Tag: Operational

07/21/18
TITE first SPLASH1

Thunder in the East: A First-time Player’s Perspective

Our guest author takes us to ConSimWorld Expo for a report on VPG’s upcoming east front mini-monster ~

Christian Snyder, 21 July 2018

I recently had the amazing opportunity to sit down with some good folks at ConsimWorld Expo’s Monster Conand play Frank Chadwick’s Thunder in the East for the first time; it was fantastic! Full disclosure: I am currently awaiting my Kickstarter copy of the game and had seen some Vassal play prior to arriving in Tempe, Arizona. Seeing the game on videos and reading the rulebook, however, are nothing compared to sitting down to play with the printer’s proof copy at the show. Since the game is not available, this is not a review, but a first impression focusing on what impressed me about seeing, playing, and meeting the development team for Frank Chadwick’s ETO Vol. I: Thunder in the East.

Frank Chadwicks ETO Vol I thunder in the east
Frank Chadwick’s ETO Vol I: Thunder in the East! Nice maps, charts and counters!

Thunder in the East is a dynamic, action packed game covering the entire Eastern Front of World War 2 in six scenarios starting with the German Operation Barbarossa and ending with the Soviet Operation Bagration. You can do each scenario singularly or start a full campaign from these points with incredible systems for morale, seasonal activities, economy and unit reorganization. My experience consisted of three playthroughs of Operation Barbarossa using the optional and campaign game rules. For each of our playthroughs, we were typically unconcerned with capturing Moscow. However, to capture Moscow, along with Stalin, would have been a scenario automatic victory. Continue reading →

05/16/18

Kriegsspiel That Would Never End™ – An AAR, part 2

The AAR takes waaaay less time than the game ~

Jim Owczarski, 16 May 2018

One of the great joys of the Kriegsspiel is the fog of war and command friction that results from any double-blind game.  The Jena-Auerstedt campaign’s fights over 13 and 14 October made this point eloquently — and I am not only discussing the fact (alluded to in the videos) that during this period Napoleon lost Bernadotte’s I Corps for a fair amount of time and Brunswick lost contact with Blucher and Ruchel for several days.

While Murat, Lannes, and Davout were barrelling nigh Hell-fot-leather Northward along their western line of advance, Napoleon I himself could never quite figure out where the Prussians were.  He kept punching forward hoping to hit something and never realized just how empty the battle space was.  In the early marches, he failed to catch the divisions guarding the Hof gap and then both Marshals Soult and Ney kept nudging forward along the eastern routes trying to make contact with Hohenlohe’s men who scampered as fast as they were able.

Continue reading →

05/12/18

Kriegsspiel That Would Never End™ – An AAR, part 1

What happens when you cram 10 days of battle into 18 months of forum posts? ~

Jim Owczarski, 12 May 2018

It took nine game days rather than the postulated six.

It took a tiny bit over a year and a half of real time.

It resulted in 568 forum posts and 33,553 forum views (as I write this).

The umpire sent out 825 dispatches.

And it is over.

Jokes to the contrary notwithstanding, the Kriegsspiel That Would Never End™ actually ended on 5 May 2018.

But that would be to begin at the ending, and no one wants that.

In the beginning, I was planning a trip to the Jena-Auerstedt battlefields and I had always had a love of Dr. Didier Rouy’s “The Flight of the Eagle” Napooleonic campaign system.  I also enjoy the company of the crew from the GrogHeads forums and was delighted when a fair number of them responded to the idea of playing one of these Kriegsspiels with something other than derisive laughter or knowing dismissal. Continue reading →

03/19/18

What’s Gus Playing? Call of Duty – Infinite Warfare pt3

GrogHeads’ moon midget muses meanderingly on martial mayhem ~

Lloyd Sabin, 19 March 2018

I loved this game. A lot.

And now…the last round of my gushing praise for Call of Duty – Infinite Warfare. I loved this game. A lot. Particularly the single player campaign.

You may know this already from the gushing I did last week, and the week before that. This is it, I swear. Next week will feature a whole new game and set of screen shots to gush over. Or despise. Who knows, really?

Anything can happen when it comes to what I am playing on my PC, for I am so very fickle, hour to hour. Here, have these screenies

Continue reading →

03/12/18

What’s Gus Playing? Call of Duty – Infinite Warfare pt2

Our Space Smurf salubriously slobbers on super sassy screenshots ~

Lloyd Sabin, 12 March 2018

[I] will now regale you with a new collection of super sassy screenshots

You may have surmised that I really loved Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (IW) from last week’s installment, what with the gushing praise for everything it does right and just a mere mention of the one (very annoying) audio bug I encountered.

I still stand by everything I said last week and will now regale you with a new collection of super sassy screenshots. Two years on and this game is still incredibly beautiful, if not overly lengthy. It goes without saying that I wish it was twice or three times as long as it was. Maybe I’ll even replay it eventually… yeah I’m pretty sure I will, that’s how much I enjoyed it.

I took so many screenshots of IW that I feel obliged to make use of them here. Apologies if you’re just not that in to it. It happens. Perhaps one more gaggle of screens next week and I will move on, I promise. But for now…more gushing!

Continue reading →