Quintus

The toothpick, if dipped in a high enough quality ink, can be used to draw very good maps...

Off Topic but semi-relevent. Holland may have been knocked out of the land war pretty rapidly but their navy did a good job with what it had out in the far east. Somewhere in my cupboard I have lead miniatures of a fair number of Royal Dutch Navy vessels that I've fielded in WW-II wargames. (Do people still yell "Where're our bloody bikes?" at German tourists or has that tradition died away?)

I suppose the "Gamey Police" should hop back in their time machine and issue citations to the Soviets for firing on the German concentration areas before the start of Zitadelle Fie and indeed Pshaw. Without figuring in an intelligence branch / advance recon model into the game, this is all rather hard to argue without getting down to opinion verses objectivity. The 'Oh yes it is' arguement for gamey probably hinges on whether one party or the other would know -when- to fire the artillery (too early and the enemy would not BE there for example). The Soviets pounded away at the Zitadelle assembly areas partly I suspect due to intel and partly also because they had O.P's and recon to tell them that there were several hundred tanks 'over yonder hill'. This is not modelled in the game. However, the fact that in the real world there were opportunities to pre-empt an enemy action with a few tonnes of lobbed TNT would probably form a reasonable part of the "Oh no it isn't" arguement. I operate a "does it look like I am taking the pi$$" system of gauging whether or not something is gamey (other than being into historical stuff more than 'will it help me win?'). Taking 10 pupchens, paratroop engineers and crack panthers just screams 'pee take' to me and so I suspect would the act of pasting a very narrow deployment area that I know as a player is likely to be packed with a couple of thousand points of log-jammed enemy forces with five batteries of artillery on turn 1. Back when I used to play 1/300 lead-miniature wargaming, we used to frequently play the Monty Python game "How not to be seen" and try to guess which hill an enemy HQ would be hiding behind by the simple expedient of blasting away with indirect 105's and seeing if the enemy army ran about like headless chickens afterwards. However, this happened in a game that assumed pre-game recces. So, to recapitulate : It's all down to taste and opinion UNLESS there's a model for recon and pre-game intelligence information. (Now, THERE would be a useful add-on for a future game - Recon pre-battle engagements and a scouting report)

"I've straddled your weapon and gone down on one knee... now, Herr Oberst... will you marry me?"

"I've straddled your weapon and gone down on one knee... now, Herr Oberst... will you marry me?"

Thank you to JasonC for that info on the Rumanians. From what I can see, their infantry is all rifle armed until April of 1942 and then it gets that rather nice cavalry squad mentioned. I shall have to definitely give them a try at some point. It almost makes me wish that there was a Far-East version of this game out at present... Rifle armed infantry, odd calibre on-board field guns, AWFUL tanks but passable aircraft... it's just like the 1941 Japanese army I used to 1/300 wargame with.

Whilst the individual Italian soldier was probably every bit as brave as anyone else, the army as a whole did not do at all well. Groggier souls than myself can probably go into deeper detail but if a British army with the sort of kit it had at the time can boot an Italian army most of the way to Casablanca in the time it takes you to say "Sapristi Indelible!" (*) then I think that says quite a lot. Their record in the Balkans was no less awful. Badly led, terribly equipped and not really all that enthusiastic about fighting a war that involved facing off against armed enemies (machine gunning spear waving Abysinnians didn't really provide much of a foretaste of what modern battle involved). And if you think their army was bad... Lord, the airforce... Oh, the airforce! (Savio Marchetti and Folgore aside, Trumpton had sufficient air defences to see them off) Their Navy however... for a non-radar navy, they had some good stuff. (*) To quote a Goon show villain.

I think rarity=off is about the only way to make the 'minors' truly viable (reflecting I suppose, those units that had all the best gear). Sucks to be me : December 1942 with Rarity=On. -le sigh-

Other than being part of a well designed scenario, has anyone had any success with the Romanians/Hungarians/Italians in Quick Battles? (I'm excluding the Finns here as they are something of a case apart IMHO) These Axis nations seem to suffer from woefully inadequate armour, troops that are armed almost exclusively with rifles and are very light on anti-tank weapons (even molotovs). I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any success stories with these 'underdogs' on the Eastern Front. (I am fully expecting a proper kicking at the hands of my soviet opponent against my Italian infantry in my present game) [ April 01, 2003, 06:00 AM: Message edited by: Quintus ]

I'd be interested to find out for sure if arty type rather than blast value did have an effect on suppression. I remember that in the old war-games ruleset ('Firefly') I used to play that rocket bombardment gave a significant penalty to morale checks.

The game does require prisoners to be escorted. I stand corrected Teach me to not read the .pdf manual more often... Hmmm, boss out of office... laser printer unattended... binding machine to hand... Giving in... to ... temptation... -whirr-

It's a shame the game doesn't require prisoners to be escorted. The image of some POW's ducking into a ditch and grabbing a rifle from a dead body before taking potshots at the foe is a good one. I've not run into the bug myself but I second the sentiment that in the face of an actual patched solution, the only honourable thing to do if you capture enemy troops is to immediately send them to the rear to avoid taking inadvertent advantage of this apparant bug.

Well, I couldn't get two "4" guns onto a transport "8" tow, so I guess CMBB 1.02 has closed that option off. Nice idea though.

Reading through another user's post, I came across this website : http://www.iremember.ru There's an interesting depiction here :- http://www.iremember.ru/artillerymen/monyushko/monyushko2.htm of a studebaker truck carrying three ZIS (3?) ATG's ! Now, THAT would be a funny thing to be able to pull off.

I think, if I remember the few first hand accounts I've read properly, that entrenching tools, knives and pistols were preferred in trench fighting because of their length. This probably applies to a lot of the 'up close and personal' stuff. There's a classical parallel I suppose, in a close melee, short weapons do better in the main than long ones (Gladius for the Romans, the short spear of the Zulu etc). SMG's are probably easier to use in-close too, gangsta-stylee.