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As a lifelong student of military history and avid wargamer since the 1960's, I have to say that the announcement months ago of BFC's upcoming wargame based on a hypothetical ground conflict in Ukraine left me feeling...strange. On the one hand, I'd love to play it. On the other hand...there is reality. As many of you know, I have for the past 14 years been married to a wonderful Ukrainian lady and have family and friends who live there today. I've been there several times, including Crimea. For the first time, my game mindset had to encounter my real-life mindset, and it ain't pretty folks. For people like me and my family, the stakes involved in the real Ukraine/Russia crisis are very high indeed. And today I have seen four videos of Ukrainian army troops leaving their barracks in their obsolescent vehicles & AFV's or loading their tanks on trains...and on the other side, videos of massive Russian army convoys backing up on roads outside of Krasnodar, waiting to cross the Strait of Kerch into Crimea...convoys which include numerous "Grad" unguided rocket launchers which are only useful if you plan to turn, say, a city into a parking lot. So all games and kidding aside, folks, here's my heart-felt hope that BFC's war on the Steppes war game remains just that, a fantasy that never comes to pass.

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Folks don't realize that the abstract discussion we enjoy having here are quite different when you have RL family on the line..

Wich is exactely one of the reasons why it is difficullt to objectively discuss historical events that arent more than 2 generations old.

I hope yours all stay safe (and off the streets)

I wish you good luck as well, gunnergoz.

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Our position is similar. Doing any contemporary warfare game, that isn't 100% generic (i.e. Blue vs. Red fighting in Countryland), runs into this problem. Even the fictitious Syrian setting of CMSF ran into some issues at the time as some people chose to tie it to then current politics. Minor, but it still got heated at times because it wasn't too hard to imagine. And now we of course Syria has become a bloodbath since then.

When we set about to make a temperate modern warfare game we chose a story that got us an interesting game since nobody wants to play an uninteresting one. Obviously :D We chose the most logical place for a conflict and pieced together a plausible story to explain the game's circumstances. Unfortunately for the Ukraine and the world, it is too plausible.

All we can do is hope that things settle down without loss of life. Even if we had no interest in making modern wargames at all, this is what we would wish. Those of us who study wars throughout history are usually the ones who are most convinced that war is a terrible means of extending national interests.

Steve

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....here's my heart-felt hope that BFC's war on the Steppes war game remains just that, a fantasy that never comes to pass.

It can and it may gunnergoz. Hopefully the world has learned how to apply enough non military pressure to make the masses realize what is best for them and it is not another war.

Best to you and your wife / family.

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