Hi Guys,
I've been watching the thread develop on table quarters and VPs with some interest. Personally, I don't have a problem with the rule; in encourages aggressive play and penalises players that hide in a corner and shoot, both of which are good things for WAB as a *game*. It also rewards the player who is able to 'keep his eye on the ball', as it were. In the heat of battle it's very easy to forget the objective and just go for pounding the hell out of the opposition (I should know, I do it all the time... ; )). However, a good general will always keep in mind his objective, which in this case includes 'taking and holding territory'.
All of which leads me neatly to *objectives* and *scenarios*. One thing I've noticed with Warhammer players is that they tend to stick fairly rigidly to play the 'line up and fight' scenarios presented in the book, sometimes venturing off to try out the other scenarios that are there, but 9 out of 10 games will be a pitched battle or a meeting engagement. There is nothing wrong with this, but it should be kept in mind that these are 'generic' scenarios, and are in many ways rather abstract, in that they are designed to give a good *game* first and foremost. The downside to this is tha,t if you're not careful, playing the same scenario all the time can lead to very stylised form of play, where the use and effectiveness of certain units can become very important, and where unit choice and the 'shape' of an army can become very abstract. In effect it tends to emphasise the game mechanics and aspects of WAB as a game, at the expense of its 'role-playing' and 'game as story' aspects.
We noticed the same trend in the 2nd edition of 40K, which basically had one way of setting up (with minor variations), and which led to extremely sylised forms of play, much to the detriment of the game. Therefore in the new edition of the game you are pretty much forced to randomly generate the mission you will play, and the game is all the better for it. This approach isn't quite as suitable for WAB, as many ancient battles were indeed 'pitched battles' or meeting enagagments. *However*, the majority of battles were *not*, and so I highly recommend that you don't just play straight 'line up and fight' battles all of the time. Use the other scenarios too, or pick an interesting historical battle and use it as the basis for the set up, victory conditions and special rules that apply to a game, or just make a scenario up!
Speaking personally, the design team very rarely plays games using the standard scenarios at all, and we rarely use points values either. Instead one of us will come up with a scenario and some objectives for each side, and then we'll set to, and decide by concensus who has 'won' at the end of the game. Funningly enough most of the formal, competative style games we've played using the Meeting Engagement rules have come out of a campaign we've been running based on the campaign system in the book (which is actually quite an interesting way of limiting access to special troops types, by the way). Clearly this style of gaming works best with a regular gaming group, but don't most of us play most of our games against regular opponents? (Oh no, this is bound to lead to jokes about 'irregular' opponents, 'impetuous' opponents....)
To sum up, you don't have to use the scenarios and objectives given in the WAB rules. They are there as examples and guidelines, and to provide a comon ground for use in tournaments or at clubs where players don't know each other. Amongst a regular gaming group they should be seen as a tool, that can be discarded or changed as the players in the group see fit. *However*, if you do decide to play with them, see them for what they are; a set of limitations that provide for a rather abstract but quite 'fair' game. And remember that if you keep on playing games with them, then you can expect to see stylised 'standard openings and tactics' developing which will serve to emphasise the nature of WAB as a *game*, and which may have no historical precedent as real life generals couldn't count on knowing in advance what sort of a battle they would fight.
Jervis