Long ago, shortly after the Earth had cooled and life began to emerge from the primordial sea, I had a board game I really liked. 'Twas named PanzerBlitz and it was published by the Avalon Hill Game Company. I had many games from Avalon Hill, still have most of 'em. I spent many a happy day with my friends playing these games.
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Now that opening photo is a new acquisition of mine, an offering from GMT Games out in Hanford, California (oddly enough where The WSO lives, it's not a store you can walk into, more like a design shop/warehouse sort of thing I reckon). I saw the game on Amazon and noted the similarity of its cover with my old favorite PanzerBlitz. (Learned that that was intentional, the guys at GMT are gamers of a certain age, they remember, and honor, the old days.)
After a couple of days of hemming and hawing, I decided to purchase the game. While doing so I noted that the game had a number of expansions. (Which is a thing these days, I don't mind, it seems to work.) So guess what ...
These are big games, lots of pieces, lots of rules, charts (of the data kind) and maps. (Didn't want to confuse you Naval types as to a chart and a map, one details the water, t'other details the land - for those going "huh?" about now.) Lots of delicious detail about guns, armor, shot types, shot type effects on armor depending on direction of the shot ...
Dear me, I get excited just typing all that.
For I have ever been a gaming geek, love the details, though I'm rather a terrible general or admiral. Too impetuous dontcha know?
I do play computer war games as well, love the fog of war (which is damned difficult to produce in a war game without duplicate maps and pieces and some brave soul volunteering to be the umpire) but there is something about a board game, perhaps it's the colorful box art, counters, and hex maps. Perhaps it's the smell of those components and the way they feel in your hands.
It's much like the difference between an actual "dead tree" book and the electronic variety of same - Kindle, Nook, what-have-you. I had a Nook once upon a time, it was nice, but the battery died, damned lithium nightmare. Haven't replaced it because one of the books I had on my Nook had maps, which were hard to read on the wee thing. You could expand them, but it just didn't work in that format.
Long story short, I discovered three other expansion sets which, of course, I just had to have.
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Note that "P500" designation on the game to the far right, this is something I had never heard of before and apparently GMT has done very well with the concept. Rather than produce a game and hope enough people buy it to make it worth their while, GMT will design and develop a game but then put it out there on their website to see if there's any interest. If at least 500 people actually order the thing, then it gets published. You can read the description of that concept here. No one is out any money until it actually gets published, and the company has at least 500 game orders in hand so they know how much they'll make. Another neat thing about P500 is that if you order it, hoping it gets published, you get the game at a discount.
The Sarge likes discounts as the Sarge is frugal, some might even say "cheap."
So if we do get snow bound, I have something to do which requires no electricity - learn a new gaming system. Something I really enjoy if the truth be told.
I'm going to get back to the book in a couple of days or so, I need to work out where the characters are going next. Especially how am I going to get Jan to Warsaw when the country is crawling with Germans (and Russians to the east).
While fighting was going on at sea and in the air, there wasn't much in the way of ground combat in the West from October of 1939 to May of 1940 (when all Hell breaks loose). So it's a good time to do some character development and bring in some supporting cast as well.
The goal is to cover the backstories of some of the characters from Almost a Lifetime. Also to cover the early parts of the war where we Americans weren't as involved. Some Americans think that we went to Europe and saved their bacon, well, sort of. Much of our contribution to the war effort in Europe was getting supplies to our Allies, particularly the Russians who were tying down the vast bulk of the German military on the Eastern Front.
I read something in Snow & Steel near the end of the book which illustrates how little the Russian people knew of American efforts to keep Russia in the war. When Soviet troops met up with American forces along the Elbe River, they were surprised that the Americans were using what the Russians thought were Soviet tanks.
Sherman tanks, the Russians thought that the Shermans they had received were actually built in the USSR.
Not.
We did quite a lot to both motorize and feed the Red Army from about 1942 on. We shipped them a lot of trucks and a lot of food. Also uniform items from what I understand. Without our help the Russians might have lost the war. Without Russian help, we would have lost the war in Europe. Our big contribution was defeating the Japanese.
But I digress.
Suffice to say, we will get to the Eastern Front in this book, North Africa as well. Stay tuned.