I agree there are lot of fun things that could be done with the addition of bases or swapping out existing bases for bases of another type.
There is a really strong argument behind Scapa Flow for example, mentioned elsewhere, since it was the main naval base for the Royal Navy during this period. There are others I can think of, that’d probably be great for the gameplay.
I’ve tempered my expectations quite a bit lately, since experience has taught me it’s pretty hard to get any change adopted as official these days. I’ll admit to being rather strategic in picking my battle here with Sierra Leone, trying to make the case as unassailable as possible. Even though I agree with pretty much everyone here, as far as corrections go it leaves quite a bit to be desired. There are of course many other alterations I can think of off the cuff, that would suit the balance needs of the game better than Sierra Leone ever could. But it just so happens that this territory was a very clear cut map error, and thus harder to ignore.
I’d say that while I agree with YG that it’d be more useful for the gameplay as a pro-allied neutral (since America has more ready cash to spend on bases than UK does) a pro-side neutral status doesn’t really fit the historical argument, since it wasn’t neutral at all, but a British colony.
As noted above, neighboring Liberia actually would make complete sense as a pro-Allied neutral rather than a true neutral, though that space is much less valuable strategically, such that I can’t really envision any situation (even a rare one like I tried to envision with Sierra Leone) where Liberia actually comes into play.
Another difficulty with changing any space from True Neutral to Pro-Side Neutral, is that the boxed materials don’t include a ready way to easy identify that graphically on the map/board. A starting control marker for UK is easy enough, but there are no Pro-Side neutral control markers available, so you’d have to ask players to use other custom materials which is a little problematic from an ease of use standpoint.
I did sort of hope that Sierra Leone might serve as a kind of genie out the bottle, that could potentially lead to other discussions of tweaks to the OOB game, but I’d anticipate reluctance on the part of the designers to open the floodgates.
I will say this much. I don’t think you actually need Wizards of the Coast to cook up a 3rd Edition reissue of the game map, to actually get a 3rd Edition ruleset/manual up and running. I think a lot of players would be more than happy to use the existing map/boxed materials to play an updated version of the ruleset or explore an updated scenario…
All that is really required for a 3rd Edition, or whatever you’d like to call it (an LHTR redux maybe) is an addendum to the manual (simple text, or in the form of a downloadable PDF) that Larry and Krieghund can get behind. That’d probably be more than enough to garner the necessary enthusiasm for an alpha like process to be jumpstarted and essentially run by the player community, with some arbitration and periodic guidence from the designers. Clearly a new board would be awesome, but if that’s too much of a pipe dream, I’d still have fun working with what we’ve already got.
Also still really intrigued by the War Room idea that was mentioned a little while back.
