Panzertruppen

I have not owned a 21" yet, but I can say for sure that a 19" is a huge improvement over a 17". As someone mentioned above, it is critical to get a good monitor. Monitors are so cheap that you can pick up what was previously considered a professional level monitor at a very reasonable price. I have owned four monitors so far and used I don't know how many at work. Try a CTX PR960F Professional Series. This is a True Flat Display (TFD) 19" Trinitron that can handle most any resolution you're likely to use. The screen really is flat, and this monitor is priced just right - about $380 (US). Look for the best prices at http://www.pricewatch.com If you're going to "go large," remember to hook it up to a good video card. A Geforce 2, or a Voodoo 5500. If you're interested in speakers, try the Klipsch Promedia set. They are probably the best PC speakers available at any price under $1000. These are the only four speaker souround setup that is certified with the THX certification from Lucus. Believe me, if you are using some crap you picked up from the local computer store, you are in for one big suprise when you hook these up! I had a Cambridge Audioworks 4 speaker setup before I bought the Klipsch set. They were decent, but after playing one CD with the Klipsch set, you're whole idea of good audio goes up a notch. You ought to hear Saving Private Ryon on DVD on these things. It's almost scary... Don Panzertruppen Maddox CM Deputy Custodian Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club

Thanks for the comments about the Blitz. I think the ST-LO tournament is going to be lots of fun. I'm really looking forward to watching you guys kick the hell out of each other. He he... By the way, here is a little something I've been working on during the weekend. Not sure when it's going to be finished and I don't want to release anything half-done. It's time consuming work, but I'll let you know when this set is finished. </p> </p> Don Panzertruppen Maddox <a href="http://www.theblitz.org"> Blitz</a> Combat Mission Deputy Custodian</p>

Very nice indeed. Magua has succeeded in doing the most difficult thing there is to do in a mod of this kind; achieve a consistant theme. I've seen lots of mods for CM and other games that individually look very nice, but taken as a whole they looked jumbled and unrealistic. Don't underestimate how hard it is to get this right. If this is the beta version, I can't wait to see what's next. Thanks for a great mod Magua. Don Panzertruppen Maddox Combat Mission Deputy Custodian Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club

There is no speed increase with Windows Me over Windows 98SE. Tomshardware, among others, did extensive tests and found a 1 - 2 FPS decrease in most applications. Unfornuately, Windows Me can also cause some other unwanted side effects. This new version has a system backup feature that has the annoying habit of eating up huge amounts of your hard drive. Worse, even when the system restore feature is disabled it will sometimes toggle itself back on. I replaced my version of Windows 98 with Me. There is very little difference that you can see. No major enhancements to IE or Outlook Express. I did some tests on my own and found that Windows Me is consistantly using about 3-5% more system resources than my previous version. So far I have not found a solution to the disappearing hard drive feature that's built in. From a performance point of view there is no advantage.

Would someone who has Gunslinger's mods installed care to post a few screenshots so we can see what his work looks like before attempting the download. I rarely like to download a 50+ meg file without having some solid idea of what I'm getting. Thanks.

<p align="center"><font color="#FF0000" size="5">The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club Proudly Presents</font></p> <p align="center"></p> <p align="center"><font face="Times New Roman">The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club's first Combat Mission tournament is now open for sign-ups. This is a four round sudden death, or knock-out, tournament. Players must achieve at least a draw to advance to the next round. All the battles in the tournament will be custom scenarios that are characteristic of the Normandy hedgerow fighting of 1944. The Round One scenario will not be emailed out until the tournament begins. The "Road to ST-LO" Tournament begins on November 6th, so sign-up while there's still time!</font></p> <p align="center"><font face="Times New Roman">Visit the Combat Mission section of the <a href="http://www.theblitz.org">Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club</a>.</font></p> <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Don Panzertruppen Maddox Blitz CM Deputy Custodian</font> [This message has been edited by Panzertruppen (edited 10-21-2000).]

Below I have posted some comments that Jay Karamales made about the famous battle at Prokorovka. As I said, Jay is part of the team working with the Dupuy Institute on the new Kursk material. I invited Jay to paticipate in a discussion of Prokorovka at the Blitzkrieg Wargame Club some time ago. Jay accepted and there were some really excellent posts from him and others. I thought I had them saved on disk, so I'll post them if I can find them. (In the post below Jay refers several times to scenario design work that he did for Talonsoft.) "This is supposed to be one of the biggest tank battles in history. The Germans had 400 to 600 tanks at the battle. Where are they all?" At this stage of the battle the II SS-Panzer Korps had 319 tanks, assault guns, and SP panzerjägers (Marders) available to them. According to the strength returns filed by the II SS-Panzer Korps at 1800 on the 11th, the three SS divisions had the following tanks "ready for action" (from north to south): SS-Totenkopf: 54 x Pz III 24 x Pz IV 6 x Pz VI (Tiger I) 20 x StuG III 7 x Marder II/III TOTAL: 111 LSSAH: 2 x Pz I (that's right, Pz I) 4 x Pz II 20 x Pz III 31 x Pz IV 3 x Pz VI (Tiger I) 20 x StuG III 20 x Marder II/III TOTAL: 100 SS-Das Reich: 43 x Pz III 18 x Pz IV 27 x StuG III 12 x Marder II/III 8 x captured T-34 TOTAL: 108 Das Reich has no panzers in the scenario because they were all actually off the south edge of the game map that day. (They also suffered only two tanks lost all day). That means the Germans really only had 211 tanks present on the board. There was a whopping total of nine Tiger I's (PzKpfw VIE) involved in this battle. Sorry to disappoint you Tiger fans, but that's the way it was. Likewise you will see no Mk V Panthers. That's because all the Panthers that were in this area (25 of them on this day) were in the 39th Pz Regt, which was attached to the Großdeutschland Panzergrenadier Division further to the west (off the left edge of the map). Against this force the Russians threw some 842 tanks, predominantly T-34s and T-70s but with a few Mk IV Churchills, SU-122s, and SU-76s. These were broken out as follows: 2nd Tank Corps: 59 2nd Guards Tank Corps: 140 5th Guards Tank Army (18th Tank Corps, 29th Tank Corps, and 5th Mech Corps): 643. Not all of these, particularly those of the 5th Mech Corps, come into play in this scenario given the time and space constraints; but there are enough that the German player should certainly have his hands full. The final tank loss figures for 12 July were 313 for the Soviets and about 49 for the Germans. Seem more one sided than you have always been led to believe? Yeah, that's what I thought too. But that's what happened. In fact, if you read the German after-action reports, it took them a couple of days before they even realized that they'd been in a major tank battle. To them, Prokhorovka was one more day of sharp fighting that followed over a week's worth of similar days. "So how did the story of the gigantic tank clash at Prokhorovka get started?" By Russian generals who were terrified of telling Stalin how roughly they'd been handled. To save their own hides they inflated German strengths and losses. By the time Stalin died in 1953 and the truth could be told, the story was too entrenched and too many decorations had been handed out. Plus, it makes a better story to say that there were hundreds of burning tanks on each side. This problem of playing down Red losses and inflating German losses is common to all Soviet sources. "But if the battle was such a lopsided German victory, why didn't they push on to Kursk, or at least to Oboyan?" Because by this time the German attack had run out of steam anyway. The Germans had been having, and continued to have, logistical problems that hampered the advance. There are a number of field reports from the panzer unit commanders stating that their tanks were advancing with less than ten, and sometimes less than five, rounds of ammunition in their turrets. The Germans never did establish air superiority over the battlefield, and Il-10 attacks on their supply lines and combat units hampered them as well. Much more importantly, the German advance slowed because of continued intense Soviet resistance, of which Prokhorovka was just one (albeit rather exceptional) example. Actually, in the face of the heavy resistance directly in front of Prokhorovka, SS-Totenkopf (aided somewhat by LSSAH) continued its push on the 13th to try to get around the Soviet flank. This is probably when it suffered the majority of its tank losses for the 12th and 13th. One final note to anyone interested in the "real" battle of Kursk: Christopher A. Lawrence of the Dupuy Institute is hard at work on a book about Kursk, including special attention to Prokhorovka. This will be the first work, in any language, that will have as its basis the official records and strength returns from both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. It will be published in 2000 by Westview Press (a division of Harper Collins). I will be providing the maps. —Jay Karamales Chief Cartographer, Olórin Press 3 March 1999 [This message has been edited by Panzertruppen (edited 10-06-2000).] [This message has been edited by Panzertruppen (edited 10-06-2000).]

Bear in mind that the Soviets went to great lengths to foster the "legend of Kursk" having been a battle that saw hundreds of Tigers destroyed, etc. The Soviets had virtually every single possible advantage in this engagement - quantity, time, volume of firepower, and some of the most extensive defensive positions ever seen in the history of warfare. The Soviet high command, although ultimately not defeated, was terrified to tell Stalin just how badly they had been handled by the Germans - particualrly von Manstein. They were probably quite right to have been so concerned. Judging by Stalin's past record he may well have executed several of them for "incompetance." A new book is about to be released concerning Kursk and the legendary battle of Prokorovka. The book was researched by the Dupuy Institute and the maps are being done by noted cartogropher/wargame scenario designer Jay Karamales. Much of the information is very recently declassified material thay may well be more accurate than Colonel Glantz's previous books.

I was there a couple of years ago and it's true that the Tigers are no longer there. However, there are still two Panthers, a Jagdtiger, and a Jagdpanther present. Also an Elephant tank destroyer which is quite impressive. The vehicles are still just sitting outside rusting away, but there was some type of effort being made to build a museum to house and restore all the AFVs. I'm not sure what the status is on that project. Let's hope they can get something done. Don Panzertruppen Maddox Combat Mission Deputy Custodian Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club [This message has been edited by Panzertruppen (edited 10-04-2000).]

To all the new members who recently registered - welcome to the Blitz! The Combat Mission Boot Camp section is steadily growing so the regular CM Ladder should become quite active within a week or two. If you haven't yet checked out the Blitz, be sure to drop by and take a look. Don Panzertruppen Maddox CM Deputy Custodian www.theblitz.org

I have the full version of CM, however, I have been challenged by a player who only has the Gold Demo for now. Is the demo PBEM compatible with the full version?

The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club has recently added a Combat Mission Ladder. Newcomers will start out in the Boot Camp section and be added to the regular CM Ladder after completion of one game. The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club features quality custom scenarios, AARs, active message boards, tournaments, articles on tactics/strategy, news, chat rooms, and ladders for the following games: Combat Mission, the Campaign Series, TOAW, TOAW2, Steel Panthers, and the Battleground series. The CM Ladder has just started, but if it grows anything like our CS Ladder, it could turn out to be one of the best on the WWW. Check it out at http://www.theblitz.org Don Panzertruppen Maddox Combat Mission Deputy Custodian [This message has been edited by Panzertruppen (edited 09-24-2000).]