pmaidhof

Could be interested. I've never fully got my arms around TOAW despite having about every edition since the beginning.

Been reading quite a bit since a very "Kindle" Christmas... Armor Battles of the Waffen SS, 1943-45 by Will Fey Beyond Stalingrad: Manstein and the Operations of Army Group Don by Dana V. Sadarananda and just began Zhukov at the Oder: The Decisive Battle for Berlin by Tony Le Tissier

P.I. arrived today!

Happy 235th Birthday to all active, reserve, and former Marines. Semper Fi.

Next up...Centennial Campaign, The Sioux War of 1876 by John S. Gray. It is an overview of the entire campaign which includes the Custer Battle.

Mine arrived in NY today.

After the obligatory last night viewing of "A Bridge Too Far" to wrap up Arnhem and the like, I dug through the personal (attic) library and spotted Closing with the Enemy, How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945 by Michael D. Doubler. Lieutenant Colonel Doubler "argues...that their ability to learn quickly from their mistakes, to adapt in the face of unforseen obstacles, and to innovate new tactics on the battlefield."

Good book, I would recommend it anyone with an interest in Operation Market-Garden. The book was written by an, at the time, actively serving officer in the "Parachute Regiment" (original Copyright 1990) and in the final chapter attempts to tie in the prospects for a modern rear area's ability to respond to an airborne/airmobile assault in the context of a possible, yet ultimately never, Warsaw Pact airborne operation behind NATO front lines and would non-combat arms/reserve/heimatschutzen types be able to mount a timely and coherent response to such an operation.

Next up is a re-read of It Never Snows In September, by Robert J. Kershaw. "The German view of Market-Garden and the Battle of Arnhem, September 1944."

Over the past few difficult weeks, I did have time to do quite a bit of reading. First was Tank Tactics From Normandy to Lorraine, by Roman Jarymowicz. This book traces the development of North American armored forces from the cavalry-infantry-armor debates following World War I, in both Europe and North America, to the initial American armored experience in North Africa, to the Canadian and American armored exploits in Operations Goodwood, Spring, Cobra, Totalize, and Tractable, to operational maturation of North American armored forces during the pursuit to the Rhine in late summer and fall of 1944. The book finishes up with a theory of why the west did not produce a heavy tank, and a comparison of how the soviet STAVKA may have handled the forces and operational situation that the west did in 1944-45. I enjoyed the read, and prompted me to find a book on Operation Cobra. That search led me to After D-Day, Operation Cobra and the Normandy Breakout, by James Carafano. The author broke the book down into three parts; Part 1 The Universe of Battle: Summer 1944; Part 2 The Day of Infantry: 25 July 1944; and Part 3 A Clash of Armor: 26 to 30 July 1944. Part 1 set the stage comparing and contrasting the commanders, fighting men, equipment and tactics of the belligerents. Part 2 explored the initial attacks of primarily of US VII, and VIII Corps. US VII Corps was to punch a whole through the German 7. Army front west between St. Lo and the Brittany coast. As luck for US VII Corps would have it the carpet bombing, which inadvertently killed US Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, decimated German Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division and the main attack fell on an inter-corps boundary between German LXXXIV Corps and II Parachute Corps. On one hand the author commends US Major General J. Lawton “Lightning Joe” Collins decision to change the plan on the fly by committing US 1st Infantry Division, part of the exploitation force, when the lead infantry divisions do not make the anticipated early progress, yet is critical of him in that he stayed with the planned right hook to pocket LXXXIV Corps north of the city of Coutances after US VIII Corps “supporting attack” had already put those Germans in flight to the south. In the end, the author heaps praise upon the field grade officers and below of the US Army who displayed the acumen and flexibility in the face of a rapidly evolving tactical and operational situation. Another very good read, which led me to… The Germans in Normandy, by Richard Hargreaves. This book traces the experience of individual German soldiers, Landsers, in the West from about 1942 along the coast, to Operation Overlord, the “ill-fated” counter-attack at Mortain – Operation Luettich, the virtual annihilation in the Falaise Gap, through the aborted defense of Paris and finally the rout/retreat back to the frontier. Most of the material was derived from the letters and diaries of the participants. Huge take away in this book was the awesome effects of allied fighter-bombers, the “Jabos”, the utter failure of the Luftwaffe, the gallant yet futile effort of the German Navy U-Boats and E-Boats against the protective screens/anti-submarine forces of the combined allied invasion fleet, the after-effects of the July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life, and mettlesome High Command that the landsers and their field commanders could not seem to understand why they would not understand the strain and pressures on Army Group West during the attrition / “materialschlacht” that was the experience of the retreating Germans in France during the Summer of 1944. Another interesting read.

I also go back from time to time for inspiration. Harpoon, coupled with the harpgamer guys help, has given me hours upon hours of fun exploring different ideas and theories. Glad you enjoy them as well.

Again 3+ years. Think that I just went with a simplistic approach by attacking the entire target made up of it's component vehicles total DP, not specifically targeting each vehicle.

Hi KC, It is not an H4.1 rule what so ever. As far as I remember, hey it was over three years ago, I simply decided 10 critical rolls would most certainly leave it dead in the water...at least. I just rolled for it sinking.

Some design rationales from the designer of this expansion: Copy paste http://www.krigsspel.se/forum/viewtopic.ph...32&start=60 A number of years ago WaW Eisenbach Gap was published. I bought a copy immediately and enjoyed playing it very much. I e-mailed Mark and asked if he could do a Scandianvian expansion. He mailed back and said that he would like to have one and if I wanted to do it, it was fine by him. So I started to work on Op Garbo. This was before Blood and Bridges, even before Death of the 1st Panzers. I questioned Mark how I should rate Swedish hardware and how he gave values to the US and Soviet vehicles in WaW EG. I did not get a clear answer, more like rough guidelines. So the Swedish stats were basically extrapolated from the US and Soviet values ( a swedish 105mm gun is basically the same as a US one and so on) As work progressed I got the stats from ”Blood and Bridges” to check if my values were in the ballpark, which I thought they were. I honestly did not think the infantry values would create such a furor. Now a number of questions have arisen to why certain units have certain values. I will try to explain my thinking. I gave some Soviet units a morale of 8 as these are the elite units of the Soviet warmachine. These were the best trained, best equipped and most motivated soldiers the Sovietunion could muster. I believe they were comparable to the US Elite units such as rangers, 82nd airborne. Thus to give them a certain edge over ordinary infantry units, which typically have 6 or 7 in morale, I gave them 8. If a future expansion adds rangers, other airborne forces or british paras I would not be upset if they also got 8 in morale. In my playtesting I did not have the ”move an fire” capability to either the S-tank or the Centurion. I must have made a mistake somewhere as this capability went into the game. PBV302 assault value. The Swedish APC was designed to let the troopers fight EFFECTIVELY from the vehicle. It therefore had two large tophatches which let the entire squad in the back stand up (although exposed from the upper chest and above) and fire. So instead of looking through small narrow apartures in the hull and firing without using the weapons sights the troopers could see well and engage targets well, ( although it is never easy to hit targets from a moving vehicle). This was also reguraly practised with live fire drills in battlefield like conditions (driving over uneven terrain, with trees around and engaging small, hidden targets at different ranges). I believe this would augment an APC platoons assault value as not only the APC can fight, but also the infantry squad. The PBV302 also had a built in ”spaced armour” that would reduce the effectivness of HEAT warheads. The outer armour was fairly thin, inside this armour was 1,5 feet wide storage space area before the main armour of the vehicle. This also gave the vehicle its bouyancy and ability to swim rivers and even lakes. Sweden had a conscript army. Conscripts are not worse soldiers than volunteers, I honestly don´t understand why conscript is authomatically equalled to "worse soldier" than volunteers. West Germany had a conscript army and the soldiers "behind the counters" in Death of the 1st Panzers are conscripts. Israel also have a conscript army and the soldiers behind ”their” counters in the expansion in LoF. And the biggest complaint. The Swedish infantry combat values. This is my reasoning: Sweden had a very large proportion of support weapons to its platoons. As Sweden knew that any aggressor would have lots of armoured vehicles, the Swedish answer was "anti-tank capability in every bush, behind every tree". So infantry platoons had lots of AT capability. Even fieldkitchen units had GPMGs, 84mm recoilless rifles and disposable LAW:s. The 84mm RR is a very capable weapon. It has a very good reach, more than twice that of an LAW and very good hitting power. I understand the argument that it is a high increase with one extra dice that upsets people. I also do not think that a swedish platoon is 33% more effective than another foreign platoon. But the dice system in WaW is fairly coarse and it is difficult to give a unit a "small" increase in firepower. As an ordinary platoon has 2 dice and I cannot add half a dice I was stuck with one extra dice or nothing. I understand the complaints and it is not "nationalstic bravado and Swedish selfworshipping" that made me give them 1 extra dice. I wanted to give them a small extra edge, as I believe that correctly models reality. But I was stuck with either nothing or 1 extra dice. If I was nationalistic I would not have made the Swedish ”home guard” units so weak and would not have made the Soviet paratroopers so strong. Another reason I gave the Swedes one extra dice was I only thought in a context relating to its opponents, the Soviets. I did not think of it as an comparison to the US forces in WaW EG, which was the only other module at the time I assigned the values to the Swedes. I wanted to model Swedish mech inf and Soviet paras as more capable than ordinary Soviet infantry. I did not intend to integrate US, British or West German units in the module or future scenarios. As I can see now, with a couple of years´ hindsight ,all troops (Syrian, Canadian, Soviet, British, German, American, Israeli) having the exact same stats I would not have given Swedish infantry that extra edge. Had I designed the module today with alot of other modules available for comparison I would not have given them that extra dice. S tank and its defense value "bar/cage armour" giving great protection against HEAT warheads. From the front the cage armour makes the warhead detonates between 1,5 feet up to 5 feet from the main armour. If kinetic rounds hit the cage armour the chance that the projectile is distured before it hits the main armour also increases. As the front armour is very sloped it also greatly increases the chance that a kinetic round will ”slide off” ( not modern 1990:s long rod penetrators, but older models of kinetic projectiles). A picture of the cage armour can be seen on Wikipedia boardgamegeek

Hi KC, from the for whats its worth file, back in June 2007 I received this response from Mr Bond. In a message dated 6/19/07 9:56:29 PM, pmaidhof writes: Hi Larry, I trust that you do not mind hearing directly from me, but this topic has been beaten around by the guys over at harpgamer. I am concerned over the subject of low-end Air-Ground Missile Damage Points compared to the Damage Point "capacity" of various targets on the General Attack Table. Most air launched anti-tank missiles in H4.1 Data Annex G4, such as the 9M17 [AT-2 SWATTER], 9M114 Shturm [AT-6 SPIRAL], 9A4172 Vikhr [AT-9 ATAKA], and BGM-71 A/B/C/D TOW, all have Damage Points of "1". This would require multiple hits by such weapons to destroy any item listed on that table, to include light and heavy tanks at 5 and 8 points each. I realize that Harpoon is a naval game first and foremost, but with gravity having pulled us into the littorals and tasked the Navy to project power ashore, there will be more and more interaction with land targets. Will the General Attack Table be updated with the unification project? Would you consider increasing AT missiles to approximately 5 DP's each, or the work around that I am using right now is that it such weapon is fired at an individual target of 5 points or less being able to be destroyed but a successful AT missile hit. Any elightenment that you can provide would be most appreciated. S/F Pete Pete, the original dp values for tanks are entirely subjective. Now that we've totally revamped both the penetration and damage models, we will revisit the issue of damage points for land targets. The evaluation will have to be empirical, since there are many different types of land targets, and we simply don't have the resources to make mathematical damage models for them, especially models that are compatible with the existing dp system. I've also gotten smarter about land targets and damage mechanisms. For instance, the small diameter bomb, a 250-lb-class guided weapon. What good is it. A 250 lb bomb won't demolish a bunker. But with a penetrating warhead, it will demolish whatever's inside. Same with the smaller ATGMs. They have less than 1 do, and will leave a tank standing intact, but the insides are gone. This is an important issue. Until we get the new weapons data out to everyone, and it's coming out soon, feel free to adjust target damage points to match your experience. Larry

I plan on playing it without that ability to fire and move and see how it works out. I based it upon this video I found after a cursory search. Toward the very end it emphatically states that it cannot move/fire.

World at War: Operation Garbo arrived yesterday. It is an expansion module for World at War: Blood and Bridges, and whose setting is LNLP's fictictious World War III in the Spring of 1985. This module focuses on a Soviet invasion of Sweden. The box comes with two map boards, 176 5/8" counters representing Swedish and Soviet units, six scenarios within a scenario booklet which includes some module spefic rules, and two Player-Aid Cards. One map is somewhat more wooded than the other, which is described to better represent "typical" northern Sweden. As the module has begun to arrive and be inspected, some concerns have been voiced, in particular a "Moving Fire" capability for the Swedish S-Tank and a highest offical rating yet, in this series, for the Swedish infantry - both points reflect the view of the module designer, a swede, and are IMO debatable. Some module specific rules include a special defense capability for the STRV-103 S Tank due its ability to lower itself to an even lower profile, leaders (something new in this series), limited amphibious operations, and mounted firepower. Scenarios include Swedish reactions to a Soviet attack while suffering from command and control disruptions, a limited counterattack, a delay, a massive counterattack, a small battle (after the Swedish Chief of Staff's helo gets shot down and he links up with some ragtag units), and finally a Soviet attempt to expand a Gotland beach head in the face of increasing Swedish resistance. I look forward to getting this onto a table sometime soon.

A cheesey, yet somewhat plausible ending to this reader.

Split in two before sinking if I recall correctly.

I'd say that sums it up quite well. Sorry Pete. I agree, it was just a rhetorical question whereas I read two separate books and find the same class of ship, one dear to my heart, take it on the chin in each book. It wasn't like neither was escorted, just both sunk for effect. OBTW, in the book, the British, French, Japanese and Americans team up with the Vietnamese and South Koreans to take on PRC and its new found vassal states.

Generic or somewhat historical? Either, really. Relatively modern...battalion task forces and brigades. Originally planned as a NATO/WP game until the wall came down during development, lifted over to the middle east. Flashpoint: Golan?

Rhetorically...what do contemporary writers have against Tarawa Class LHA's? I was embarked aboard LHA-2 USS Saipan and truely enjoyed my stay. . I had read RSR before I went the summer before I deployed and had no idea that I would ever be assigned to Saipan. Clancy had it struck by ASM's an it quickly sank with a enormous loss of life. Now LHA-5 USS Peleliu... Dang Fiction!

Generic or somewhat historical?

While not history per se, reading Dragon Strike - A Novel of the Coming War with China by Humphrey Hawksley and Simon Holberton. About 180 pages in so far and mostly a political thriller with dashes of miltary action. China is about to come to blows with USN, diesel subs ordered to attack a USN Amphibious Ready Group centered on USS Peleliu whic is entering the South China Sea to conduct on Non-Combatant Evacuation. Japan is deliberating to take unerlateral action against China due to their unprovoked attack on Vietnam and the seizure of both the Parcel and Sprately Islands. Interesting enough.

Thanks...strangers.