Include Lapland

[Roosevelt45]

For the record Lapland is that very,very,very cold piece of land that connects Finland,Norway and Sweden.

I don't know if there were battles or even troops there but it would be much more realistic to connect those three countries than pretend that they're floting pieces of land.

The germans would also be forced to fight for Finland if they don't want to see Soviet Troops running all over Scandinavia(Norway in specific)

[Kuniworth]

Yes there were lots of troops there during ww2. First in the Murmansk-campaign but later also in the russian invasion of norway with 100,000+ troops..

[jon_j_rambo]

Can you provide some proof?

[Kuniworth]

Proof? Read your historybook son.

[Exel]

There was also the Lapland war where Finland drove the Germans off to Norway after peace with USSR. Though at first the battle wasn't fierce, as the former brothers-in-arms didn't want to fight each other, the Soviets forces the Finns to speed up the advance and thus make contact with the retreating Germans. As a result, the Germans razed most of Lapland.

And as Kuniworth said, during the Continuation War Germans took the front responsibility in northern Finland and attacked Murmansk with little success.

[jon_j_rambo]

Seems a little silly to be fighting way up in Scandavania when you can fight & kill closer to home.

[Kuniworth]

One big problem was infrastructure. Roads only ran north-south direction which made movement almost impossible.

The capture of Murmansk was important to axis as it would be possible to limit the lend-lease from the allies. Fortunately colonel-General Dietl with 5 divisions german and finnish troops could not advance through the terrain.

[Roosevelt45]

Originally posted by jon_j_rambo:

Seems a little silly to be fighting way up in Scandavania when you can fight & kill closer to home.

The way it is now seems silly as well, doesn't it?

It's like you could only fight in the south of these countries. And finland only has like 1/10 of their country available.

[Lars]

I think you could do it if you provided a new terrain type linked to the harsh weather. Movement and supply was very difficult in the Arctic, which was why there wasn't much fighting there. Realistically, we'd only be talking a Corps on either side here anyway so I'm not sure its really worth it.

But I would like to have the space further north at sea to model those Murmansk convoys.

[Sergei]

Part of the reason why Germans were there was to protect the important nickel mine in Petsamo (the Finnish Barents Sea port). There wasn't much point in fighting in the mountainous/swampy/forested terrain though, as there were only few roads/trails, but it tied forces.

[Norse]

Originally posted by Lars:

Realistically, we'd only be talking a Corps on either side here anyway so I'm not sure its really worth it.

When the Soviets crossed the border on November 30th 1939, they came with one million troops, against which the Finns mobilized about 200.000 troops.

Lars is pointing out that 1 million troops = 1 corps. Realistically, that is.

[ May 16, 2004, 06:38 AM: Message edited by: Norse ]

[Exel]

I think Lars meant fighting up north in Lapland. The Soviet offensive in Winter War took place mainly in the south.

[Norse]

You're right, that's what he did, my bad.

I don't think it's a gamebreaker not to include Lappland, but by doing so doesn't make the game complete. Including the artic circle, includes strategical alternatives to all of the major nations, which they also considered / tried to put to life.

What IMO would do it, would be to include two more rows of hexes to the north. The northernmost finnish hex to link with Norway, and the other one to link from Finland <-> Sweden <-> Norway. That way you force the same kind of restriction to troop movement as you have in North-Africa, yet opens up the strategic possibillities that excisted. If Hubert have plans to make Africa bigger, then I've missed it, I haven't read alot on these pages lately, so I'm just talking out of experiences with SC.

[Terry]

I used to play World In Flames from the Australian Design Group (it is a map tiles based board game). As in SC 'Lapland' didn't exsist. There was a lot of agitation for a connecting additional map and eventually one was brought out. And guess what - no one ever used it because it was simply swamp, unpassable hexes and mountains. No movement, no supply - nightmare. In addtion it just wasn't strategically important enough in the German attack to justify diverting from Smolensk or Sevastapol or Minsk or anywhere really.

A similar thing happened when a further additional map was prodiced to connect the European and Eastern maps (to cater for the Rommel fantasy). Basically it never got used because if the Grmans or Japanese were driving into Delhi why bother - strategically the Allies had already lost or else why would the Germans or Japenese be there? Smae applies to Archangel and Murmansk - it would have to be one weird game to justify why the Germans had them but had not won.

So basically extendeding the map for areas that are never likley to be fought over or if they are one side has already (in reality) lost why bother. Which leads me back to Lpaland quite nicely. QED.

I'd also add that extending the hexes in North Africa is nice but again can also go too far. Armies did not have the infrastructure to operate too far from the coast and what exsisting infrastrucre there was. You can't get away from the fact that EL Alamein was, and remains to this day, a practical abd very real bottlekneck because of geography and the reality of infrastructure. So lets extend the map where it improves playability and realisitic winning options but simply because 'it's there'.

[Kuniworth]

World in flames is hex based, not tiles-based.

[Norse]

Originally posted by Terry:

There was a lot of agitation for a connecting additional map and eventually one was brought out. And guess what - no one ever used it because it was simply swamp, unpassable hexes and mountains.

The world looks like the world in flames map. Pure evidence right there...

[bloodstar]

The whole point of Lapland and other things like that would be the *option* to try unusual strategies. In particular if the idea of strategic transfer is modified, it might be possible to get units up into unusual places and suprise your enemy. Just as in chess, sometimes the suprise value of an opening, or a move, can be just as important (White playing b2-b4 comes to mind, I believe Kasperov lost a game when white opened with that move...) as a 'sound' start to the game. Keep that in mind if you want to call this the 'chess' of strategy wargames!