The Sharp End Gaming

The tip of the spear for 11th Army is the Romanian 1st Armored Division! Against the wishes of some within the German High Command, I made a strategic decision to give the Romanians a seat at the table for the opening of the Barbarossa offensive.  We will see what the long term implications are, but in the short term I am relying on them to help the 11th Army drive on Odessa. I will be blogging periodically about Barbarossa for the next few weeks.  I am super excited about this game and I can't wait to see if I can get to Moscow by winter!

The holidays are almost here and now I am thinking about a gaming wish list.  Here are the games that have made my list this year: Vietnam 65 :  A counter insurgency game for Vietnam with a price point of $9.99. I even expect this game to be discounted for the holidays on Steam.  The hands down best write ups for this game are by Tim at Ranger X3X.   Read one here . Command Inferno : A standalone game simulating a cold war conflict between the Soviet Union and NATO set in 1975. This Matrix product is also reasonably priced at $17.99. Panzer Battles Normandy :  A John Tiller game, to follow Kursk Panzer Battles, I have had the privilege of seeing this in it's beta form and can say without a doubt it will blow the doors off Kursk with it's ambition.  This game is not yet released but JC at Real and Simulated Wars has previewed the game and blogged about it here , here , here , here and here . Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa : Another Matrix Games produ...

A Belgian defensive line forms as reinforcing Belgian forces move eastwards.  Also visible, BEF air assets as I deploy them to the east to cover Belgian forces and screen the BEF advance.    I am playing as France, Britain, Netherlands and Belgium against the Germans.  I know very little about the Fall of France and find myself worrying about repeating the mistakes that were made.  I am struggling with a number of strategic decisions and trying to correct some things that I found at the start of the campaign.

I know very little about the Fall of France in 1940.  Until this morning I had never heard of the Dyle Plan, I didn't appreciate the difficulty one has managing the armies of four nations (UK, France, Netherlands and Belgium) and I didn't realize Belgium seems awfully big when you have to defend it against a German blitzkrieg. This is the "Oh #$%*" moment of the Belgium turn where my faint memory of these events meets the reality of these events. There are a lot of tanks in those woods...