Patrick

I remember reading a description of the battle at Villers Bocage about Wittman and his men bailing out of their Tiger. He ordered his men to take the MG34's with them to defend themselves ...

What about campaign games ??? In all other games, units are generate as if they had been preserved in order to hit into your depleted forces ...

One thing I hate about most games is that enemy units pop up completely spic and span with an OOB straight from the handbook. What about BF ???

KwazyDog, The development of new IBM weapons is more worrying that seeing a few armoured divisions crossing the Bering straits ... I think it's more likely that an enemy of the US would drop a nuke or some biological/chemical agent into a major urban area than send "mongol hordes" to storm Venice Beach Well perhaps a China vs Russia conflict ??? The Chinese are really strapped for oil, just check out who owns major oil fields in South America, Soudan and the Middle East. If I were china, I'd look forward to invading Siberia to secure the natural resources there ... BTW, Zjirinowski's vision is something like "The north dominates the south" So Europe gets Africa, Russia gets anything south of it (Middle East, India, China ...) US get South America ... There are some theories that he is a KGB plant, rattling sabers to scare all the others into keeping Jeltsin in power ...

I may have been a bit harsh, but I just can't imagine the Soviets crossing over ... Let's imagine they went through Alaska ... How long before the T80's are chewed up by M1's ??? (keeping it a ground battle ...) It's just that I never could imagine anyone invading the US !!! Not the Germans, not the Japanese, and certainly not the Soviets !!! Invading the US is a logistical nightmare !!! Hitler couldn't cross the channel, how could he get over the Atlantic ??? As for the commie US government ... LOL Why not try something on the recent struggles in former Soviet republics ??? I mean, the Tchetchen had more AK47's that an IRA member's wet dreams !!!

Sorry, but I find a Red-Dawn game a bit egotistic ... Perhaps some people still keep a gun under their pillow in case the Cubans invade and force everybody to smoke their cigars, but we've had hundreds if not thousands of conflicts since WWII isn't there enough material out there to do something more original ??? Every once in a while I bump into this kind of thing and I just can't keep myself from cringing at the idea that the USA could ever be invaded by a foreign power, a nation with the largest industral base and a huge reserve in manpower !!! Even if Spetznatz paratroopers landed in Poughkeepsie, wouldn't every "gun-owning patriot" rush out and blast them back to wherever they came from ??? I'm sorry, but I'd rather see a product that offered all the wars that really happened rather than some piece of S-F ... How about a game about Orson Welles' War of the Worlds ??? And sorry if I hurt anybody's feelings ...

Well, I got some comments by people who said that they didn't like computer wargames. The main reason I think is that these people still see wargames as an abstract, mathematical game ... With the computer we finally get a whole new environment which more faithfully reproduces battle conditions that any other game system before. I'm not saying computer wargames are the be-all end-all, but they certainly can offer some incredible potential !!!

The German high command decided near the end of the war to put the inexperienced troops in the best tanks available, hoping the superior equipment would make up for experience. This generally meant green crews in Panthers, while the veterans had to do miracles with Marders and Stugs ... Most allied tankers commented that it was not the big powerful tanks they were most scared of (you sometimes could hear them come a mile away ...), but by the sneaky Marders and Hetzers that would lay in ambush and pick out allied tanks one by one.

Actually there are more incredible Tiger related stories out there ... What about a Canadian Sherman that suddenly happens upon a Tiger charging towards them. They fire at it out of sheer desperation and find that after three or so shots the Tiger stops ... The Sherman fires again, but suddenly the hatches open and the crew of the Tiger surrender. Apparently they were a recovery crew and had just picked up that Tiger whose 88 had malfunctioned. They had hoped to scare away the Sherman, but discovering that the Sherman stood its ground surrendered ... Another story (unverified) A Sherman going through the Ardennes suddenly sees a Tiger II pop out less than 10 yards away from them. In desperation the driver hits the throttle and the sherman rams into the Tiger II. Both crews are stunned, but the Germans recover first and traverse their turret only to find out the gun sticks beyond the Sherman !!! The Sherman crew fires a shot at point-blank range with their 75mm, which does not pierce the armour, but does stun the crew of the German tank long enough for them to get away !!!

One of the things that has bothered me about SP and other games is the "BUDGET" idea of buying tanks and equipment, sometimes based on how well you did in a previous scenario. My idea is to forgo all this (except for scenario building) and add a new concept, asking HQ for reinforcements ... So rather than spending points and "shop around" you just ask HQ for reinforcements. Depending on the situation you're in you'll get anything HQ can provide. You might ask for tigers and have a small chance to get them. You'll probably get PzIV's instead or Marders ... If you're unlucky a few infantrymen with AT mines ... My belief is : Computer Wargames need to be divorced of their tabletop counterparts !!! Nothing wrong with tabletop games, but computers offer so much more !

About vision blocks and tactics ... One of the ways the Germans managed to tackle those scary KV tanks early in the war was to aim machinegun fire at the vision slots. Either they smashed the blocks and impaired vision, or a few rounds would ricochet inside the tank !!! Still you have to wonder how the Germans managed to kill all those T34's with just 37mm and 50mm AT guns ... 88's were RARE ! Saving Private Ryan is great, but the TIger tank is NOT the real thing !!! It's a modified T34 !!! Still one helluva job making that replica ...