Dealing with a Mistake - War Journal: Flames of War - Tigers in the Mud

First the newest episode of War Journal: Flames of War podcast is up. You can get it here or at iTunes.

Next I want to talk about an issue that came up with episode 6, Tigers in the Mud. Episode 6 was suppose to have 6 segments and we did record 6. While editing the "That's New" segment, we realize we made a mistake with a rule. You would think the difference between making a check at half and making a check at more than half is a minor thing. However this type of error is what ruined the entire segment. The core of our discussion dealt with platoon morale checks for armored vehicles. The dreaded example we were using was a platoon of four vehicles, 1 operational, 1 bailed out, 1 bogged down and 1 destroyed. For this type of check you ignore the bailed out and bogged down vehicles. That left the 1 operational and 1 destroyed vehicles. We assumed this was a platoon morale check and that assumption was used as the basis of the rest of the discussion. This is NOT a check. You need MORE than half of the unit to be destroyed to require a platoon morale check. We needed either the bailed out or bogged down vehicle to be destroyed instead or added a fifth vehicle that was destroyed for the example to be correct. That means all the various scenarios we talked about while correct on their own their own, in the overall context was wrong because of our previous mistake. We had an disagreement on what to do. I wanted to either record short correction to go with the segment or record a new segment where we talked about our mistake. I felt that outside the error, the segment still had value and though we had some good dialogue in it which included a call back to our mid war battle. Tracy wanted to either drop the segment or rerecord it. Given that it was late at the time and the final episode was over an hour long, dropping it was the correct decision. Still I felt the need to explain what happen which is why I'm writing this post.

We really dodge a bullet this time. We were over half way done editing before we realize the mistake. That means we were really close to releasing a podcast that got game rules really wrong. That is unacceptable to us. While the podcast is our thoughts and opinions on Flames of War, segments like "That's New", "Keep Your Enemies Close", and others like them that are about game rules need to be accurate. For nearly releasing false information I am truly sorry. We will be watchful for errors in the future. That said, mistakes happen. I have learned from mine and I am moving on. If you ever hear us get a game rule wrong please contact us and let us know. Please enjoy the episode and have a good game.