CeeJee

The well-named XB-42 Mixmaster: And the even-better-named XF5U Flying Pancake:

The SS is another part of the Nazi policy, practiced on its own military. If you had a 'degenerate' somewhere in your ancestry, no fancy new equipment, or sometimes even food or ammmo for you. We should thank the Nazis for such a hopelessly inefficient system of building one SS-corps after another from raw recruits and top equipment. But their victims found out what happens when you convince men they are better and everyone else is less.

Thanks for the Boot Camp article, arty is difficult to use but extremely effective. I'm still having some problems in using on-map mortars. First, their low ammo supply, 3 German 81 mm onmap mortars get 70 or so HE, while one offmap has 150 for less points. The smoke produced is even worse. The onmap would seem to be more flexible, but their slow speed and reliance on a HQ spotter close by make them almost impossible to use offensively. They also have an annoying tendency to ignore their spotting HQ when some other HQ happens to flee or pass by near them. In an attack situation, onmap mortars seem to me to be waste of points. Then again, seeing a 2-inch mortar knocking out a Puma in the Arnhem campaign was a sweet sight..

What happened to the real sniper? According to the book Enemy at the Gates, Vassili Zaitsev's sniper career ended after 242 kills, when he was injured by a mine. After the war he became director of an engeneering school. Enemy at the Gates, by William Craig shows very well what a horrifying battle Stalingrad really was. Urban combat eats up anything thrown into it, even an army of 250,000 men.

There is the Saving Private Ryan scenario from CombatHQ. Things were going nicely for Captain Miller when a quad 20mm Flak Halftrack appeared on the side of the bridge. Normally no problem wth a Crack zook team at 90 meters, but somehow the team managed to shoot its entire ammo supply and mis every shot ! The Flak in the meantime opens up and reduces three buildings to rubble within 10 turns. Tigers were being killed all over the place by Miller's men, but this single Flak gun levelled the town and sealed defeat........

More Multiplater options ! Like having two (or more) players on each side, controlling a part of the total force. ------------------ "War does not determine who is right, only who is left"