Playtesters Needed for New Campaign

[vahauser]

Greetings,

A friend of mine is developing a new SP:WAW campaign and is looking for playtesters.

The campaign is called "Kampfgruppe Wolff" and covers battles leading up to and including the Battle for Stalingrad.

It is a very large and complicated campaign with each battle involving hundreds of units.

As far as I know, the first 8 battles are ready for testing. I'm guessing there will be 25-30 battles when the campaign is finished.

Please post here in this thread if you are interested in playtesting.

Thanks,
Victor

[sonoran_fox]

Hi

I am the designer friend vahauser mentions in the post above. His description of the campaign is mostly right. The campaign starts in May of 42 and will go into March of 1943, with 25-30 battles being the target.

"Kampfgruppe Wolff" begins as a scratch team built at Dneprepetrovsk in response to the emergency situation the Soviet breakthrough south of Kharkov has created early in May. The Soviets at one point were threatening the entire position of AGS. Kharkov, Poltava and Dneprepetrovsk were all directly threatened, and if Dneprepetrovsk had fallen all of AGS south of there (including the Crimea) would have had their supply lines cut. Sooo.... Kampfgruppe Wolff is born of desperation and the, ummm, eclectic assortment of auxillaries in your ongoing OB reflects this emergency baptism as a combat unit.

Battles are spaced at a variable rate. Some are only a day or two apart, other times a couple of weeks separates them. The pacing is largely determined by what I as a designer believe is a reasonable possibility of activity. The intent is to roughly simulate what a mobile kampfgruppe attached to Army Group South would experience during the summer of 42 campaign. Outside of your core group both the Axis and Soviet units will normally be "standard issue quality".

This is a good time to note that this scenario will be an "alternative history" and vahauser's assumption that the campaign will go to Stalingrad is his, not mine. I never said anything about Stalingrad in our conversations about this campaign! He has made his own assumptions and automatically wants to follow the same old trail. If you think like vahauser, be prepared for some surprises.

The maps are usually large to very large (some 10s from the custom map builder) with large to very large OBs for the Soviet opponent. The Axis OB features your (not particularly large) core, a set of auxillaries (that eclectic bunch mentioned above) that will be present at some strength in most of the battles and some scenario specific forces that relate to the overall campaign activity occuring right then, i.e. engineers will be present when forcing a bridgehead etc.

The fact that the maps are large and activity frenzied at times mean force mobility and adequate numbers are virtues that will be at a premium in your core group. Everyone that plays Steel Panthers has his own style and will build his/her core to taste. However, as the designer I will say that the usual tension between numbers and quality that is present for any German player will be rewarded by shading toward numbers in your initial buy with the intent to upgrade as you go. The Soviet forces you will be facing initially will be mostly be winter of 41/42 raised and equipped forces. You can expect to see the better equipped and more formidable Soviet forces we all remember from history appear over the summer with a notable improvement in the Red Army as the winter of 42/43 hits.

As a final note I pass on an anecdote an ex-army buddy friend relates. During the 70s he was stationed in Germany and was returning to base using the German rail system with half a dozen of his buddies after a weekend in Bavaria. They mostly had the car to themselves and spent much of the ride discussing (argueing?) amongst themselves why the Germans lost in East during WWII. Sitting quietly in a corner of the rail car and listening was an elderly German. When the oldtimer reached his stop he paused just before stepping out and turned to let my friend know his opinion. "You want to know why we lost? We lost that war because Russia was too big, too cold and there were too d*** many of them!"

Good Hunting

[A_B_Danner]

I'd love to playtest your campaign. I've been away from SPWAW for a couple years, but just came back to check if there was anything new, and i saw your post. I usually just play campaigns, and enjoy the larger ones (of which there are few).

Email is dancbd@comcast.net

Hope to hear from you soon.

[sonoran_fox]

Pleased to hear from you dan...

will be in touch via e-mail

[Beerice]

I am pretty new SP:WAW but am a long time fan and hardcore player of all the Steel Panthers series... Count me in...

[vahauser]

Beerice,

I sent an email to Jan (i.e., sonoran_fox) and I expect him to be contacting you soon.

--Victor

[sonoran_fox]

good to hear from you beerice....nice user name for a mid-summer day!![;)]

I will sitemail you now. Welcome!

[ken ennis]

i would be interested in trying that too. my e mail is ken.ennis@gmail.com hope to hear from you and good luck with your designing

[Alby]

Is this based on "vanilla" SPWAW?
And what version?

[woofgm]

count me in, woofgm@yahoo.com

[parusski]

Please count me in. I would love to playtest this baby.

parusski@hotmail.com

[sonoran_fox]

Thanks for stepping up and volunteering playtesters. I apologize about being slow to post, having to work for a living can seriously cut into ones gaming time on occasion. Hopefully things are calming down at work and I can resume steady progress on this campaign.

I am in the midst of switching the scenarios over to 8.04EnhancedFV.1. Unfortunately the changes in unit fighting abilities are proving substantial enough to force me to review and adapt a lot of what was previously done.

I will e-mail ech of you with more particulars this weekend.

[sonoran_fox]

Alby, I am converting the scenario over to 8.04 EnhancedFV.1.

With 35 scenarios, expansive custom maps and large OBs for the computer run Soviets it is going to take me a couple of months to complete the switchover. Hopefully you can wait until next spring for any more updates to the system![:)]

[Alby]

I know how you feel, doing Long Long road to vctory was 35 scenarios
now I am redoing Stalingrad which is 25
[:)]
no more updates to Enhanced FV.1 in foreseeable future.
I am only working on the HTH Pbem mod these days and no updates for it will be out till spring.

[sonoran_fox]

Thanks for the update Alby.

I also appreciate the reminder that there is in fact an end to this tunnel!