LongLeftFlank

The Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack from "Patton" still can't be beat, music-wise. I often listen to it when I play CM. You might also sample Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". (If some of it sounds Star Warsy, that's because John Williams plagiarized Prokofiev's works wholesale for his film scores). Doldinger's "Das Boot" work is also cool, though it's quite nautical (and just why is that I wonder?)

Yeah, and reversing a tank out of a bad situation can't be all that easy to do, especially while BU. You're peering through a letterbox the wrong way!

In the autobiography of Petro Grigorenko, the dissident Russian general, he speaks with a Red Army sniper in Hungary 44 who only shoots people in the legs because he doesn't like to kill... as I recall he had shot several hundred however. Takes a pretty good eye to hit people in the legs. As I noted in an earlier thread re incidents of lone BAR gunners holding off enemy attacks all night in the Bulge and Korea, the pinning effect of a single weapon in a commanding position can be quite powerful in tactical actions. It can totally throw off a timetable. Especially when green troops are involved, or it's April 45 and you don't want to be the last guy in your outfit to "cop one".

Rented the color Stalingrad 9 months ago -- the first 30 minutes were not bad, raising my hopes that it would be a Guy Sajer type of memoir. Unfortunately, it didn't stay that way. At the risk of starting another thread on war film conventions, it seems to me that the filmmakers were aiming at an Apocalypse Now or Cross of Iron-- a stylized/surrealist nightmare version of the war tinged with Vietnam-era squishiness. I was also irritated at how they painted the politics of the time such crude terms -- Landser=good working class fellows Russians=good working class fellows Officers= bad, effeminate, cowardly, corrupt and responsible for all the bad stuff the Nazis did (so most of the parents of you ordinary Germans in the audience weren't really to blame, you see. We're all victims, after all-- typical 60s moral relativism). And the pointless S&M/bondage scene toward the end with the Russian POW girl simply reinforces nasty stereotypes about German psychology.... Denouncing war while titillating your audience is about as low as you can get. If you like this kind of kinky stuff in a war film, Cross of Iron did it better. A lot of grogs like COI because, frankly, there haven't been many other Western films dealing with Our Favourite Campaign, but IMHO that film is kind of overrated too. So if the 60s Antiwar War Film convention has run its course, let's see what the James Cameron Historical Epic With Androgynous Haircuts style does with Drang Nach Osten. Flame away, kids

Respectfully, I'm not convinced of the independent fighting abilities of partisans compared to those of trained regular troops. You might get elite groups of hard core partisans with outstanding tactical and combat skills, but the broad mass of these folks are badly inferior to regulars in a sustained firefight and they know it. "Kill and get away", as the old Cossack saying goes. This was exactly the tactic employed by the irregulars I spoke to in Asia... set up an ambush zone, shoot off two mags and then get the hell away before the Burmese regrouped and counterattacked. Roger Hilsman (a longtime professor at Columbia University) who led these same tribesmen against the Japs in Burma as an OSS officer, told me that his people used the exact same bump and run tactics, as do special forces units today. And it's still two mags and beat it into the trees so the enemy counterattack hits empty scrapes. CM partisan engagements in open country would therefore assume a pattern where the partisan sets ambushes, shoots like crazy for a turn or two and then spends the rest of the game trying to withdraw before the enemy can inflict even greater losses on him. In a larger bump, he might set up smaller secondary ambushes to whack the pursuing enemy. The Partisanjager on the other hand would need to deploy in such a way as to minimize losses in the ambush zone and read the terrain so as to envelop the partisans and mow them down with MGs.... Then massacre the inhabitants of the nearest village in good Kurt Waldheim fashion.

I kind of liked the "shadow" approach used by Talonsoft in East Front where when you click an "LOS filter", everything not in a designated unit's LOS appears in shadow. But then, that game's graphics aren't as demanding as CM's. The current system works well enough.... While I too have experienced the annoyance of taking multiple turns to get a unit into an effective position, I just think of it as them being being slowed up by some random shots, or just the plain old pucker factor.

I seventh (eighth?) the motion to include partisans. Partisan "bumps" and hit and run raids make great little quickie infantry battles for those of us wage slaves with not much time to game. Curious to have the Grognard Collective's thoughts on how partisan tactics and organization would differ from regular infantry as modeled in CM. I had the opportunity to hang out with some irregular units fighting in Burma (Karen insurgents and Shan/Kuomintang opium guerrillas). Based on that limited experience, I'd suggest the following: 1. Smaller squads -- Use half squads that can't recombine. 2. No organic support weapons. All support weapons would be found in separate teams. 3. Far fewer leaders, with far less command control for a player.... Perhaps only a single HQ to control an entire company-sized group. If possible, partisan HQ units should be very difficult for the enemy to distinguish from regular partisan half-squads. 4. Less ammunition and a lot less firepower to reflect lousy marksmanship. Partly offset this with more snipers though! 5. Not sure whether concealment or woods movement abilities should be enhanced. They did it in Squad Leader, but I can't honestly make a case for why this should be so. Experienced regular troops are pretty woodcrafty and local trail knowledge will only get you so far. Punt....

“Zaphod put on the glasses. They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Superchromatic Peril-Sensitive sunglasses, which had been specifically designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might harm you.” -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the end of the universe

First Hamster Guards Army? Although their parade discipline really isn't very good.... presumably a lot of hamster conscripts there. "One dead hamster is a tragedy... A million dead hamsters is a statistic...and what do you do with all the little exercise wheels?" Stalin "...And by the way, how many hamsters does the Pope have?"

My mum read the review in the New York Times, figured I'd like the game and got it for me for Xmas. Good thing too -- I was getting a bit tired of East Front II. I wonder if the Talonsoft (ex-AH) designers are secret admirers of this game.... wouldn't be surprised. Thanks, Mum! (no, she's not on the board, at least not as far as I know).

Heard and read some amazing stories about BAR gunners though, in both WWII and Korea, basically holding off overwhelming enemy attacks for hours single-handed. With the long range and the bipod it seems you can really sweep a pretty wide area and once the enemy has gone to ground you can keep him pinned there pretty well if you're determined to. I suppose a low cyclic rate has its advantages in this kind of situation, as does a one man crew (less conspicuous?). A lot of CMH winners among BAR gunners. Not a bad combat record for an obsolete weapon. I'll still take an MG42, mind you.... make that two. Reach out, reach out and touch someone.... (oops, showing my age)

Just to clarify... With apologies to the Bersaglieri and Ariete fans among you, my original request had nothing to do with gaming the Italian WWII experience. I don't have a huge fascination with the Desert War either, much less with Graziani's boys' role in it. It's the Italian Campaign itself (sans Italians, except as bedraggled refugees) that interests me... Strategically, this campaign was pointless, at least after Sicily and the Capitulation -- Churchill's "soft underbelly" obsession again. But operationally, it is where the Allied armies really learned to fight and win, the hard way, against the later war Wehrmacht. Anzio, for example, was a hard school whose lessons paid off big time in Normandy. OK, so we're looking at Mark II Shermans with lousy optics and no wet stowage, blah blah blah. Other than that kind of minor nitpick, it's perfectly reasonable to build historically accurate scenarios in Italy 44 with CM-1 and that's what I was looking for here. Thanks everyone, for pitching in.

Wow, Michael, that's one heck of an impressive site you have there, with a fantastic collection of Canadian scenarios. I was kind of underwhelmed by the CMHQ "Canadian" site -- maybe you ought to take the label over. BTW, A number of my family members (North Nova Scotias, Cape Breton Highlanders and PPCLI) fought in a lot of those battles. Also, according to my Mum, who was interested in military history as a girl, they evidently acquired a disinclination to take German prisoners after the Kurt Meyer thing-- used to shoot them in the woods apparently, making no distinction between SS and Wehrmacht. Kind of belies our country's reputation as a nation of bleeding hearts, eh? I'm going to pillage all your scenarios as soon as I get to my T1 connection at work. Many thanks

"... A squadron of Spitfires, Herr Reichsmarschall." (Adolf Galland, 1940) "Lions, led by donkeys." German general's description of the British Army (which war and which general I can't recall) That's the best I can offer. I'd strongly doubt that your quote is authentic, although as a fellow Canuck and the son of an Englander I'd certainly be flattered. Australian troops with British NCOs, German officers and US equipment would be more like it though.... (if I had a division of such men, our troubles here would soon be over). A question in return -- did the Germans have a distinct nickname for the Canadians, or were they simply another type of Tommy to them? For that matter, did the English have a tag for them, like "Diggers", "Kiwis", Taffys", "Paddys", "Jocks", "Yanks", etc?

I'm not talking about Italians actually doing any fighting at this point, other than some partisan raids. They just provided the venue... but that's kind of their fault for following Il Duce. Don't forget, there was a lot of really nasty positional warfare going on in Italy all during the time covered by CMBO. Same armies (plus the ANZACs), and mostly the same gear. General Mark Clark (probably the worst US general of the war... but if you want to debate that, please start another thread! ) got all pissed off because his triumphal entry into Rome got knocked off Page One by D-Day. And at that point they were only half way up the Boot. Kesselring held the Allies to a slow painful crawl with very limited resources right up to the end of the war. Just ask Bob Dole. And from a gaming perspective that's kind of the neat thing about Italy-- at a tactical level, the odds were frequently even or -- at Anzio -- in German favor. The Bulge aside, you don't really get that anywhere else in 1944-45

Does anyone know of any historically accurate CM scenarios relating to the Italian campaign, particularly Cassino or Anzio? A search turned up one fictionalized scen relating to Cassino, but alas the download link didn't work. Also, has anybody done Italy terrain mods (red earth, olive orchards, adobe buildings etc.)? Think Poles, Kiwis and Fallschirmjager at each others' throats in the ruins of the abbey.... Elefants pounding poor old Willie and Joe as they huddle in pouring rain on the Anzio beachhead.... 88s used as monster long range sniper rifles... 75th Rangers taking 90% casualties in a single night... and of course, Audie Murphy slapping the s**t out of Ralph Fiennes who gets horribly burned in Cyrenaica sometime in 1942 and yet takes until 1945 to die in Tuscany in a clean bed tended day and night by a beautiful Canadian nurse while whining about his love life. (Oops, sorry, that's the "Pretentious and Narcissistic Pseudohistorical Movie Remakes We'd Like To See" Thread) Many thanks in advance.

Die Freiwilligen alive and well I see...

Tactics II (age 9, and boy was I disappointed at first not to get "Tank Command" with real plastic tanks that popped into the air. But it grew on me). Tactics II always seemed to degenerate into a trench warfare stalemate untless you used the optional nukes... Remember that discussion "Problems of Nuclear Warfare"? Computer: Eastern Front for the Atari 800 (1981). Not a bad game actually. This was also the first instance of "We Go" logic I ever saw in a game... you gave all your corps movement orders and then they all executed at once each turn to the best of their ability.

If you can track down Cajus Bekker, "The Luftwaffe War Diaries", it contains a chapter on Flak as a Field Weapon, including a blow by blow description with map of the "Night of Ilza", where a Luftwaffe flak unit (20mm and 88mm) singlehandedly turned back a Polish counterattack in 1939. The Germans were so impressed with these experiences, their Flak units became a standard part of the Blitzkrieg package and unlike the Allied gunners, did not put up a fuss when pressed into the ground role. Of course, the 88 figures just as prominently in the memoirs of many GIs and Tommies as the Tiger, especially in Italy where many Luftwaffe field units were deployed. I recall stories of 88s being used as super long range sniper rifles to pick off individual Allied soldiers. "Why they couldn't hit an elephant at this r--" (Last words of a Union general whose name escapes me, U.S. Civil War)

The Vietnam memoir by the ex-SS Legionnaire (Karl Wegener) referred to earlier in this post is "Devil's Guard". It's a nice tale, and has some good tactical information, but large parts of it are clearly fictional. Don't read it as history. The sequel, "Recall to Inferno" which features scenes where the Germans seize Viet Minh tanks and use them against their owners, discover a Communist spy in their midst who was a former death camp guard, or make phosgene gas and wipe out an entire VC camp border on comic book plots. You can probably pass on it unless you like this stuff. Sounds like this guy Wegener would have been a real pisser to serve with though -- lots of BS and tall tales to fill the boring hours and take your mind off the skeeters.

I've got a couple of more movies with realistic (though not 100% so) combat depictions y'all might want to track down at some point: 1. The Odd Angry Shot -- the Aussie Vietnam experience. Captures a lot of the tension and boredom of the jungle war without the Oliver Stone nonsense. 2. The Bridge, with Jimmy Stewart (who knew a few things about combat himself), set in Sichuan Province, China during the '44 Ichigo offensive. Not much combat, but what's in there is pretty damn good.... and at proper combat ranges too. My main beef with SPR was that most of the final battle took place at way too close quarters, even for a city fight. Once the enemy is within sub 30m. grenade/SMG range, you don't get up and run around the way both sides were doing the whole time. You crouch in your selected hole pissing yourself and unable to see much of anything, or if you feel really motivated, you crawl like a snake. And if you're plain nuts or want to win a posthumous medal, you might engage in a brief heroic dash.... real brief. 3. The Sand Pebbles (Steve McQueen). The actual hand to hand fighting is standard Hollywood choreography, but this is one of the few movies that actually has the characters using sensible military tactics, both in the river battle and at the end. A great movie movie too and one of my favorites in any genre. 4. Oddly enough, the brief combat clips done by Kubrick in Dr. Strangelove(!) are in an authentic, grainy "combat camera" style that I suspect Spielberg drew upon. "A great.... fatigue came over me..."