I've come up with so far is to play my forces like BKC/CWC (activation), then pull cards for the enemy's activation. I haven't tried it yet, but the whole issue seems to be figuring out a good balance of cards to forces.

For example, you could pull one card per command stand, maybe two for the CO, then move that many units in that area (using the 'normal' Memoir '44 left, right, center. The problem is, that might not give you enough opportunities. You could try rolling a D6 per command stand/CO, though this could give you way too many moves, and you find yourself overrun very quickly.

I'd bet that rolling a D3 or D4 per command/CO is probably the best, though you'd have to do a bunch of playtesting to figure out the right ratio, and still realize you could have some pretty generous swings to one side or the other, that is, too much/too few activations in any given turn, or even game. But BKC/CWC, with the die-roll activations, can be like that anyway.

If you really got it nailed down, you could bump from one card per, to D3, D4, or D6, based on troop quality.

Certainly an interesting discussion, I'm always keen to hear what fellow solo-gamers are doing to 'liven' up the enemy. And this should be on the 'solo' board! Lord knows it rarely gets any traffic

V/R,
Jack

The way I figured out the Memoir'44 route is a mixture of opportunity/reaction fire but the enemy does not suffer any negative modifiers but there are also a small YES/NO categories I follow for the enemy too from the examples below.

1. Is the unit in range? Yes, fire if able to, No; move full distance toward nearest enemy unit or objective.
2. Did the unit fire last turn? No; fire this turn, Yes; use a unit that has yet to fire.
3. Is the unit holding the objective? Yes; fire this turn, No; use another unit.

As I mainly play armour-vs-armour games with a few helicopters thrown in, extra cards such as Barrage, and Close Assault don't really apply, so stick to the core deck. I find now that one card per turn is too few for the enemy and have gone through the route of 2 cards per CO, and 1 card per HQ. This has me on my toes, especially facing off against my old nemesis; the Russian armoured company