By Robert Kelly

This is part two of my Grand Tour of Europe museum reports. We booked a Baltic Cruise out of Copenhagen with stops in Stockholm, Tallinn, Helsinki, and Saint Petersburg and sailed in mid-May.  Due to the war in Ukraine, the cruise company offered us an extra day in Stockholm instead of stopping in Saint Petersburg. We took them up on the offer but were disappointed we couldn’t visit Russia.  After the first day in Stockholm, we were glad to have an extra day in town.  There is so much to see that if we hadn’t had the second day, I probably wouldn’t have made it to the Swedish Army Museum.

The museum is located in the downtown core and is not far from the harbour. I was able to walk there in no time. Stockholm is an expensive place to visit and fortunately, the museum offered free admission. A rare bargain indeed.

Here is everyone’s favourite Swedish tank, the S Tank on gate duty. Unfortunately, it was the only armoured vehicle out front. And there was room for more. That seems to be a trend in Europe.  You find very few large vehicles at the downtown museums, but they usually have separate tank museums.

By Jim Naughton

PART III – (part 2 here) Now we’ll take a look at the complications – the effect of shifting targets, larger batteries, and Krasnopol. Refer to Battlefront’s source books World War III Soviet https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7154 and World War III Warsaw Pact https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7455 for details.

RANGING IN
The big weakness of artillery comes when your forces close in for the kill. ‘DANGER CLOSE’ makes you move the template, stop shooting or switch to smoke. PACT artillery suffers less than that of the Soviets. In fact, with an observer, it’s more likely to range in on the first attempt than the other two attempts combined.

By Robert Kelly

I retired from the Canadian Public Service in early April.  Within a few days my wife and I were on our way for the “Retirement Grand Tour of Europe”.

As my wife is from Denmark, we set up our Forward Operating Base in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. Besides a one-week Baltic Cruise out of Copenhagen with stops in Stockholm, Helsinki, and Tallinn, our plan was every week or so we would see what deals Ryanair had. 

If we could find cities with good hotel deals at the same time, we would make our bookings. My wife had always wanted to go to Paris so that was our first trip “outside the wire”.

As we went in May, the tourist season hadn’t fully started, so prices were still reasonable. But then coming from Denmark, everywhere else in Europe is reasonably priced. 

Big treat for you in this episode. We talk to some of the staff at the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies and talk about how they use wargaming in professional military education.

By David Garvin

One of the many reasons I play Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) is because I am a self-professed amateur historian. The history of the Second World War is not only fascinating but is rich and has even to this day many surprises awaiting anyone who wants to dig deep enough. I intend to do a blog post on how ASL is part history teacher.

For example, it is through ASL that I learned of a battle in early 1942 to the west of Moscow, The Battle of the Kholm Pocket. I discovered this epic battle through the purchase of a Historical ASL (HASL) product from a 3rd party producer, le franc tireur. Based in France, this HASL was designed by Andrew Hershey of Virginia. Before doing a blog post about learning history through gaming, I reached out to him and interviewed him.  That interview follows now.

By Jim Naughton

PART I gave an introduction to the subject and cataloged the seven weapon systems available to Soviet/PACT Team Yankee players.  Today we’ll take a close look at the math that allows comparing weapons. Battlefront’s source books World War III Team Yankee Soviet and World War III Team Yankee Warsaw Pact are invaluable references.

Always remember, a Scientific Wild Ass Guess (SWAG) is a Wild Ass Guess (WAG) done with slide rules, calculators, and spreadsheets. Now for our SWAG:

Team Yankee uses D6 for combat resolution. In an artillery bombardment, you roll to range-in up to three times, and the number of range-in attempts adjusts the to-hit number for stands under the template. Then comes a save for each stand hit, and finally the artillery rolls a firepower test (if required) to kill the target. That’s a lot of die rolls, each with six possible outcomes. Up to three range-in attempts, then up to four more for each team under the template (to-hit, save, reroll save if brutal, firepower). 216 possible outcomes for the range-in procedure and 1,296 possible outcomes for each team.

“This game is so out of date, anybody who plays it would have to wear a leisure suit.”

• Al Lowe- Game Designer

By Patrick S. Baker

The husband-and-wife team of Ken and Roberta Williams founded Sierra Entertainment as On-Line Systems in 1979 to develop and market business software for the TRS-80 and Apple II. But the couple soon discovered text adventure games and Roberta had the brainwave of adding graphics to such adventure games.

Thus, with Roberta designing and Ken doing some programming, they developed Mystery House, the first graphic adventure game. Released in 1980 Mystery House sold 15,000 copies sold and earned some $167,000 (about $565,000 today). Buoyed by this success On-line Systems shifted from business software to adventure games.

Join Glenn, Tom and guest host Preston Jacka as they talk about the newly released Firelock Video preview, the upcoming Calvert Marine Museum event (deadline for registration is September 9th) and discuss the incoming fall season of gaming and new releases. Thanks for tuning in! and check out our event before time runs out.

By David Garvin

In my previous article, I discussed how the designers of Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) took the characteristics of real-world tanks and then incorporated them into the game. The tanks of ASL all have the same three characteristics as their real-world inspirations: Firepower, Mobility, and Protection.

As promised, this article will tell you, the player, where to find the information to tell you what kind of Firepower your tank has, how mobile it is and what its protection is. The inspiration for these two articles came from a 5-minute conversation with a new ASL player and this was about a week or so ago. He was just learning how to play and he wasn’t sure where to look for information on the vehicles in a certain scenario. This article (and the previous) are the result of that conversation.

By Jim Naughton

Introduction

With the publication of World War III: Team Yankee Soviets https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7154 the options for Soviet artillery nearly doubled. Battlefront added the BM-27 Hurricane and the TOS-1 Buratino.  Opinions about the effectiveness of these new tools vary, and they have a significant AP differential over the older systems.

The recent publication of World War III: Team Yankee Warsaw Pact https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7455 updates the PACT-unique artillery, providing options for the East Germans that didn’t exist at the publication of Volksarmee several years ago.  Also, the issue of black box support for PACT armies is cleared up.

By blending allied forces the PACT player literally has a golf bag of options.  A PACT player can choose to array his troops as Soviet allies, and access the newer Soviet artillery, or make his core a PACT force and use the better skill of PACT supporting artillery units.