tecumseh

My personal cheat is to play quick battles where my side has +40%. It sounds awful, but I just cannot stomach a fair fight where 100s of my guys are dying. So instead I make my victory inevitable but I am trying to minimize loses. Then every dead guy hurts and somehow it feels more realistic. At least that's what I tell myself

As a kiwi myself I can tell you that "like spots on a knife" refers to spotting, a popular way of smoking pot in NZ using a knife blade, and that it's also called blading or doing blades, which is kinda similar to 'Blade Runner'.

He's fantastic. He's one of the few WW2 authors I feel I could spend an evening with, and wouldn't need to invent an excuse to escape back to normal people. He's not pompous, he's not lost in fantasy. He has empathy and he has perspective and balance. I've read all his books and probably enjoyed the one on the Spanish civil war the most. I never really saw an anti-soviet bias, but he mentions rape in most of his books and I think his personal feeling is the suffering of women by rape is a horror of war that doesn't get enough attention, so he focuses some time on it. And he doesn't attempt to excuse the horrific Red Army rape statistics by talking at great length about the reasons a soviet soldier might think it was warranted. Which I think is the right thing, just as he doesn't try to excuse other atrocities by giving the criminal's POV.

Paper Tiger - I played most of your CMSF missions and campaigns and always thought you were pretty awesome. This one though....it's the next level. Best CMxanything games I've played. I only hope I have enough guys left to see all the maps. Nice one!

Would love to see a user controlled LOD distance. Editing a 'use at own risk' config file to do it would be fine. I think my machine could draw out a lot further.

I'm bumping this to maybe help sales. I assumed this was going to be lower quality than CMSF but I got it a week ago anyway after finishing the CMSF campaigns. High quality, great missions, great briefings, well balanced, utterly brutal and a completely different feel. Tremendous fun.

I'm 35. I wasn't a wargamer or a ww2 grog, but I got sucked into CM a decade ago because of the gameplay, and now I'm both. A decade ago I was in New Zealand. Now I live in Noo Yawk and have a perfect little 6 month old boy. Time flies!

I was hoping Fionn's ban would be lifted and he'd be wheeled out to do some AARs and call Steve and Jason rude names.

I got a tactical defeat as well, after I called a ceasefire with 20 minutes left. I'd already suffered 34 casualties and didn't feel I could take the rest of the central block without a whole lot more, since my Apaches were out of ammo. My boys had seen enough horror for one day. So I wussed out, dug in and called for reinforcements! Brutal stuff, but great fun. Thanks paper tiger

I'm been reborn into CMSF after discovering patches + packs + this mission = totally awesome. Glad to hear others are finding it hard. I'm starting my second attempt after I lost too many troops for my conscience to let me continue.

I grabbed this today ... and then realised I'd actually grabbed the wrong book. I got Eagle and the Rising Sun by Alan Schom instead. Not a good start Also got Guadalcanal by Richard B. Frank.

Thank you, a great start.

Many years ago I got good advice from this forum on books, so... I’m looking for a book/books on the pacific war, and I was hoping someone could recommend one for me. I’d like it to be in the same style as Erickson’s Road to Stalingrad and Road to Berlin – strategic and operational level, sensible writing without hyperbole, lots on the Japanese side of things. OR operational/tactical stuff in the style of Glantz - detailed, factual, dispassionate. Clinical strategy grog stuff rather than gung-ho popular history that “recreates” the events. Any suggestions?

Thanks, I appreciate the help. I know hypothetical "what if" WW2 discussions are as rare and exciting as indigestion. So in summary... Politically: never going to happen Technically: difficult but very possible Effect: probably not huge by winter 42

Was there any possibility for UK & commonwealth troops to fight in numbers on the eastern front? I just want to get a sense if it was possible but rejected, extremely difficult and rejected, or simply impossible. It’s in response to this Russian chap who feels belatedly aggrieved:

Those combats are at a smaller scale than I am talking about. The fighting for mamayev kurgan involved regiments and battalions – for example, on 28th Sep, it was the reduced 95 RD and bits of the 284 RD that attacked. Many times the soviets sent divisions in piece-meal in the desperate 'kitchen sink' way you describe. My point is that significant soviet forces that could have been sent into fighting were instead being held back for the ‘master plan’ of mars and uranus. This is not the behaviour of a stavka throwing everything at the enemy. They were hording whole armies. Not coz ferries couldn't get them into Stalingrad either. From Sep 7, Stalin was culling troops from elsewhere and sending them into reserve - 4th, 17th and 18th Tank Corps for example. They could have been sent into combat any time in October, but they weren't. The huge 5TA was not milling around waiting for ferries into Stalingrad, or going into attack off the march. They were part of a master plan. From mid september, the red army was not swinging wildly like a punch-drunk boxer, lucky enough to land one blow out of 10. The red army continued to jab and parry and duck like any boxer will, taking a dreadful hammering, while building up for the huge hooks of Mars and Uranus. One missed by a mile, but one landed flush on the jaw.

OK, I maybe read authors with a soviet bias, but I would interpret the constant attacks on the 6A flanks and the dribbling re-inforcement of the 62A - all the while as reserves were being pooled and earmarked for Mars and Uranus - as definately part of a master plan. To keep the battle in Stalingrad as a stalemate. Sure, if they'd pushed germany back earlier they would have taken it, but making significant ground was not expected by any soviet operation until Uranus. Chuikov was to hold on, not push back. The counter attacks to the north and south were to relieve pressure on 62A, with attempts at small-scale tactical encirclement only. Of course, this may be erickson propaganda working on me.

The planning for the uranus encirclement began in mid-september, before the german assaults on sep 13 and before the brutal october fighting had carved up chuikov so precariously. I know you're not implying the counter-attack forces were standing about the flanks because they couldn't get on ferries, but...well, you almost are

Thanks Gopblin for posting that - good to read. It would be nice if western countries had a day every year to remember what the soviet people did to defeat Hitler. It would be nice if Russia had a day to remember what the western allies did too.

infact: vs

Can you find a single image where Stalin poses without his hat? My memory fails me. :confused: </font>

But Stalin had that useless withered arm, so unless he had learned whip it about like a stegosaurus tail, he would have been pretty pathetic in a fist fight.

Alright, I'll look forward to them. Yesterday I finished Small Assault, which means I've worked my way down the DK CMBB list. I got a total victory, but I figure that scenario is more about minimising casualties and ammo management than not losing. Overall it played very realistically, as usual.

In a my annual attack of CM fever, I'm playing single player CMBB, but I've finished all of Andreas's scenarios :mad: Andreas - please make some more. It seems a while since you have (?) and they are always excellent. The scale, restraint and logic of your small-medium ones is sorely missed.

I think the massed soviet forces to the north and south of the Kursk salient, and the counter-attacks towards Orel and west of Kharkov are all the evidence you need that there was no 'winning' Kursk for germany.