Has anybody ever done a PBEM game of Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich? Mulling a purchase.
Thunder in the East arrived. Wow I didnt realise how big a game this was. Its huge.
edit: here. This is a large game. Case Blue Box for scale.
I’m thinking about trying to work out a 1941 AGN scenario for something that’s one-mappable.
Yeah a bite sized scenario to start seems wise.
I’m interested in that, and I almost bought it. I’d be interested in hearing thoughts from folks who have bought and tried it. What sets it apart? I have so many eastern front games already…I do like Chadwick, generally.
Agree 100%. I bought it purely because it’s Chadwick.
I havent played it yet, however I would like to ramble about it, so maybe my rambling will be of use.
First you may have played its forebear(s) Battle for Moscow and his follow ups with VPG. A simple introductory ruleset (explained below).
Thunder in the East takes that introductory wargame concept, which weighed in at a dozen or so pages, book sized map, plus half counter a sheet which covered a single eastern front operation and turned it into a game that covers all of the Eastern Front and later ETO.
The price for that is a 88 page rulebook of fairly dense type plus numerous play aids, cards, 40 page scenario book, 12 page reference guide ,increasing the number of counters more than ten fold plus a map that looks about 4ft square.
At its core is the Battle For Moscow is very simple hex and counter game. Movement points, attack & defence ratings, throw in Zoc’s, Russian Campaign style airstrikes, a CRT its all very familiar ground.
Chadwick got this to work beautifully with the basic rule set at lower scales. Simply put, it played like a dream. All the players attention was on decisions and dice, the rules were light and logical enough to be kept in the head of a child as it was originally an introductory wargames set, this was recently demonstrated by my son who at 11 played Battle for Moscow with me and mastered the game with ease.
So my hope is this be another Third World War . In that game Chadwick made a playable monster. It wasnt light by any means but achieved a lot through simple mechanics, the air war rules in that game are sublime for example. Of course thats my hope, this could be a chrome burdened mess ruining a simple game, we shall see.
Chadwick rarely lets me down though and when he is on form he is truly on form.
Me too. I actually have slightly higher hopes for it. I love TWW, but the scale (and terrain type/effects choices he had to make bc of the scale) always made it a bit sludgy for me. This should be a lower echelon and allow for more mobility in play.
Yeah it had its flaws for sure but compared to most of the very heavy WW3 games out at the time and oh my there were a lot, it was a breath of fresh air I think. I have high hopes for this one too. A lot of these counters are play aids. Which I think will help this monster move fast and the scale seems just about right for rewarding operational thinking while playing the entire war. Excited!
TWW > TNW. Sorry, Mark Herman.
Oh this is neat, the campaign rules which account for the economic and political aspects have a starting setup at the end of each scenario.
So you can start, say Barbarossa as a purely military scenario then if you like the situation (end of Sept 41) you can pick it up from there as a full campaign.
I’ve actually played TiTE so i can chime in, but i’ve got to get up early to hit a gaming meetup so my take will have to wait till tonight or tomorrow.
Woo! Cant wait to hear!
PLUS ONE
I played out most of the Barbarossa scenario with a buddy on VASSAL early last year. He and I really enjoyed it- one of the things that really works is how smooth things work. The air system works well while staying out of the way. You don’t have to worry about spreading out your planes on airbases on the map, and you really don’t have to worry about ranges for tactical missions. It does require some planning ahead because planes can take a while to get back into the fight and you have to manage how much fuel you want to spend to increase your tempo and get them back faster.
The supply also does what it’s supposed to do- where OCS convinces you to start and stop based on having to shuffle supplies on the map to units, TiTE basically has a fairly simple supply model that works well- cities and HQs emnate supply radiuses and whenever you move them, they no longer provide supply for the next three turns. It’s the same for capturing cities- you have to really consider how aggressive you want to be based on how far you can go- also, the way motorized unit supply goes further during offensives than leg unit supply actually gives you some temptations to take risks as the Axis player.
I think I like the free setup for the scenarios more than the historical setups- you get to play things out a little closer to how you want, and the restrictions don’t really allow much cheese.
Probably the most annoying part is the way you have to build units only in cities and move them to the front and make sure not to forget, but I can live with that- it does mean that there’s some taxation on the rail points and you’re not just using it to shuffle things around the front.
Great post! It sounds like the master hasn’t lost his touch. Does it feel fluid?
I do think the game could use some smaller scenarios- it would be very feasible, I think, to make an AGN-specific scenario, for example, using just one map.
Hey guys, I have a question for the house. I’ve long been interested in the John Tiller civil war games, particularly Campaign Gettysburg, but I’ve held off because I’ve heard the AI is not so good and also because I’ve found the idea of commanding every brigade individually just too unrealistic to contemplate. However I just heard a rumour about “commander mode,” which introduces Command Ops-style AI control over units below a selectable command level. Does Campaign Gettysburg in particular have this feature, and does it work as advertised? Also, I heard a separate rumor that the “campaign” features (string of scenarios with force loss carryover) aren’t available vs the AI. True? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: Managed to answer my second question, at least: “The game engine supports single player against the computer as well as two-player Play By E-Mail for both individual scenarios as well as the campaign game.”
The scenario names don’t seem to suggest that there are multiplayer only scenarios, but I guess it would be buried in the description text for them. I’m not seeing anything in the manual about commander mode style features.
Yes, Gettysburg has Command and Control options. However, I can’t tell you how well it plays, never have tried it.
Just a brief description from the game manual…
Select Commander Control if you want to have some control over decisions made by certain leaders in the battle. For example, in this mode you can give orders as the Army commander or you may want to take command at a lower level such as Division or Corp. If you make this selection, the Leader Selection Dialog will be displayed so that you can select the leaders you wish to command.