Game vs Book I - Kampfgruppe Peiper and the Bridges at Stavelot and Trois Ponts - Part Two

Continued from a previous entry ...

On to Stavelot, then. Before reading the book, I was all for smashing the whole 3rd Bn., 2 SS PzRegt. (highlighted in the screenshot above) against the bridge at Stavelot. During the real battle, Peiper chose a force with more punch.

Game vs Book I - Kampfgruppe Peiper and the Bridges at Stavelot and Trois Ponts - Part One

The book: Kampfgruppe Peiper at the Battle of the Bulge, by David Cooke and Wayne Evans (Stackpole Military History Series)
The game: Command Ops Battles from the Bulge (Panther Games, published by Matrix Games)

I will start this Game vs Book series small and easy, folks. Here is the situation: It is now December 18th 1944 and the Germans drive their armor through the Ardennes for a second time in five years. Kampfgruppe Peiper is the spearhead of the 1st SS Pz. Div. and the immediate mission is to cross the Meuse river. The road ahead is not exactly tank country, as seen in the map below.

Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! (Matrix Games) - Released

I just got word that the game has just been released by Matrix.

Set in the Eastern Front during WWII, this is computer port of a very
successful boardgame. It looks good and I am reading very good
impressions from the first buyers.

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/424/details/Conflict.of.Heroes:.Awakening.the.Bear!

Looking forward to get home and fire up this thing.

Cheers,

(Posted from my tablet)

Iron Front Liberation 1944 - Preview at SimHQ.com

Holy! This is WWII Eastern Front, with the ArmA2 engine!

A great preview at SimHQ.com, with plenty of screenshots. Don't you dare to miss it! :)

Cheers,

Game vs Book - How "Historical" War Gaming Can Be?

A few years back when I had the time to play by e-mail, one of my regular opponents almost completely dismissed a title of a well-known, thoroughly researched series of World War II games because the order of battle was "way off". I'm not talking a whole brigade missing, just the number of tanks in a couple of regiments in an scenario that spans a whole Soviet Front. Yeah, I can't blame the guy for not knowing his military history ... Eventually I talked him back into the game, but his passion for historic authenticity was hard not to notice.

The flow of any real battle seems to be dependent on many uncontrollable variables interacting in a capricious way. There is some sort of a "butterfly effect" in the way real battles unfold. In a parallel universe, where the telephone cable of the 5th Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the Chasseurs Ardennais didn't break during the morning of 10th May 1940, would the 1st Panzer Division bet stopped cold on its tracks? Would the invasion of France fail in this parallel universe?

Teasers for the mind but fear not, I have no intention of getting into academics or esoterism!

This entry is just to introduce a series about historical war gaming. The premise is simple: grab a book where the level of tactical/operational detail is good enough to get a real life plan, apply it into a war game, and see how it goes from there. Outcomes, deviations from the real life battle, challenges that are not obvious or mentioned in the book ... How historical the war game gets and remains during gameplay? Many of you do this all the time and in that case I wish you can get and supply suggestions about good books to enhance your "historical war gaming".

So, stay tuned for the first entry of the series. Hint provided below.

Command Ops Battles from the Bulge VS KG Peiper at the Battle of the Bulge

Cheers,

Scourge of War Antietam - Burnside's Bridge - Part 2

"Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks."  Field Marshal Prince Aleksandr Suvorov

This a continuation of a previous entry.

Scourge of War Antietam - Burnside's Bridge - Part 1

So blessed by a position  favorable for the defense yet so cursed by such a shortage of men and guns.

The game is Scourge of War, with the Antietam DLC. This 3D tactical war game is certainly unique and recently it has been adopted by the United States Army College for Senior Officer Training.

This scenario is about the action at the so-called "Burnside Bridge" during the American Civil War's Battle of Antietam (by that time the bridge was named the "Rohrbach Bridge").

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - What I Envy of Mainstream Shooters: Moving Around

Distractions as of late: playing CoD MW2 private matches with my son and getting my rear end kicked by him every time.

Panzer Command Ostfront - German Armor Counterattack

If this would be real life I would rather not come back to the battalion HQ tent at the end of this battle ...

The game is Panzer Command Ostfront (Matrix Games) and the scenario is about a German armored counter-attack after the Soviet breakthrough near Kapitanovka (Korsun Operation, February 1944). I am playing as the Germans against the Soviets (commanded by the computer).

Gary Grigsby's War in the East - Don to the Danube Expansion - A First Row Seat for WWII Soviet Operational Art

The Don to the Danube expansion for Gary Grigsby's War in the East has been released a while ago. This expansion offers new scenarios and challenges for you. In case you are playing as the Soviets, you are now on the strategic offensive and it's time to show off your operational art.

One of the first scenarios I jumped into was the Cherkassi-Korsun one. This operation is quite famous and was a tough one for both the Axis and the Soviets. I was put in command of the First and Second Ukrainian Fronts and sooner than later, the formidable order of battle felt quite diluted in the expanses south of Kiev.