Rinaldi

A Blackadder quote in one of the posts? I'm in!

Was able to reproduce it myself, Aragorn. Seems to be a genuine oversight - SS do not have any Heavy Panzer units from June-Aug '44 in either "Soviet Union" or "Eastern Europe" location parameters.

Uh oh! Would you happen to remember the details Warts? I'm planning a replay of this soon, so I'm hoping I can unpack and patch it personally for myself. The above bug not withstanding I would recommend Amiens Tonight, if only for the lovely change of pace from the usual CMBN campaign. If you want something mechanized and 'slash and dash' then this campaign definitely gives it to you in the final portions. I loved it, JonS really outdid himself. If commanding a sizeable armour and motorized force is not what you're looking for, I would recommend Operation Deadstick. It's about the eponymous operation to seize the bridge over the Orne-Caen canals (Pegasus). It's based on ASL so it has a few design decisions I found personally curious (re: troop quality that can seem artificial at times), but its otherwise fairly historically accurate and played really well.

Well done.

Hope you don't mind if I chime in? I found this scenario a challenge but not insurmountable. Like yourself my initial movements were on the left, along the rail line. I made good progress at first but got caught up on the bunker and while I was able to work a T-34 forwards I could not keep the German infantry heads' down and had to withdraw under Panzerschreck fire. I kept a unit there to take pot-shots at the Germans and shifted my efforts to the centre-right. I remember concentrating my maxims in the orchard (with the wood fence) which was decent cover and allowed me to put grazing fire all along the trench line, as well as on the forested hill. The AT guns were able to put direct fire onto the hill as well and I shot my SMG units and engineers onto the hill and poured through the gaps in the wire. Flamethrowers took massive losses but a team worked its way up to the bunker and I had my break in. From there I was able to route an entire rifle company through and break into the second obstacle belt, forming a base of fire in the captured trenches. I was then able to direct accurate mortar fire on PaK guns and work a few OT-34s forward to engage. I lost two T-34s doing this, one getting destroyed whilst bogged (of course) I did get lucky with the StuGs however and knocked them out from hull down positions. I do think strikes up the flanks can work but a thrust down the centre would require more off map support than what is provided, even though that route has the most gaps in the obstacle belt for you to work your way through. The recon was able to infiltrate quite close and use the anti tank ditch to identify targets though. I lost quite a few of those men running back and forth to Battalion HQ to report, but the information was worth its weight in gold for the close attacks.

I flipped through the campaign notes, and unless I missed it, they didn't list the designers and testers' names. So, whoever you are, my hat's off to you. It was the first campaign in a while I found legitimately difficult. I loved it. I thought it was an excellent depiction of the type of hastily improvised Pak-fronts the Germans would concentrate and lay across an allied mechanized thrust. You could feel mission-to-mission that you were fighting an enemy desperately trying to prevent a breakthrough or blunt a flanking thrust. There was always a great deal of opportunity for mounted manoeuvre, with use of artillery and masking fires, and the time limits encouraged a surgical attitude. I did a lot of bypassing and leapfrogging (often under light fire) of my units through one another to try and meet the timetable. Nor do I think the timetable was artificial: you're doing an armoured thrust up an enemy's flank, speed is key and the campaign captures that. I also appreciated being in command of a relatively untested unit. I'm somewhat familiar with the actual fight for Cellano and I do remember reading the German unit was about as fresh as the South Africans facing them, and it showed. I never felt the difficulty was artificially heightened by suddenly encountering some random, fanatic, Heer unit. The casualties seemed realistically proportionate as well. The lack of resupply and reinforcement made it quite the administrative challenge too. I spent a lot of time deciding which unit was up front or would be the main effort, trying to spread out echelon consumption and casualties. Most of the platoons were combat effective to the end, even if some were glorified squads. Needless to say, the maps were all gorgeous. If anyone wants a good little combined arms battle in complex terrain, and practice busting concentrated pak fronts, I definitely recommend.

Phenomenal shots.

Great spiel, and I do agree. I just was wondering aloud why you felt the need to go down into the mud with him re: the mom's house "jokes" when you had a perfectly valid point otherwise, but that is your prerogative. But I'll contribute: I actually think Buzz has a point as well. We pay out the nose for these games, you are entirely entitled as consumers to demand the kitchen sink. PBEM, PBEM +++ or whatever the hell buzz phrase they are using, an actual peer-to-peer lobby system. Demand it all.

Congrats on the retirement, hope you get to enjoy the free time to the fullest.

Not in Education, Employment or Training, which certain ignoramuses assume everyone who isn't working themselves to death and is under the age of 65 must be.

Irony: we loves to see it babes. I truly enjoy the wonderful debate of extremes we have. In one corner, in the blue shorts, 'everyone who plays PBEM is a geriatric' versus the red corner, 'everyone who disagrees with me is a NEET.'

It's not uniform but it can happen, its always up to the designer. I've played the BS campaigns several times (I know, I know) and I've had a different experience every time, but whether that's because of different AI or different tactics on my end is another matter.

Actually given how I feed my men into L-shaped ambushes like a mindless butcher I believe it's fair to say I am not invested in the game enough. Sadly I must defer to 15, 000 hours of testing :^)

Now that sounds right up my alley; and Cromwells definitely need more love and attention in CMBN.

Nice interview, liking most of what I read. I got to admit I maintain a fool's hope for an AK2 type module - after all, I thought Cold War would never happen and then I got egg all over my face. I'm willing to be wrong again

Have been slowly reading through this, looking forward to the updates. I've already had a sneak peek of how you operate during the abortive attempt at Arracourt a few years back, but it's worth repeating I love your scenario design philosophy. @Xorg_Xalargsky and myself had just been talking about your JOE's bridge scenario, in point of fact, and how good it was. Been really enjoying the Tukums campaign as well. I find a lot of the Axis campaigns tend to be mere cartharsis; fun but not necessarily challenging (KG Engel is a prime example), and sometimes a bit too liberal with supporting assets. I've been enjoying Tukums precisely for the opposite reason, you really captured how much of an improvised mess the Wehrmacht was on all fronts by August '44.

Looking forward to this one Surplice.

Anti-government sentiment doesn't necessarily translate into action. Proof of the former is not evidence of the possibility of the latter. Again, it also presupposes that the would-be liberators are palatable and remain so. If the entire premise is that the Ukrainians could be emboldened to action because their current government exploited their land and killed their people, then it must be repeated that they aren't likely to take said action with the support of a government who exploits their land and kills their people. The hypothetical runs into the same problem: Nazis not acting like Nazis. The Clintons.

1) The oil fields were the objective of the later Case Blue; not Barbarossa. Barbarossa's objective was much simpler in scope: the destruction of the RKKA and VVS. Case Blue's objective stems from the birth of a realization that they were fighting a longer, total war in which command of resources and industry were equally as important as destruction of enemy forces in the field. It was not the plan from the get-go, and must be said wasn't much of a plan when it did become a focus. 2) Re: Ukraine, we run right back into the problem already pointed out that it expects the Nazis to not act like...Nazis. Further, the presence of dissident groups in Ukraine sympathetic to the Nazis does not suggest there was enough general sentiment for an anti-Soviet uprising. People may dislike their governments, but they usually hate invaders more, even if they aren't rapacious, pseudo-occultic mass-murders. 3) Yugoslavia: It is historical consensus. Forgive me for being a Wikipedia warrior, but the sources are definitely valid ones. I'll quote: " In 1952, the Historical Branch of the UK Cabinet Office concluded that the Balkan Campaign had no influence on the launching of Operation Barbarossa." "According to Robert Kirchubel, "the main causes for deferring Barbarossa's start from 15 May to 22 June were incomplete logistical arrangements and an unusually wet winter that kept rivers at full flood until late spring." Keegan writes: In the aftermath, historians would measure its significance in terms of the delay Marita had or had not imposed on the unleashing of Barbarossa, an exercise ultimately to be judged profitless, since it was the Russian weather, not the contingencies of subsidiary campaigns, which determined Barbarossa's launch date. "US Army analyst Richard Hooker Jr., calculates that the 22 June start date of Barbarossa was sufficient for the Germans to advance to Moscow by mid-August, and he says that the victories in the Balkans raised the morale of the German soldier" The arguments are compelling. Barbarossa was a flawed plan, which went against a lot of the classical military thought of Germany, such as concentration of force, unified objective-based thinking, etc. It also went against much of the newer school of thought re: the operation of massed armoured forces. It is a common refrain that too many operational pauses were preplanned and imposed on the operational armoured groupings. Certainly, Guderian thought so, and appealed strongly to let the armour move to the end of its logistical tether in exploitation towards Moscow, rather than make relatively (for the theatre of operations) conservative encirclements in conjunction with the footbound infantry. As Aragorn mentioned, prior to the evacuation of industry to the Urals (and the inevitable hit that would have in the short term on Soviet production capabilities), Moscow was a communications nerve centre and its rapid loss would have been a terrible blow. The Germans never realistically set themselves up for its rapid seizure, even if it was possible. I am by no means convinced that Guderian's assessment is anymore correct than what was actually enacted: strategically, it is a debate of extremes. Lastly, and so properly put to you all, is that all these happy hypotheticals discount the Soviet fighting man. There was already a worrying trend from Poland and France of taking massive casualties in lead formations. The German army had much of its striking power focused in relatively few units, who had repeatedly shown themselves to be run ragged. In a campaign lasting 4 weeks, or 6 weeks, that was acceptable. In a campaign lasting, at the most optimistic estimates, two months it was an issue that should've been given much more thought. Given that the Soviets inflicted proportionally heavy casualties despite all their initial handicaps, is proof enough to suggest Barbarossa may not have been 'on' in any way or form.

The main issue I take with the criticism regarding Churchill's decision to support the Greeks in their struggle is that they are all purely military criticisms. Churchill wasn't a purely military leader (indeed, constitutionally, he wouldn't be much of one at all in any other circumstance other than total war). It was an excellent political decision, and arguably a morally sublime one. The United Kingdom was functionally alone at that point, Western Betrayal sentiments were just beginning to really solidify in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and there had hitherto appeared to be no way to get at the Germans on the continent since being bounced off it in 1940. Intervention in Greece showed that the UK was still very much willing to fight against the odds. Crucially, it demonstrated that it wouldn't further abandon anyone who sought to resist Fascism and Nazism. The decision may have made Wavell despair but it certainly would have been a trumpet blast to occupied Europe, and the Americans, that the British were willing to not only defend themselves on their island, but to seek active decision with the enemy. In short, there were political considerations, very good ones. Goodness knows there's a lot to criticise Churchill for, the man was far from a saint. I just don't think most of the grounds for criticism are related to his leadership during WWII. From a top-down perspective he did precisely what was necessary to carry his country through the conflict, and it must be said, quite a few other governments-in-exile. Any further analysis is nitpicking best left to academics with more letters behind their names than myself.

You may want to see if you can get a copy of Wolfgang Schneider's "Panzer Tactics" - a good read, with quite a bit of focus on small-unit stuff. Leans heavily on examples (the good, the bad and the ugly), primarily from the Eastern front. Presents the textbook 'ideal' (much like that video) that all armies sought to achieve, if rarely accomplished.

Have made this mistake more times than I care to admit.

Agree with all of this. Insofar as community scenario designers go, most will make scenarios they themselves want to play (this is certainly true of me, and I suspect, George) and these types of scenarios are rarely 'winnable' equally by both sides. Let me toss my two pence in. The simple truth is that the reality of combat means creating a properly balanced scenario is not likely to occur. A clever scenario maker can make the 'unwinnable' scenario winnable through allocation of points, but the reality of the fact is its not likely to be fun for the majority of H2H players. A perfect example is my 'Power Hour' scenario for Black Sea. It was designed to be played, primarily, as BLUFOR v AI but I balanced it and playtested it for H2H as well (to which I'm grateful to @IICptMillerII and @Saint_Fuller for their time and effort). The Russian player has the unenviable task of holding forward positions against a strong breakthrough force. They simply do not have the combat power to stop the attack if it is competently (if unimaginatively) handled by the US player. If they maul the force sufficiently enough they will win, as the US force has strict casualty parameters to balance things out. This is to simulate the fact that a sane commander holding a defence in depth would never presuppose that his forward units could actually stop an initial determined effort; a forward position's mission is to maul the enemy and get out of their way when they are no longer capable of doing so. That's a realistic mission....but not necessarily a fun one. When I designed the scenario, I presumed that: a) the average human player would not particularly enjoy the experience of watching his Russian force get mauled; or b) that a US player would appreciate how the strict parameters would translate against a human opponent. My assumptions proved correct: the scenario got rave reviews from those who played it in singleplayer but got generally panned at the Blitz by Russian players, despite them winning more often than not. The long and short of this spiel is that its difficult to actually design a human on human scenario that isn't surreal and a 'realistic' H2H scenario relies on assuming there's masochists like myself or Fuller who are willing to play the 'tough' side and not balk at taking massive casualties. That's not everyone's cup.

That's quite unfortunate fella, stay hydrated.

Hard to argue with the analysis, in this case. The German's propensity to launch local counterattacks quite literally won us battles, or won us larger successes in what would otherwise have been a rebuff. Indeed, we began to plan around the certainty of a counteroffensive: 2nd Alamein, Epsom, Totalize, Tractable are all good examples. Totalize would have been a success regardless, in my view, of the disappointing 2nd phase but the Germans just had to lay on the alter for us their last heavy armour reserve in a wild counterattack against strong positions, enhancing the scale of the victory and denuding themselves of any type of effective reserve in follow-on set pieces. In fact, off the top of my head, the only time the Germans didn't predictably dash themselves to pieces in a counteroffensive was during Crusader, and that's largely because they were so taken by the deception they refused to believe armour was en masse in their rear, we got impatient, and abandoned excellent BPs. We make such a pfaff about how flexible and dynamic the Wehrmacht was in Europe operationally, but in all reality they were predictable, and a predictable foe is invariably inflexible.