sburke

A loaded question if ever I saw one, hope nobody in this room is drinking or this could get ugly. To be honest, the variables are too great for any real answer to come from this but it sure is fun to contemplate and see how folks develop an opinion. Interesting to see the hard factor data (unit firepower etc) vs soft factors (unit integrity and experience) being juxtaposed. Not sure if anyone can come up with a situation of "regular units" to support or disprove your theory, but curious to see. Just to throw out a different example - take a look at the US assault on Carentan. Airborne troopers on both sides, Germans defending. The Germans were elite with combat experience, the Americans highly trained and motivated but new to combat. The US prevailed. Granted the 6th FJR fought very hard and had resupply issues, but there will always be mitigating factors for either side. Very high potential for a campaign game there especially with the addition of the 17th SS and 2nd Armored Divisions. June/July 1944 is a difficult period to be able to equate the two forces. Allied forces were generally new formations with a scattering of experienced units. By the time that you could really consider the US Army a seasoned force, the Allies had broken the back of the Wehrmacht and you then find the opposite, poorly trained German units hastily committed to battle. For example the Axis Lorraine offensives against veteran US and French units resulting in the German debacles at Arracourt and Dompaire. I know this is outside the scope of your original question but as the topic of the Ardennes has already come up.. I have an Uncle who served with the 99th ID. A green division placed on the line directly in the path of of the Northern German pincer fought with distinction alongside the 2nd ID. The battle of the Twin Villages kind of put to rest the myth of SS superiority for anyone still believing it.

Of the lot I think Normany 44 offers the best potential in that the OoB is on company scale (and can be edited further if desired), individual tanks and AT guns are accounted for, air and artillery support can be defined, the addition of replacements to units especially when removed from the front line, impact of allied air surpremacy on German supply and reinforcements etc and the game scale of 1 km and 2 hrs per turn is about as close as you can get. You can also edit your saved games in a text editor allowing you to include the results of the battles you chose to fight through CMBN. I am not sure how well this will allow you to develop balanced scenarios though. I can't imagine being on the receiving end and of an assault by 2 infantry battalions with armor, air and artillery support trying to defend with 1 company from an Ost Battalion would be too much fun. What you may find is that you will fight battles in CMBN that you wouldn't try in PzC simply because you wouldn't have some magical odds number to succeed. The biggest issue if you are really intent on modelling this I think is the terrain is still far too generic. At best you will have roads and villages and some height changes to draw from. However as seen in the latest AAR, one of the real strengths of the tactical game is how to make best use of terrain and deciding the resources to use. The problem I think you will find using any operational level game is deciding how to take the very generic terrain depicted and adapt that to the depth of detail you get in CMBN scale. If someone would just do all 22,500 1 km hexes in detailed CMBN maps....... One game series that might have been better for this is the Tactical Games Series by The Gamers . At platoon level and a map that was not simply generic and a step closer to scale it would give you a campaign scenario potential of several days, depict delays in reinforcements, operational plans etc. Unfortunately they only developed one game in the series for this time period (Omaha) and it only covers the first few days for the 1st and 29th IDs. When we get Market Garden and Bulge modules they have I think 3 games in that time period to use. By the way, my lawyer says I must include a disclaimer as trying to manage an operational level game to develop scenarios may lead to mental stress and health issues. In no way am I suggesting or implying you should do this and am not accountable to the impact on your personal hygiene should you chose to do so. :-P

Simple, cause you guys scare the crap out of us! We sit here wondering, hey if I keep playing these games am I gonna turn out like that..oh wait I have been playing these games that long already...maybe I am like that and just don't know it! Then we see page on page of figures on ballistic characteristics of an unladen (African) swallow and we start remembering that teacher in elementary school with the yardstick she called Egore....oh god I need to go for a walk. Wait was that my outside voice? Seriously - I for one am just sitting back, watching and enjoying the AARs and counting the days till my pre order is available for download. I don't care about the cost, I don't care if it doesn't have beach surf or if some commonwealth soldiers third cousin twice removed has a name (whether he has Polish blood or not). I have waited for this game for 20+ years, a few weeks more is just a blip - Thank you Battlefront.

as long as I see CM campaigns...... sometime soon..... maybe....please