TFB was my first experience as CO. I enjoyed the experience immensely. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
What I found, especially when the going got rough, several of my GL's finally stepped up to the plate. I got the responses I had hoped for and asked for from the very onset of the scenario. I even had some of the FL's throw their weight into it. All in All I was very pleased with my staff.
I agree with points made on boths sides of this discussion, which by the way I hope remains civil, because a discussion on this subject is needed.
Since this is a game, yet it contains a good degree of "realism", you have at least to types of participants:
1. Those who are their for the fight and to have fun, and
2. Those who are their to win and stick it to the other side.
That being said, the command staff has to juggle those 2 mindsets in order to maintain a solid turnout through out all the frames and be able to sufficiently satisfy both.
When I got the nod to CO in TFB, my first duty was to fill my staff. After finding out I was to take on the duties as Axis CO, I looked first at the Squads that I knew where into the german iron. Keep in mind here that other than being a Race CM, I am a relatively unknown player in this community, this makes it even more difficult to recruit people as in their minds they have no real reference as to your own personality.
I also used previous scenario experiences with some of these guys as to how they dealt with orders, being on the losing end of the stick, and how they conducted themselves on the boards after acheiving a big win or suffering defeat, especially if that defeat was based on questionable terms.
As far as I am concerned, I ended up with a good staff. I learned alot from these guys that I can carry into a future attempt at this. I made some fatal mistakes at points which cost us some serious ground. The biggest of those was not using certain squads to their full potential. Even though I did that, and by george they let me hear about by frame 4, their leadership managed to stem a mutiny and ended up shining in the final frame.
In closing on this, one thing I do really agree with Lute on is the Pre-Scenario "reading" of the writeup. The designer needs to be actively involved with both CO's in explaining the design and the reasoning of certain restrictions. The writeups can be vague which leaves alot of wiggle room to take advantage of things. I'm sure if they really wanted they could write bullet proof rules, but then the design becomes overly restrictive. It's true, Myself and my staff had an entirely different interpretation of what was meant of the design vs. the Allied perception. This in turn is what created the atmospheres of how the orders were percieved.
