ORIGINAL: Grognerd
Hello Hans. Just noticed you were from St. Petersburg, Fl, I'm a displaced Californian down here in Melbourne, good to know there are other gamers here in Fl....
In order to get it right I'll wait as long as necessary...(the patience of a 56-year old I guess)
Off topic: After Bulge I read the Chir river battles from the russian front is next. Interesting, should be real fun too. I have all the satellite map images from Google of all the battles depicted in Von Mellienthin's "Panzer battles". Might be a good scenario or two in there. Some of the spots were a bit hard to find but the maps in the book are very accurate when you find the locations as they are today. Some of the cities have changed names and have grown, several dams have been built but the river lines from the book are near perfect.
My curiosity about the Chir river battles and the game engine as designed now, it would seem to me that the engine will have to be tailored for the Russian style of warfighting of that era. Very scarce radio's and radio networks for C3. Echelon style attacks with very little ability to change battle plan mid-stream. The engine would seem now to give the Russian side far too much command authority once the plan commences. (Most wargames miss this fact)
Remember Victory games "Panzer Command" a very good title that reflected this very well.
A long time ago I ordered like 8 or 9 counter sets from this game (Avalon Hill was good about selling game parts and blank hex maps) I used Beryl Prismacolor pens to create a giant 4 map geomorph of the Kursk maps in "Panzer Battles" book. A friend and I played Panzer Command on a vast scale for months. Not bragging but my maps were drawn on a professional level so the look of the game was really cool. I love map making, I've made many a monster game map..
Divisional level of all the Russian Front for "PanzerKrieg". All of the North African front for a magazine game "Kassarine" Me and the Central Coast Wargamers (California club now defunct) played em all.
I'll be interested to see how the engine is implemented on the Russian Front, considering the high level of authenticity of the present games.
We sound a lot like contemporaries as well as neighbors. I'm 50 myself and started wargaming in the early 1970s, cutting my teeth on the AH classics of the day. If you happen to have a copy of Advanced Third Reich, you'll find my name (real name) in the design credits as a playtester.
I do indeed remember Panzer Command. I have a copy on the shelf. Interestingly enough, my local boardgame group is currently playing the Case Blue edition of the Gamers Operational Combat Series, with plenty of action occurring along the Chir.
I, personally, haven't made too many maps, but have played many, many monster games and created a few additional counters with my drafting skills as an architect. I once created company breakdown counters for the American paraptroopers in The Longest Day because we didn't like the fact that they dropped as battalions without recreating the scatter and dispersal of the historical drops. We wanted them to scatter by companies as they did in AHs Crete/Malta game that was the predesessor to TLD with regard to that particular game mechanics system.
I'm pretty much strictly a scenario tester for Panther games and haven't gotten much into actual development besides making lot's of suggestions. The points you make regarding the Russian army are valid. The Panther Games development forum has sub forums for each theater that has been proposed and I have not yet wandered into the East Front subforum to peruse the discussions the developers have had there.
One idea might be to restrict command to the regimental level for the Russians, where most players tend to command by battalions in this system. Another might be to substantially incease the orders delays to heavily penalize flexibility and detract from the players ability to increase flexibility by taking command at very low levels.
If you haven't seen it yet, there is a sticky here of my AAR of the early beta version of Peiper's Race for the Meuse scenario. I like to think it does a good job of showcasing this game engine's fortes.
There is a guy on the WitP forum under the moniker of Feinder, or something like that, who is located here in Florida as well.
It's good hearing from another Floridian who is a wargamer.
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