Hi all,
I've jumped into purchasing a few miniatures rule sets that seemed interesting, and trying them out using Tabletop Simulator before investing in huge amounts of actual miniatures. One that seemed intriguing to me was Fireball Forward! and so I tried to play that earlier today with the first scenario, "Easy Company".
As always seems to be the case, it's the daggum spotting rules that tripped me up again. The Spot Action is straightforward enough. But Opportunity Spotting (Page 13, Rule 7.4) breaks my brain. It didn't help that I spent far too long on the Woods/Zone example when there are no terrain zones in the first scenario.
The second paragraph seems straightforward enough. Move in non-concealing terrain in the LOS of an enemy, and they'll spot you and can opportunity fire.
But paragraph 3 seems to make no sense. "If one element is in terrain that offers concealment and the other element is in open terrain or in terrain that is not adjacent to the enemy element then: There is no opportunity spotting."
I'm going to ignore the part starting with "or in terrain that is not adjacent" as that appears to refer to Zones which aren't present in the first scenario. But the first part seems to contradict the second paragraph. It sounds as though, for instance, if a unit crossed the hedgerows into the open (actually onto a Trench – that's a later question), that they won't be opportunity spotted by Germans in the V shaped hedgerows that are pressed right up to them. Is this correct? If not, what does this rule actually mean?
Paragraph 4 I think I understand: "If one element is in the open and an enemy element moves into a terrain piece/zone within 3 inches then there is no opportunity spotting…" The first thing is, I assume that this is referring to a case where the element in the open never has LOS to the enemy element. You can't opportunity spot such a unit, but on the activation of that element, it could then automatically spot the enemy element in the terrain piece by using the spot action (assuming that terrain piece is the chosen one).
The way I'm playing is that German elements up against the inside of the V shaped hedgerows will see any American units that go over the hedgerows into the trench, in the German's LOS, thus spotting them.
I'll be honest, I think the first scenario is poorly chosen as the interaction between the spotting rules, the hedgerows and the trenches are somewhat challenging for a new player. However, I really like the firing rules and the simplicity of the results.
