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scoop88

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  1. John: Sorry I missed that episode. I watched that show religiously as a kid. The whole subject of mines and boobytraps during WWII is fascinating but seems to have gotten overlooked as the years have passed. (Were there any mines or boobytraps in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers? I don't remember any, but it's been a long time since I saw those films.) I remember reading how the Germans would booby-trap swastika flags and other potential souvenirs that would mame or kill anyone who tried to take them, not to mention the tens of thousands (maybe millions) of mines that were sewn in North Africa by both sides. Thanks for the post.
  2. Fought the Battle of Jefferson Barracks from 1971-77 with 88th Engr Bn, HQ Detachment. Field wireman 36K20. Highlight of military career was when some genius decided to send our entire bn from St. Louis to Fort Riley, Kan., for our annual two weeks of active duty at the height of the "energy crisis" in 1974 after spending active duty in 73 and 74 at our home base. We littered I-70 with broken-down deuce-and-a-halfs. No doubt the summer vacationers on the highway were less than amused, especially when we all pulled off to the side of the road for our regularly scheduled stop to relieve ourselves.
  3. Keep: 1. Focus on World War II 2. Realism over eye candy 3. Scale of game 4. Mod-ability of terrain, forces and scenarios 5. Ease of play Change: 1. More fog of war for own and enemy forces and terrain features 2. More weather effects on movement and fatigue 3. Reduce the gaminess of the map edge so it's more difficult to secure your flank by moving along the side edges of the map ... perhaps have edge-huggers draw fire from abstracted enemy forces off the map edge 4. Support Mac OSX 5. Return the "ride the tank" feature from CMBO on camera level 1. (You could select a vehicle and the camera view would be from the top of the vehicle as it moved.)
  4. I prefer historical battles, especially those with very accurate replication of terrain. It gives one a very strong sense of going back in time and "being there."
  5. Thanks for the heads-up. I've been waiting a long time for the next installment.
  6. Yes, CM has killed most of the board wargames for me. I grew up playing them, starting around 1964. The early games that AH put out, such as Tactics II, Afrika Korps, Gettysburg and Battle of the Bulge, were simple and fun. But as board wargames evolved and tried to become more "realistic," they became more complicated and less fun. I bought Squad Leader and Panzerblitz, but as soon as I saw the rulebooks, I never bothered to play them. The final straw for me was when I bought "Stalingrad" from the people who used to publish "Strategy and Tactics" magazine, and it took me two hours just to set up my units. The high points in board wargame development for me were AH's "The Russian Campaign" and "Fortress Europa." They had a great balance between realism and fun. I still play Afrika Korps and The Russian campaign maybe once a year, but CM is light years ahead!
  7. I'm with MikeyD. Cool graphics are nice, but I much prefer an accurate historical scenario to play. I've been reading about WWII for decades longer than I care to admit, and it is a terrific experience to see actual events come to life in a way that's not possible unless you could go back in time and see the real thing! Still, a big thanks goes to all the modders out there. I, too, went "mod-crazy" with CMBO, but I eventually reconciled with sticking to terrain mods most of the time. For me, the graphics payoff is better looking and more realistic terrain than a vehicle mod. Still download vehicle mods, but not nearly as much as in the days of CMBO.
  8. A couple suggestions for scenarios: 1. German defense of Halfaya Pass near the Libya-Egypt border, I think in late 1941. There is a chapter about it in Carrell's book from the early 1960s about the Afrika Korps. If I remember correclty, the commander, Bach, was a minister in civilian life -- his troops called him "Pastor Bach." 2. Someone asked for small battles. Because both sides in North Africa relied heavily on small long-range recce units, there are many possibilities for fictional or historical firefights involving these units -- for example, an attack on an airfield, which someone has already suggested. Thanks for asking!
  9. Dear Eichenbaum: I would love to play this great operation but, alas, I can't download because I am on a Mac. If you would be so kind as to e-mail it to me, I would be most appreciative. My e-mail address is: dalange@aol.com Many thanks.
  10. FYI, Amazon is bundling "Army At Dawn" and "Desert War: The North African Campaign 1940-43" together and giving free shipping. So if you buy the bundle, you can read about the entire campaign in Alan Moorehead's book and focus on the American part of the campaign in "Army At Dawn."
  11. Early-war Soviet tanks usually had no radios, and no dedicated commander in each tank crew. The commander had other jobs, like gun-loader. German tanks had radios, and each tank had one crewman whose only job was to command the tank.
  12. Spook: Thanks for the link to "German Myth." Interesting reading! His criticism of German logistics reminded me of something I read a long time ago that Hitler specifically ordered before the start of Barbarossa that German Mark III and IV tanks were to be retrofitted with long-barrel, higher-trajectory main guns before the invasion began. Somehow, the order "got lost" and it didn't happen, with the result that the short-barrel, low velocity guns had trouble stopping T-34s and KVs. Had the long-barrel Mark III and IV been available in June 1941, who knows? Maybe the Germans might have won the Russian war in 1941. His comments about games not accurately factoring in supply were also good, but for me, at least, I'm not interested in becoming a bookkeeper for the sake of historical accuracy. Contrary to what he wrote, some of the early board games did a decent job of abstracting supply without taking away from the fun of the game. Anybody out there who played Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps back in the 1960s remember how you had to roll a die before each turn to determine whether or not the Axis got a supply unit? If you got a couple of bad rolls -- especially during the period of the campaign when the odds were high of having your supply convoy sunk at sea en route to Libya -- left you in serious doo-doo. You had to expend a supply unit when you attacked, and your plans suffered big time if you got a couple of bad dice rolls in a row for that precious supply unit.
  13. I can appreciate some people's desire for a more operational or strategic level version for future CM games, but if Battlefront makes any effort to do this, I hope it is not at the risk of lessening the attractiveness of the current tactical level of the game. Let me explain. To me, realistic strategy games, especially those on the Eastern Front, ultimately become very boring because they ARE realistic. If the German player doesn't achieve victory by December 1941, the game becomes a stalemate for a while, and then a rout of the Germans as the Russian war machine snowballs, quickly replacing losses and adding huge numbers of tank and infantry divisions. It's no fun for the German player to get steamrolled and it's no challenge for the Russian player because of his overwhelming superiority of numbers. The beauty of Combat Mission is that you can wage a fairly equal fight at any time of the war on the small tactical scale of the game. And it's realistic ... even late in the war, there were times when the Germans could achieve somewhat equal numbers with the Russians on the purely local level.
  14. Dear Battlefront: Suggest locking this thread up real fast before things get ugly.
  15. Dear Sergei: Thanks for your comments. Just to explain a little further: 2. Failure to develop a plan to invade England until it was too late It would seem to me that the Germans, once it was clear that France was going to fall --and that was obvious 2-3 weeks after the start of the German offensive in the West in May 1940 -- would have started planning an invasion. In reality, the planning didn't start in earnest until later that summer. By then, it was too late because of the bad weather that traditionally hits the English Channel in October. As a self-proclaimed military genius, Hitler should have had the foresight to have contingency planning for an invasion under way much sooner. Whether an invasion would have worked is very questionable because the Germans didn't have the navy or the landing craft to support it. At a minimum, they needed air superiority, which Goering failed to achieve, at least in part because, again, the Nazi leadership were poor strategic thinkers. Hitler switched the air campaign's focus away from airfields and aircraft factories in Britain to terror bombing of cities, with the result that the RAF was able to recover sufficiently from its losses in late August and early September to keep control of the air. 5. Failure to understand the importance that a navy plays in global strategy, as evidenced by Germany's failure to build a navy of any consequence before WWII. Your points are well-taken. As you wrote, the Germans misused the large surface navy they had in World War I. It just seems to me that Hitler should have put more resources into building subs during Germany's rearmament in the late 1930s. When the war started, the Germans had a relatively small submarine force, even though submarine warfare against England was an important strategic weapon. 6. Failure to understand the role of strategic bombing, as evidenced by Germany's failure to build a strategic bombing force in any numbers before and during WWII. The U.S. and Britain had heavy bombers already in service when the war started, and then had the strategic sense to build them in large numbers during the war. The Germans had four-engine bombers of sorts (the FW Condor), but never built them in any numbers. While the effect of strategic bombing on Germany's manufacturing facilities is debatable, and the fire-bombing of German cities was criminal, I think the impact on Germany's transportation system alone justified the worth of strategic bombing. A strategic bombing force directed at resources, manufacturing, transportation and port facilities in England, Russia, and the Mediterranean (Suez Canal, Malta, Gibraltar) might have paid big dividends for Hitler. Remember, Hitler kept his factories going by using slave labor to disperse them or move them underground, then keep them running. England might not have had the manpower to do that. In retrospect, it's fortunate for the rest of the world that Hitler wasn't a better strategist. Enjoyed reading your comments and look forward to your other posts on this and other topics on the Battlefront forum!
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