A French Vauban Fortress

Excellent virtual tour of a French Vauban fortress.

Too much combat?

A recent poster on our playtest site indicated that Mein Panzer and Mein Truppen have excessive dice rolls, and that it takes too much time to resolve combat.  Well now, this is something which occurs when you have a lot of units on the battlefield uncovered and shooting at each other, especially if there are units which have rates of fire of two or more and have Bonus rolls due to being Veteran or Elites.  Our group is as guilty as the next for having too many forces on the battlefield.  When you get up around five or six units per player, you are asking a lot.  It is better to max out around four or five, especially if there are combined arms in action.  For infantry in Mein Panzer, that is two platoons.  In Mein Truppen, it is one.

I am going to start posting some of the very numerous scenarios I have collected over the years to the Download Library for use by MP players.  I hope that some will find them entertaining.  Many of them contain specific rules for incorporating MP.

No price increase

I spoke too soon.  It looks like there will be no price increase on ODGW products coming with the new year.  So stand down from frantic shopping mode, if you were in that mode to begin with.  ODGW continues to have great value for its games, which are very comprehensive treatments of the eras they cover.

Price increase

Printing costs have increased, and so will our prices, effective very soon.  Anyone wishing to purchase a game at the old price should do so within the next few weeks, as I expect we will put the new prices into effect on the first of the year.

San Diego road trip

Travelled south to San Diego to host a Mein Panzer engagement yesterday.  My standard training scenario, "Is That You, Sacha?", has small amounts of artillery (mortars), infantry, and light AFV's, which makes it perfect for novices spooling up on the rules.  It pits an American Armored Cav battlegroup against a German Panzer Recon group.  After playing it, most gamers are ready for more involved units and tactics.  Each time I have run it, there has been a dramatically different outcome.  This time the "Amis" won, using a long range gunnery duel with the AFV's to decide the issue.  The infantry in the centrally located town failed to make contact with each other, and did not factor in the fight.  I believe both sides had a good time, which bodes well for more games in the future.