Streaming Panzer Battles North Aftrica

Jim and I played the Mersa Brega scenario last night from upcoming John Tiller Software game Panzer Battles North African Campaign 1941 last night. Here's my recorded version of the live stream.

Germantown - Conway at Mount Airy

Conway's Pennsylvania brigade deploying versus light infantry and artillery at Mount Airy, as Sullivan's division begins their advance on Germantown.

John Tiller Software Campaign 1776

WDS Tiller Antietam

The WDS improvements to the Tiller ACW games are astounding

John Tiller Software Sale Items

John Tiller Software is right now doing something I've not seen them do before: having some items on sale! If you're a veteran JTS player, now is a great time to pick up a game you might not have. If you've never played but think you might like to give these games a try, you can grab a title for a few dollar less right now.  Go on, you know you want to!

Shooting Blanks at St. Quentin

The 1st Band of the French Companies has nearly cleared the island. Imperial forces are on the move.

I learned something very important today about the JTS Musket & Pike engine that I didn't know. It took several hours of playing the St. Quentin scenario. I've never run into it in other scenarios and never suspected it was there.

St. Quentin 1557 - JTS Renaissance

Montmorency's French relief army moving to force the passage into the city while English and Imperial forces begin to move toward the French flanks

I've been reading Sir John Fortescue's A History of the British Army - Volume I (1066-1713). The section on the evolution of Renaissance armies after the introduction of gunpowder I found particularly fascinating.

Action at Dego: JTS Campaign Marengo

French approach to Dego, initial positions

Not much boardgaming this weekend, as I've been consumed with PBEM turns and solo computer gaming. Much of the latter has been due to this game, the newly released Campaign Marengo from John Tiller Software.

2/Worcestershire at Gheluvelt

I think that the late 19th and early 20th Centuries are a particularly interesting period of warfare. Then, as now, rapid technological changes drove development of weapons systems that were far more effective than those of the past - but too often the thinking of the officers tasked with using those weapons was mired in the past. Frequently such thinking led to horrendous casualties and, by 1915, a stalemated war of attrition in the trenches that wouldn't be resolved until the invention of new tactics and new weapons like tanks.

2/Worcestershire preparing to advance from Polygon Woods toward Gheluvelt, near Ypres - 31 October 1914

Battles of Normandy Released

John Tiller Software has released the next installment of their Panzer Battles series: Battles of Normandy.

Squad Battles: Always Enjoyable

I don't always feel a desire to play a squad-level, purely tactical game...

Before (much) modding

After modding

...but when I do, more often than not it'll be JTS Squad Battles.

Linz-Urfar 17 May 1809

During the Spring of 1809, the Austrians rose against Napoleon in a somewhat over-optimistic attempt to throw off French dominance and reverse the defeat of 1805. The initial Austrian invasion of Bavaria took the French off-guard, but Napoleon reacted quickly, concentrating his army and defeating the Austrians under Archduke Charles at Eckmuhl on 21-22 April.

As Charles withdrew towards Vienna Napoleon and his Saxon and Württemberg allies chased after them along the Danube. Not quite a month after the defeat at Eckmuhl, Charles dispatched Kolowrat's Austrian III Corps to attack Napoleon's extended lines of communication at the town of Linz, where the Wurttemberg troops and Saxons under Vandamme and Bernadotte respectively had established a bridgehead across the Danube.

JTS scenario background. I am playing the historical variant of the scenario.

Assaulting Jenin

After an extended excursion into 16th through 19th century warfare over the past couple of months, nearly all of which I played PBEM, I woke up one morning last week with a burning desire to return to the world of armored warfare. It might have been triggered by the extended Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue PBEM game I'm engaged in, but whatever the cause, I needed tanks.

Not just any tanks would do, however. I coerced my frequent PBEM opponent Jim into playing Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm and that's a ton of fun, but what I really wanted was to learn more about the greatest armored clashes of the post-WWII era: the Arab-Israeli Wars.

My armored task force at the Line of Departure near Jenin in 1967. The triangles mark the path half the force will take during the initial advance on the town. 

Gumbinnen - August 20, 1914 : A Review of East Prussia '14

A little over 100 years ago, the advancing troops of the Russian 1st Army met Maximilian von Prittwitz's 8.Armee at the town of Gumbinnen in East Prussia. It was the first German offensive of the the war in the east. Strategically, the battle was a German defeat. Tactically the Russians certainly didn't shine, but they held long enough, and did enough damage to the German XVII Corps to make von Prittzwitz lose his nerve and retreat. His corps commanders did not generally agree that they had been beaten.

Courtesy of the new World War I Campaigns game from John Tiller Software. East Prussia '14, I'm going to try my hand at managing a better outcome for 8.Armee.

8.Armee positions the morning of August 20th, 1914. IArmeekorps and XVII.Armeekorps are already in contact