A Close Run Thing

[Jim von Krieg]

Optional Rules: Indirect Fire by Map, Armor Facing, Extreme Fog of War, Command Control, and Extreme Assault

House Rules: Historical usage of halftracks...

IMHO it was a bang up fight with a group of excellent guys... It went quickly, so quick in fact that at times I had trouble keeping up with the screen shots because the turns were coming back so quickly... everyone was dedicated and that made it a real enjoyable experience... I couldn't asked for a better set of team mates and opponents on the other side..

This battle is over... but I'll unfold a turn every day or so.... Scott is going to drop in some X Corps commentary as his perspective was different... It was clear that he had insight into this fight from his experience with you guys... and it helped temper our plans a bit... We also learned quite a bit about the strengths and weaknesses of our forces and our strategy over the course of the battle...

In addition to my discussion with the team, after the game I had some good e-mail exchanges with the opponents to gather some of their thoughts about it...

Early in the battle, most of our fight focused on VI Corps efforts to become relevant to the center of the battle... Paestum is where the initial friction point is coming ashore... everyone else on my team was moving towards objectives with limited fighting as this is the only point where the Germans are right on the beaches in close proximity to allied forces...

I actually really wanted to play the scenario after looking it over as part of the team scenario discovery process... Initially, we were looking at an East Front fight... as I had been reading extensively about Salerno prior to my Iraq excursions with the thought of building a scenario or series of scenarios depicting these landings...

Once I became aware of Earl's work, I wanted to see what he had put together as it really, and I do mean REALLY peeked my interest... Over the course of this battle I always looked at what was going on in the game AND thinking about how the battle unfolded historically...

Regards,

Jim