Shosties

Umlaut grog.

Yeah, we could have done something really smooth and landed in the Balkans instead!

If Bradley and Hodges are to be called on the carpet for the Hurtgen battles, then it would only be fair to point out the failure of Montgomery and Horrocks to cut off the tenuous route of retreat for the 15th Army from its positions on the Channel coast. One wonders how Market Garden would have gone if this had been done. Montgomery went onto compound this error and the debacle of Market Garden with his clear preference of working on the Market Garden salient at the expense of the clearing of the Scheldt.

Paulus wasn't a Junker or descended from nobility anywhere else for that matter. There is no von to get tacked in front of his surname.

The Auk, Wavell, and O'Connor. The what ifs, the what ifs! What if Churchill hadn't diverted manpower to Greece? What if that German recce group hadn't gotten lucky and snagged O'Connor? Could these men have gone on to be revered and lionized and Montgomery forgotten instead? Bill Slim! There's more to British generalship than Monty.

Remember the original notion was for Overlord and Anvil to come off at the same time, but the number of landing craft and LSTs available ruled this out. Anvil was seen as an all-too suggestive codename so they changed it to Dragoon. If they had been able to do both at the same time, the Germans would have been in a hell of a predicament. As it was, in the weeks preceeding Cobra, Dragoon must have appeared the surest bet to the combined chiefs for breaking the deadlock in Normandy.

No problemo. It's good to be of use for somefink, at least.

No, you haven't... we've just had to infer something of this sort happened to you! EDIT: There you go! It works too. Now leave it alone! LOL

[XXX=http://s7.invisionfree.com/The_Writing_Club/index.php?]The Writing Club Website[/XXX] See that? ... Put that crap in there... then replace both the XXX's with URL and you will be good to go.

*blinks* I have no idea what you've done with it in the current state. Have you tried cut and paste of the bit I disabled by replacing URL with XXX? EDIT: Ah, that's better! You just have the superfluous brackets enclosing the linkable text now, which you can delete if you want too. EDIT REDUX: you've made a syntax error with the address, there is a repeat of "http://" that's throwing it off. [ May 10, 2004, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

LOL! Not quite there yet!

JJ, you need to axe the ][ between the first URL and the =, then you can take away the [] enclosing "The Writing Club". This post brought to you by Shosties4th, personal sig manager for JerseyJohn. P.S. You can do a cut and paste dealie from here... [XXX=http://s7.invisionfree.com/The_Writing_Club/index.php?]The Writing Club Website[/XXX] Replace the XXX with URL after pasting in. The following is a test... The Writing Club Website Yeah, it's good to go.

Hey, it worked for Wellington's "scum of the earth" against Napoleon's cavalry, didn't it? Might have been a little too fond of reading histories instead of those new-fangled field manuals.

Hmmm... WORST in all-caps... I'm no big fan of Mark Clark. His moaning about Anvil ticks me off considering his rush to Rome (foregoing the encirclement of a juicy lot of Germans for political self-glorification) and first Monte Cassino. But all-caps WORST would be overdoing it. Any number of generals in the Red Army could be pointed to in 1940-1942, but this is beating something of a dead horse from a safe distance without appreciating what they had to work with. What was any guy going to do with Red Army in the state it was in and with Stalin and Beria looking over his shoulder? It took Zhukov, the fall mud, German overextension, winter, and the Siberians to rescue the situation. Surely some likely candidates could be found in the fascist Italian army. Who was supposedly "on the ground" in Greece? Hitler, as generalissimo and micromanager of the war. Now you're talking. Himmler as an army group commander (AG Vistula in early 1945 IIRC). Doesn't get much worse than that. Goering as commander of an air force and air production ministry (*shouting into phone* "Galland, your pilots are all cowards!" *to aide* "Where's my makeup and heroin?... oh, bring me a list of the paintings we've "aquirred" in the past week"). [ May 09, 2004, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

OK, I have a better idea of what the mechanics of MNB could be like after poking about the DiF forum (relative positioning, manuever and action cards, reaction and counter-reaction, etc.). However, that leaves open the question of what the scope of a single game is? Does it stay at the tactical level or are there some strategic components to it?

And you are aware, Dan, that it's spelled Bismarck? I think you'll find the BFC crowd to be fussy. Loyal, yes. But really, really fussy. LOL

DiF and MNB: all appearances of being a real fun, must-have combo in the future! Good work, Dan and BFC!

Might that be reading a bit much into our new Russian friend's few words, Sergei? Allow him to elaborate at least?

If the banner up above (allowing for it being quite compact) is any indication of what we will be treated to with some of the game screenies, I say, bring it on!

I am looking forward to the bone throws and downloading the demo when it comes out. For both this and DiF. As much as "CM at Sea" would jazz lots of people, a fun (but not entirely mindless) beer & pretzels game that doesn't require a hard core gamers rig to run has its place, IMHO. A little more info on the mechanics of these sorts of card games would be nice, as I have never played any of this sort before. Edit: Ah, OK, the mechanics topic has a thread going over in DiF. [ May 09, 2004, 08:02 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

Sorry, these are indeed legitimate questions. I just couldn't get it out of my head the image of the habitual German panzer-heavy player-fetishist getting all fussy and upset when his vaunted armor doesn't perform to the ueber standard. Not saying you fit that archtype at all! You've been giving non-big cats a whirl for the challenge. Rexford and JasonC will probably be arriving shortly to delve into the finer points since you mentioned some of the "magic words" so I will bow out.

I could help relieve you of it. Being a Korean -er- Chicago suburbanite myself.

Oh, how the worm turns.

Ah, Bob goes a for a steep learning curve!

"A captain can do worse than to place his ship alongside the enemy's" or somefink.