by Professorelm
I believe some answer is required of me as well.Chick: you are talking about RSG, but Piero is rather referring to set scenarios. While generating a scenario, there are indeed several way of balancing things out. The one you suggest, assigning "Green" status to the veteran player's troops, sounds sound to me, as it does not alter the game flow but directy originates a more difficult tactical situation for the experienced player.
But one should not forget that generating a scenario requires other, different skills than just playing a battle, and in this case the weaker player will be, again, inferior in several ways. Things for him/her will be still difficult, maybe too difficult, anyway.
How to handicap a set scenario is another matter. Here, I am strongly against tinkering with VP count or victory conditions in general. In a set scenario, this will alter the tactical situation, originating a totally different battle. Since it will force the player under handicap to play for different goals as those pre-set, the task will be surely harder for him, but the overall gameflow and game experience for that scenario willl be altered as well. Who can say it will be as rewarding?
I believe the best way is acting on players' hands, after the fashion already suggested by the optional rules in the old C3i magazine:
(1) Have the weaker player play with one more card in hand.
(2) Allow the weaker player to discard one card even after Orders.
However, let me say that I believe that playing is the best way of improving one skills. In PBEM, analising and planning each move is probably the key, as one has more or less as much time as he wants, at home, before replaying to his/her opponents move. After-battle debriefing is also useful.
But one still has to judge such an effort worthwile.
And this connects with another matter, a more general and difficult problem to address:
How much time and energy one has to invest in CC in order to become really good at it?
I think we should discuss this matter in some depth, because it lays at the very core of the CC playing experience. I won't do it here and now, but let me just outline the basic problem:
Combat commander has a very low entry level skill, as it is very (you may read also: too) easy to learn. This allows players to become self sufficient and enjoy playing without learning all the rules properly and without studying the game. But to learn CC well, which is, basically, to learn how to aticipate, provoke, overcome, in short cope with (mis)fortune, and so have a degree of control over the fuzziness of the battlefield, that is another matter entirely. It takes a lot of time and investment, in terms of time and energy. This opens a deep gap between the battle performance of a veteran skilled player and that of a green, less experienced, less involved one. The latter player will nearly always lose, and his/her sense of frustration increase. After a while, the green player will almost invariabily quit playing the game altogether, believing the reason of his/her defeats is bad luck and hence judging CC "too chancy".
I have a roster of all the players I met: up to 10 plays, one is still a true newbie, still fascinated by the whole CC experience; quitting CC usually happens just under the 20-play line, then up to 40 there is still some uncertainty if going on or not, and I can say a player has survived and become a regular only once (s)he's got 40+ plays in the bag.
It is exactly in order to keep beginner players hooked that we must find a way to balance out play.