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I have taken the plunge and challenged Gary (gwgardner) to a battle. We have selected Pete Abrams NATO-WP 78 scenario.

Gary is going to play as the NATO player and I get to be the aggressor - the Warsaw Pact.

When I bought TOAW IV, the WWIII scenarios are the ones that I wanted to try, so I am very happy that Gary has agreed to give this one a go.

This is going to be fun!

Here is an overview of the situation

A look at the terrain. Two posts, first North and then South

Here is the South

Two slides looking at Objective locations. Here is the North one.

Here is the South one

Mike,

You are correct in questioning the lack of towns on this map. This is my old stomping grounds when I was stationed in Wuerzburg in the mid-1980s, and this map does not reflect the actual terrain (I still have my 1:50,000 topos of the area). Oddly enough, based on the map orientation and scale, it appears it was based on the SPI boardgame "Hof Gap" which did a much better job of representing the difficult terrain. Because of the large number of towns and dense road net, the map designer of the entire 5th Corps series of games used an alternate method of depicting these on the paper map (red dots in the corners of the hexes for towns and black diamonds on hexsides to depict hexes connected by roads). It appears that this was missed when doing the TOAW map. Or maybe not and it was the scenario designer's choice. If so, he choose to misrepresent the terrain making it a lot easier for the Warsaw Pact player.

Nick

I found this image of the Hof Gap map:

Nicholas,

That is really neat. I really wanted to be posted to Europe, specifically I wanted to be posted to 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, in Lahr Germany. I ended up being posted to a regiment in Quebec City as a young office instead. Oh well, I really enjoyed my time there. Canada had pulled its forces out of Germany before I joined the 1st Regiment.

The map above look great and reminds me of lots of games I played when I was younger.

Thanks for sharing.

Have a good day,

Well, I thought I had figured out how to set up a challenge. Then discovered I had set it up the wrong way round. Oh well, hopefully this time I did it right...

Here is a look at the NATO force facing me.

Hey Mike !

Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out!

Welcome to the dark side of multiplayer TOAW IV....[:)]

As for the set up screens....they are the work of Satan....I have yet to set up a game right first time [:@]

Ian,

Agreed, I sent a challenge to Gwgardner and discovered I had sent it for him to be the Soviet player. Tried sending a different option this morning, got it wrong again. Gary is smart, and he set it up correctly for us.

I'm looking forward to this too.

Hopefully, I can figure out how to send the game to him when I'm done my turn...

All the best,

I have completed my planning and selected a course of action. Later, I may post my planning slides. For now, I will keep them for myself.

I have done my first turn. I do not find the PBEM option that straightforward. I understand that I'm supposed to use the close and save option, instead of the save option. So, I did that. I do not know if I'm supposed to do anything to send it to Gary...

I guess I will find out.

My bad, Mike. Close and Save is for when you want to stop before completing your turn. So you can resume play for that turn later.

I should have said that once you have completed your turn, go ahead and hit 'end turn,' as for a normal game. Your turn will process, and then the game will close and save, and send me a notification to do my turn.

So all you need to do now is go into 'play online' again, resume your turn, and do an 'end turn.'

Sorry for the incomplete info.

Gary,

I have figured it out - I think. You should be getting it soon!

Thanks for your patience.

Have fun,

The morning was fairly quiet. My forces are making their way SW towards the initial deployments of the NATO forces.

I kept my air force on Air Superiority tasks and there is no sign of any combat – I had no losses.

I have to take my time with the playback – I started it and then must have hit the wrong button as it ended. No big deal at this point.

The afternoon will see similar movement for me- advancing to combat. I am surprised that some of my units are still reorganizing. My zampolits (political commissars) are going to check this out!

The afternoon of May 28th saw the initial combat as the Czech's ran into an American recce element...

The Warsaw Pact have caught Nato forces by surprise. Reports of increased movements of equipment and supplies should have alerted us, but it was interpreted as the repositioning after the Pact's recent maneuvers.

Their forward movement out of cantonments is now clear, from early satellite, recon, and local reports.

Our forces mobilizing, but the enemy have already gained the better part of a day on us.

The general Nato plan is to offer a running defense northeast of the Main-Regnitz-Rednitz River line, delaying the enemy long enough to offer a strong defense of the river crossings. Only the 2nd Cav and 10th Panzer forces are ready for action at this moment. And a lone engineering platoon which has already blown the southern-most bridge over the Rednitz at Nurnberg. Several other Nurnberg bridges are available for the forward forces.

The advance continues.

As an aside, when playing against the computer, I see results of each battle that occurs while the AI is playing. I did not see that, nor a list of battles during Gary's turn. Am I missing something?

Have a good day,

I read your aside, but avoided taking in the map. You can look at the battle reports for both sides, and for the previous turn, using the flag icon/arrows at the bottom of the battle reports window.

Gary,

Thanks. I will give it a shot.

All the best,

Here is the situation in the early hours.