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RE: Blackcloud's PG Lament
Town and Entrenchment
Demoralized units in an assault hex must exit the hex if they fail a recovery attempt (14.35). That includes entrenchments.
The 4th edition Assault Chart was a step forward towards pushing enemy units out of town and entrenchment hexes. It still remains a difficult task with low-strength units and there are times when you better off using direct fire from an adjacent hex.
Balance
Matt and I tried but even when we were both spending 10+ hours each every week developing scenarios, in the end we just expressed an opinion based upon our experience and limited playtesting. Balancing a tiny scenario (< 30 counters) can be done through multiple plays but playtesting even a medium size scenario (~75 counters, 18 turns) is more difficult because a single play may take 4-5 hours and we developed maybe 100+ scenarios a year in addition to editing the special rules, orders of battle, introductions and conclusions. It was painful when the victory conditions proposed did not work at all; we had to spend even more time exploring the scenario while keeping the spirit of the proposed victory conditions.
As an aside, I mentioned years ago I played some scenarios multiple times solitaire (5 or 6 times in some rare cases) and almost all responders wrote they rarely play a scenario more than once. I think that's relevant for some of the tiny scenarios we developed because a few were really puzzles and the key is unlikely to be discovered during the first play. I was never fond of tiny scenarios because one bad and/or great roll has too much influence on the scenario. The same with leader draw; the balance is strongly tilted in your favor when you draw a "2" morale leader when your task is to defend an objective with 6-10 units.
Anyway, back to balance. I had to set my bar to (1) I think each side has a 30% chance of winning, or (2) I am don't know if side X can win 30% of the time but the scenario is more fun than usual and side X has several interesting strategies to try.
Finally, I looked through my 88 recorded shared plays on PG-HQ, I think only in 6 or 7 scenarios did I think it was way too unbalanced for one side to have a 30% chance.
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