Klementi Voroshilov

Sorry to hear about the loss of Patrick Ireland, a great teacher of ASL who was always available on the VASL server for a chat or to help out newbies.  He will be missed.

While the Sixth SS Panzer Army was lavished with the best equipment that the Reich could scratch together in 1945, the Second Panzer Army was apportioned with only a handful of tanks.  The Second actually had farther to go and faced the 3rd Ukrainian Front straight on.  The Sixth would attack the nexus of the Third and Second in a more fair fight.

I received the ASL Action Pack #14 yesterday--great, fast shipping from MMP.  But man, shipping costs are freaking killing me.  $24 for the Pack.  $24 for shipping.

Don't want to belabor this, but the British Army's documentary corps is the shit.  Really good graphics, sound analysis, first person perspectives and a pretty balanced approach.

Following the Ardennes Offensive the 6th Panzer Army was in a bad state.  Personnel losses could be replaced--not with the same quality of soldier, but with warm bodies--but materiel losses were far more difficult to fix, given the losses suffered and the lavish equipment compliment that the 6th was used to. Four SS Divisions made up the 6th Panzer Army:  The Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler, the 3rd SS Totenkopf, the 12th SS Hitlerjungend and 9th SS Hohenstauffen Division.  These were the core of the Army.  Various units were attached, the most important of which was the Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade (once part of the Grossdeutschland Division.)

Just got a message from Double One organizer Derek Cox saying that Double One 2020 has been cancelled.  Was it just me? Really too bad.  I'm going to miss some of the friends I made and the nice Writtle College venue.

Given current events, I thought I would point people to my scenario Kurdish Way. In 1946, one of the early proxy battles of the Cold War took place in Northwestern Iran between the Kurdish People's Republic and the US backed Pahlavi Imperial Regime of Iran (nee Persia.)

In my research of the 1945 war in Hungary, basically the Konrad Operations, Operation Fruhlungswachen and the Vienna Defensive Operation, I have come to an important conclusion:  many AFV crews of the 6th SS Panzer Army were inexperienced.

Tiger Meet just got more sexy. Klementi Voroshilov trophy for most wins of KV scenarios  at Tiger Meet in two weeks.

To the Germans, it was Operation Fruhlungswachen.  For the Soviets, it was the Battle for Lake Balaton.  For the western allies, it was, evidently, a minor skirmish.  US history books say that the Battle of the Bulge was the last German offensive of WWII, but this is tunnel vision.  Fruhlungswachen was just as ambitious and perhaps even more desperate, but was erased from Western history because it doesn't fit their narrative. The purpose of Fruhlungswachen (Awakening of Spring in German) was extremely ambitious.  The idea was first to relieve pressure on Vienna and Prague.  Second, it was hoped that they could get back into Budapest and re-establish what was their last ally--Hungary.  The German High Command also hoped to encircle a huge Soviet Army south of Budapest as well.  Finally, the last oil reserves of the Axis (which really only included Germany at this point) were South of Lake Balaton.

Here is the printable version of my scenario Red Sisters . Here is the page for the scenario contest, which will feature a TROPHY and a 10 euro gift certificate to LFT. Looking forward to some submissions!

What are tank movement points based on?  In all the times I've checked numbers of the founding fathers of ASL I've found that there is a pretty solid mathematical backstory. However, I'm pretty dubious about movement points as I am generally certain that the game is biased against the heroic Red Army.

As suggested by my upcoming tournaments table in the upper left hand corner of the blog, I'm going to be in Normandy in a couple of weeks.  Is there anything anyone wants me to look more closely at? Some pictures from Gold Beach, 2010:

Blogger stopped accepting comments without a third party cookie a couple of months ago and didn't say anything about it.  They aren't going to fix it, but I did learn a way around it.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

After all the research I've done, it comes time to put the scenario together. I've decided on a rather abstracted version of the events which goes according to the Red Army's plan.  It focuses around Hill 57.3 (which I still cannot find on any map) and includes all elements of the Soviet plan--airborne, marine, infantry and naval gunfire support.

My ongoing analysis of the Soviet attack on Grigor'evka in 1941 on the coast of the Black Sea continues with an attempt to find the right situation for a scenario. Krasny Krym...badass boat or donut franchise? For one thing, I've decided on a name for the scenario... "Red Sisters."  Krasny is Russian for Red, and the Krym and Kavkaz were sister ships. 

Jonathan Kay, an ASL player in New York, talks about his general board game experience in yesterday's Toronto Globe and Mail . He's plugging his new book, Your Move , which discusses what life lessons we learn about from board games. I really like the way that ASL let's me travel around Europe and meet people with a similar interest in history.  (Even my lovely wife likes to tag along and meet my geeky gaming friends.  But I'm not leaving her alone with some of those Italian guys!) The first guy who greeted me in Europe was Xavier Vitry!  Using your ASL connections can be risky, but I will say that meeting face to face allows you to reach across divides that you would never get an opportunity to online.  My buddy Bjorn would never have met a dirty commie like me online.  :)

This one is too good not to post.  A member of the 506th Parachute Regiment, Joseph Beyrle was captured within a few days of landing during of D-Day.  In the meantime, he managed to cause a great deal of mayhem.  After capture, he was sent east to Stalag IIIC, where he made several attempts to escape.  In January of 1945, he finally escaped from the German prisoner camp and linked up with a Red Army tank unit.