Battle of The Bulge in PG!

[JayTownsend]

I think with (51) scenarios from *Battle of The Bulge, (35) scenarios from *Battle of The Bulge 2: Elsenborn Ridge and (30) scenarios and (1) campaign from *Winter Soldiers, the Bulge is well represented in PG and I am thankful it is, as they are some of my favorite scenarios.

[vince hughes]

I think with (51) scenarios from *Battle of The Bulge, (35) scenarios from *Battle of The Bulge 2: Elsenborn Ridge and (30) scenarios and (1) campaign from *Winter Soldiers, the Bulge is well represented in PG and I am thankful it is, as they are some of my favorite scenarios.

PG is kind of 'bulging' with Wacht Am Rhein scenarios then

[Blackcloud6]

...and the Sherman should be better in all of them.

(sorry, I just had to say it)

[larry marak]

It reflects the fact that in American consciousness, WW2 was Pear Harbor, Midway, the Bulge and Normandy. Most of Avalanche's buyers grew up with that mindset. A pity.

There is so much British/Commonwealth and Pacific/Asian mainland that has not been represented.

Its even possible that we don't see Torch/Kasserine because fighting the French has always been in poor taste, and the U.S. forces were soundly thrashed at Kasserine.

[plloyd1010]

It reflects the fact that in American consciousness, WW2 was Pear Harbor, Midway, the Bulge and Normandy.

Only for you kids there, Larry. Mostly because history has gotten short shrift in schools. Everything has become an opinion, even science. Us old guys had grow up with the good stuff, bad stuff, heroics, and blunders.

[JayTownsend]

I know about all WWII and studied all types of actions from 1939-1945, well actually much earlier in Asia. But the Battle of The Bulge interests me a lot because it was Americans in it and when I was a kid I remember watching the movie about the Battle of The Bulge and built lot of models of German & American tanks shortly after watching that movie.

Torch/Kasserine is really a must have in the PG series someday. I even thought of doing a design for AP myself but I think it would be too time consuming for me now and I am not sure how to go about creating maps. Well, maybe someone else is working on it I hope?

[Blackcloud6]

There was a time in the WWII war game world where it seemed like everything was focused on the fighting on the Eastern Front. Most game series began with some form of East Front module.

Even PG began that way but branched out well with Beyond Normandy, Cassino, War on the Equator, Alaska's War and so on.

[larry marak]

Eastern Front consciousness...a product of the cold war, you could enjoy playing either side because one army represented an evil authoritarian regime, the other represented an evil totalitarian regime, who we grew up with the idea that we'd be fighting ourselves one day.

Its curious...WW2 ended 67 years ago, a lot of the old prejudices of the topic should be fading out...

[Matt W]

Norman Davies wrote a fascinating book on WW II in Europe whose name completely escapes me at this point and since I'm not home I can't figure it out right now. One of the best pieces in it was a table showing man-months invested by the combatants on each front. While we all know that the bulk of the fighting in the war was on the Eastern Front. I compared this table to the scenarios by front to see how well the war was being presented in PG. I was stunned to see that the western and desert campaigns were incredibly overrepresented in comparison to the Eastern Front.

If I remember correctly there were over 400 million man months spent on the eastern front in comparison to 50 million on the western front (including 1939-940 and 1944-45). Remember how very short the campaigns were in the west in comparison to the four years of insanely intense combat on the eastern front. If I remember correctly Davies did try to control for logistics troops as non-combat so the number of man months should be comparable to combat situations.

While my initial review focused on the fronts themselves I also noticed that the eastern front scenarios were highly concentrated in 1941 (EFDx) and 1945 (RtB) and didn't look at the conversion of the Soviets from a mob to an effective force which occured in 1942-1944. Recent additions (the GD trilogy and Kursk:SF) have started to address this but the well is hardly touched as yet in comparison to the much more deeply mined west front. Consider the Bulge numbers previously noted, or the 50 scenarios in the Invasion of German collection.

I'm not arguing that a proportional representation would be appropriate (heck I'd have never been able to play the Slovak experience then!). That would be a great way to go out of business, because the 1,248th scenario of city fighting in Stalingrad probably won't sell anywhere nearly as well as 25 scenarios of Patton against Montgomery (oops I mean the Herman Goering Division (oops I mean dispirited Italians for most of the campaign)). It's merely to say that an objective view of the combat in the war will ultimately lead one to a discussion of the underrepresentation of the eastern front.

[vince hughes]

Norman Davies wrote a fascinating book on WW II in Europe whose name completely escapes me at this point and since I'm not home I can't figure it out right now.

"The War In Europe"

Matt that book is an engrossing read and should be on the lists of any WW2 buff that has a habit towards Westcentricity so as to show just how immense the 'Total War' was in the east.

Funnily enough, Mark Pitcabbage was denigrating Davies' work on a thread somewhere on CSW, or if not denigrating, at least displaying a lack of love for his work. Apart from referring to him as a Polonophile (which he admittedly is very much so), there are allegedly some points in his other work that MP was not happy about (such as the names used for Polish main characters which were different from those used in other works, and some other points which I will stay away from here). Personally, the two books I have read of Davies have been interesting to say the least, neither of which are ones referred to by MP, and also, having met the man in a seminar in our force's History Society at Scotland Yard, he was very charming. I'm attending one held by Mr Roger Moorhouse in August (writer of 'Berlin At War').

So to end, yes, I would recommend that book as a read, but that said, I am a bit of a stats freak anyway