kohlenklau

Summer is cancelled. This is the Ardennes baby!

@PhilM The battle of hex (3,6) is completed! Normally your Baker Company 2IC and his staff would gather the platoon reports...but their dog tags and jeep are burnt nearly beyond recognition.... Your 4 troop took the most casualties at barely 2 sections left. 5 troop unscathed and 6 troop hit almost as bad as 4 troop. Battalion Pioneer Troop is down to only 2 men and the bridging construction is a no go. 12 troop of the PLDG has 3 of 5 M5's ready and the other 2 are being examined for extent of damage by the troop senior NCO. But it might not matter as 4 section and the light mortar are all casualties. Shermans: 5 of 6 are ready. 1 is beyond local repair. Allied Forces summary: 164 OK, 29KIA, 22 WIA. Some of the wounded should be posted back to their units after minor medical treatment. Axis Forces: 44 KIA will eventually be counted. 4 Troop as a weakened troop was assigned to round up and guard the 31 prisoners (many severely wounded) as they head south back over the Moro. <Maybe 4 Troop will get a hot meal back there and return to battle>. 2 anti-tank guns and a few trucks were destroyed during the battle. "A handful of the enemy were seen to be running north...less than a dozen for sure..."

The big cheese or pbem foot soldier?

Test test 1 2 test test 1 2 3 4 "Is this mike on?" Doing sound checks and tuning up the guitars... I hope to be firing up a Hungarian Operation in 2 weeks.

I guess travel and distance is a relative thing. For example I made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.... But really it is relative. My butt has been all over this planet and most of it on Sam's nickel. 50 countries. Trans-oceanics? fuuu---dge....at least in the 80's... by ship about a dozen. The rest by air, none by swimming! Enjoyed about 11 years living in Japan and about 5 in Italy. Now relaxed in central Texas. Travel done on my own nickel often and of course from now on... EDIT: oh, I guess I could try for the space-A thing when I am really old! But anyway, okay. I can't send you or anyone else a sack of gold. You'll be there in spirit? Once I nail down the specific dates in October I will branch this off to an e-mail thread and only to those seriously interested.

Dig in and be ready for a counterattack lads!

PhilM, just as more detail as the view from my umpire eyes... Point A: A few posts back and when you asked about the objective, etc etc Then I made a small call and recommendation as to achieve a conclusion. etc etc Point B: I blinked my eyes and viewed a turn this morning and it seemed you were up on it since Point A. So, I figured why belabor you or draw it out? If you had gotten to the same point after say only 10 minutes of battle and had 20 left, would you want me to have you just chill and swap turns?

Don't worry fellas, we'll roll on forward and all will be well. Trust me as the umpire. Round up the prisoners. Hand out some medals and food. Get the engineers looking at the site for the bridge. PhilM, you are in charge of the bridge construction!

Anybody interested? This would be played using the ol' 1-2 combination punch! -John Tiller's Panzer Campaigns Bulge '44 <not needed by anybody but myself as the umpire>. -BFC's winter-season snowy delight CMFI Gustav Line. <date set to Dec.'43 due to editor limitations.> Allies: Colonel Hurley Fuller's 110th Infantry Regiment and supporting co-stars. Axis: Elements of XLVII Panzer Corps: 2nd Panzer Div., Panzer Lehr and 26th VG Div. As usual, the player interest level will drive the size of the operation within my sanity maintenance protocol of "10-10-10x10". 10 Panzer Campaign turns max. 10 units per side max. 10x10 km map max size. I want to see if we can do a little trick and extend the turns out over several days by consolidating the evening/night turns. So, imagine maybe 2 days of operational combat to delay and disrupt the axis timetable towards Bastogne. If nobody wants to jump on this now due to the new Bulge title coming out soon (soon = ?), I fully understand. Maybe it is like eating a bunch of candy before Halloween trick or treating? Kills your appetite?

As a general response, I do sincerely appreciate the mentions of concern for my safety and welfare during the recent weather/flooding. All went well for my specific family and home. Worst: The water must have sat and rotted out some roots on a few ornamental plants and they are now looking near death's door. I guess I can see if they make a recovery! Thanks.

@PhilM For the (3,6) battle...I am going to shut it down and process the final turns as umpire. I want to do this to keep fog of war versus the usual end of game map review.

A good PBEM buddy suggested maybe a small session on modding. Aris will be flown in from Spain? If I am a sober enough I would share what I know with everybody who wanted to see it. Give me 15 minutes! Realistically I think people are not drawn to this unless somebody from BFC shows or there is the unveiling of a new module or family or whatever. I mean, if they wanted a cool a$$ place to show the CM Bulge game at around the same time as the battle for Aachen went down... A-A-C-H-E-N and A-U-S-T-I-N hmmm, 6 letters in each!

John, There are only so many emoticons. It was intended to say how pi$$ed off I would be if indeed you are a multiple profiler forum rule violator as I had made some stand against haters and bashers and bullies and whatever you call them. Anyway, I had seen a few highly familiar style of posts where the profile was new and I even saw a few other posters make reference to "new Kettler"... It is not my rule and if anybody needed a new identity on here, maybe it is you and if you have or had or whatever I don't really care or see any harm except the sadness if you indeed felt you had to do that to say something and not get immediately attacked as "old crackpot" Kettler. Like anybody, if and when I/they offer/offered some cover fire against any unwarranted crap someone suffers, it doesn't mean or have to mean I agree with the crapped on person. From here on out, I want to focus on the convention and not get mired down in anything. Moving onward and upward, I think the cooler weather of the fall will be a great relief for many who had wanted to attend but feared the Texas 37C weather of mid-August. <<Why did I do August to begin with? It was a jump to find a weekend and the 70th Anniversary of VJ and a bit after that weekend my son would soon depart for military service.>> So, who can attend the October timeframe in the Austin area?

Misunderstanding maybe ~ fog of war?

I understand the frustration Phil. Maybe these things that come up are the reasons that not many people desire to play in these operations and even fewer people volunteer to organize them. But you are here. Thanks! Know that I do take notes and try to use my pea brain to outsmart these issues the next time! Either by the editor or by rules or whatever. One issue was mud and tanks! Chappy and I worked out a lot of stuff over the PM and based on things we experienced in the previous Eindhoven Operation. One issue we kicked around then and recently was the muddy and swampy tiles that hinder a tank to the point the pathing goes nutso, tank bogs and maybe immobilizes. So, it was technically never prohibited to try to cross and maybe a tank could slowly make it across given enough time and enough tanks! The chain of command may have ordered you not to try in fear the bogging would happen. Well, it all boiled down to avoiding frustration and the proposal that this would be solved using historically what occurred, some type of bridge was eventually built. Back In '43....Did any vehicles try to make it? Did any actually make it across before the "impossible bridge" was put in place? I don't know. I think I read that these poor baztards had to manhandle the AT guns all the way down and across the mud and whatever and up the far side and then on to San Leonardo. Wow. Objective areas: I never count a lone enemy soldier cowering in a mud puddle as actual enemy holding out. Or the sprinkled remains of the defense just hiding. If I make a few discrete objectives then maybe the player grabs just a few and we have some sort of big evaluation and decision after that battle ends. Then to start another battle everyone is in LOS and ugghg. On and on. The ultimate cool thing would be one giant map and all players just log on and can enter into a continuous multiplayer battle assigned units to control by their CO with some designation system so those units know they follow your mouse and keyboard and as umpire I can edit in troops to arrive and the only objective would be Ortona. Now that would be cool!

1. OK, don't try with the tank. Not a problem. No big deal. Tanks trying to slowly get through the mud. Risky. Besides if you have LOS to support from afar, no worry. 2. The objective area is there as guidance. It already includes those buildings so really my reply was never needed. But when you asked if you had to clear the Germans from the "map"...no, nobody says you have to do that. Check those buildings for intel and any good vino!

Press forward and get them out of those buildings. More up on the higher ground. Try and get a tank across if you can.

I can look at the specifics later and make a call. At work...no CM.

You know what. Fall just might be better. Why don't we move it to that slightly cooler weather? I will make a new "poster".... Standby!

Thanks!

John, Maybe I am a stupid patsy. Know anybody that violates this rule? 3. There is no legitimate or innocent reason to have multiple accounts, therefore discovery that a single person has multiple accounts means an instant banishment from these Forums.

I have a couple sales quotes to finalize early this week but Wednesday I will figure out one of those event trackers.... Where people can log on to confirm they will attend. Then we can start to figure out the venue of where to have this. Probably Austin for hotels. So far a bit more than 10 people seem interested. I hope it grows and we can get some group rates for hotels or whatever lodging. Army surplus tents?

John, Please don't make me get out the rubber chicken. I said the longhorns were on the other side of a fence. Hint! These fences are NOT your suburbs privacy fences so ladies can layout naked on their back deck. Of course we can see the longhorn cattle!

Am I the next John Kettler? John Kettler may be crazy. I don't know, I am not certified to make that call. John Kettler may have dozens of pages of a website that professes certain theories I might not believe in. He has never to me in a forum or PM or whatever attempted to press them on me. Maybe some of his posts.....ok, maybe many of his posts are "too long"..sure, a terrible waste of expensive bytes? Who cares? Maybe many of his long lists of wikipedia links are redundant or whatever negative way you want to label them. In one thread I even told him he was a little testa pazzo. His style is quite particular. Sure, he isn't perfect. Who is? But, has he done something or anything to get banned off here? Then report him and present the charges and try to get him banned! Maybe long ago and got some warning and now he suffers for that and would have been better off to get banned? I don't know any details or anything.. But I always believe that things will evolve per nature. He gets ignored or the threads and posts just drift away. But clearly we have some people who really want to make fun of him in the school hallways. Maybe eventually some people who would look dang natural in a brown uniform with an armband? Load him in the truck! I just wanted a little thread about an attempt to gather a few PBEM buddies...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)