Pak_43

"The Bear Went Over The Mountain" has very in-depth analysis of Soviet operations and is broken up so that each chapter is a critique of a real operation including maps etc. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bear-Went-Over-Mountain-Afghanistan/dp/190752102X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391607788&sr=1-1&keywords=the+bear+went+over+the+mountain Edited to add, only covers the Soviet Union in Afghanistan though...

Combat Commander Europe? http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21050/combat-commander-europe And Conflict of Heroes http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24800/conflict-of-heroes-awakening-the-bear-russia-1941 Are a couple of alternatives

Probably SOCA http://www.soca.gov.uk/

"Get the Quattro" versus "Get your trousers on, you're nicked!"

Just watched "Wipers Times" written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman from Private Eye. Absolutely brilliant (IMHO) based on real events of WWI and much of the source material coming from an unpublished memoir released by the main characters family. British TV drama at it's finest... http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-11/the-wipers-times-ian-hislop-on-the-wartime-newspaper-that-laughed-in-the-face-of-death

Sherlock (with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman) is actually only 3 episodes. They were originally going to work with 6 but decided they'd rather double the length of the episodes to get a full plot line in and halve the episodes. Great idea imho. I suspect one of the reasons for a 6-ish episode season in the UK is that this means the top actors can do a stint in theatre over here or a hollywood film and still fit filming a TV series in (Gillian Anderson for instance fitted in filming "The Fall" in Ireland along with "Our Robot Overlords") that of course and our TV companies simply don't have the money or resources to spend on long runs of expensive drama series. In addition it may be that the talented writers, directors and production staff simply don't want to commit to a long run of one series but would rather go and do something else... http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/feb/23/british-directors-tv-drama-oscars "The biggest challenge to those who continue to regard TV as an inferior medium is that Britain's leading actors seem increasingly to regard the media as interchangeable. Oscar-listed acting aristocrats such as Julie Walters and Helen Mirren have continued to move between TV and movies because the writing and production values in a small-screen drama did not inevitably result in slumming it."

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=92954&highlight=Pak_43&page=5 http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83510&highlight=Pak_43 Here's some ancient history from JK along the same lines. I'll leave it here in case there are people new to the forum who might mistake JK for a researcher with methods that are something other than slapdash or haphazard.

"In 1941 yes, hence Affentitten saying 1944." Agreed, I was actually replying to JonS in that it wasn't just the German air force that would have given the impression of a random targetting policy and no specific aim points. Perhaps I missed some subtlety in JonS' post? Always possible...

In 1940 the same would have been true of the RAF also. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_Report "Any examination of night photographs taken during night bombing in June and July points to the following conclusions: 1. Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 miles [(8 kilometres)]. 2. Over the French ports, the proportion was two in three; over Germany as a whole, the proportion was one in four; over the Ruhr it was only one in ten. 3. In the full moon, the proportion was two in five; in the new moon it was only one in fifteen. ... 4. All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within 5 miles is less than one-third. ... The conclusion seems to follow that only about one-third of aircraft claiming to reach their target actually reached it.[4]"

"Overall, the Arab world's grip on reality fails to impress me time and again. This video is no exception. A lot of what they do is entirely based upon highly emotional theatrics with little regard for what is practical, safe or sane." I'm sure somewhere in England someone was saying pretty much the same thing as Washington crossed the Delaware

It doesn't run on XP mate, there's your problem. Your only chance is to stick a homebrew fix on done by a programmer and released privately. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2964408 I've tried the fix on my PC at work and it definitely works, so good luck!

Not out in the UK until the 12th... grrr..nicely suprised by how good it is after playing the demo, but yep, I can't wait for this... Eurogamer review of the game http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-08-xcom-enemy-unknown-review_3

Just finished http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cables-Kabul-Inside-Afghanistan-Campaign/dp/0007432011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342194821&sr=8-1 A really good read with many eyebrow raising details in it, a lot of references to the UK armies rotation policy and the desire of new brigade leaders to indulge in high profile "kinetic" operations since it was their one chance to put their training into play...

For the X-Com reboot go to Eurogamer and search for XCOM:Enemy Unknown (no hyphen in the XCOM is correct) and there's 3 or 4 articles including an interview with one of the devs plus some in-game footage...

Why do you even care what they think? They're not stopping you going and seeing this stuff are they? It's all subjective (imho) anyway so big deal what they write?

Who sets those rules? The artist? The critics? The buyer? Society in general? But surely what art is, is different things to different people? I'm not sure Tracy Emin's work speaks to me on any level as "art" but to plenty of people it appears to, ditto Hockney's work while he was in America which my girlfriend really likes and to me looks like painting by numbers... In fact I'm pretty sure I don't have a definition of what "art" I like and that which I don't, I just have "things I like" and "things I don't" without really worrying if it's "art" or not. I quite like Damien Hirsts shark in a tank, in the sense I look at it and think how powerful a beast the shark is and wonder how on earth he pulled it off on a technical level. I really don't stop and consider "is it art?" and I'm pretty sure Hirst is trying to make a statement about something, although what that would be I don't know.... I guess I'm trying to say is that I think artists should be able to do whatever they want without having some judgement about whether it has "artistic merit" or not. Let the purchaser / viewer decide that?

Surely all art is subjective? Isn't that the point of it?

Kim Jong is dead? I didn't even know he was Il... Thank you very much, you've been wonderful, I'll be here all week...

"ISTR the developers blew the schedule deadline--big time." Developer, (singular) IIRC, him plus a guy he knew doing the art and that was it...

Great job BFC. Hugely deserved...

I think the game is great in doing what it set out to do. There's some random stuff goes on for who knows what reason, but given you are mimicking a 19th century battlefield commander that's fair enough But simply wading through the UI though is a lot of work.. Is it worth the creds to buy? I'm not too sure about that. Is it a difference experience compared to any other 19th century wargame out there? For sure...

No worries. I patch it occasionally and roll it out, only to remember each time how eye wateringly bad the UI is, and I mean so soul crushingly bad that I weep tears of frustration each time. There's a gem of a game in there somewhere I feel, but by god it makes you work harder than any other I've known to see it's merits..

Histwar Les Grognards. Dropped by BFC. Self published by the developer Still being patched and supported by the dev. Google for link

*sigh*, a 2nd rate, ineffective navy strikes me as a singular waste of money, what's the phrase? Either go big or go home? "It takes three years to build a ship, it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Admiral Cunnigham 1941)