Archives for History - Page 21
Book Review – Blitzkrieg Legend
"In the West (Western campaign).- Panzer II and Panzer I in the woods; KBK Lw Kompanie Luftwaffe, "Luftwaffe war-reporting company" 4" (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Blitzkrieg Legend: The Campaign in the West, 1940 by Karl-Heinz Frieser My rating: 5 of 5 stars As part of the planning for the megagame War in the West I bought myself a copy of Blitzkrieg Legend because it is the German Army’s official history (although it didn't get written until the 1990s). From reading the first couple of chapters and looking through the maps you can see the evolution of the German plan. You can see why the directive was written the way that it was in October 1939. The most interesting thing for me is that there is no concept of a lightning war, the general staffs & high command all believe that…
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Inspiration
Image via Wikipedia Today has been an unusually inspiring day, I had two separate ideas for games both of which I reckon could be pulled off in the space of a couple of days basic research and writing briefings etc. Tracy & I both woke up early and we got a couple of hours to do things before Alexander surfaced at the rather late (for him) 9am. In that time I unusually got to watch some TV of my own choice. The first idea came from a programme on the freeview channel 'Yesterday' about the Glencoe Massacre (or more accurately the events leading up to it and the aftermath. This is the follow on to the two games I've done about the revolution in 1689-90 in Scotland. There was a meeting between Albany and the Highland Chiefs where two secret…
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Improper Ganda!
A fantastic collection of propaganda posters that have been photoshopped to change the message. Very funny, especially the re-enactment one, and the Cthulhu poster. Worth a few minutes of browsing past in my opinion.
Preparing For War – Onside Report
British evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I had a design session titled 'Preparing for War' at the CLWG November meeting. Preparing for War was about training an infantry company in the UK after Dunkirk. Rather than a conversational design session I decided to try and do something that was playable. I'd been somewhat frustrated at the conference with discussions of games that looked like they could have been played. I'd felt that perhaps by playing it we could have tested whether or not the perceived problems were actually real. Preparing for War I ran a sort of role-playing game about re-constructing an infantry company after the evacuation from Dunkirk. John Rutherford was the first person to arrive (after me). So I cast him as the first officer to report to the village in Devon I'd decided to put the company in. Chosen only because the OS map…
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Absolute Friends
This is John Le Carre's latest book, a post-cold war spy novel about two of the cold warriors just over a decade on in the wake of 9/11. This is just a fantastic story, incredibly detailed and well researched (where it follows the historical/factual stuff). It starts off as a fairly normal story, told by flashbacks from 2003-4ish, about a chap who gets caught up in the 68-69 student protest movement in Berlin. After a gap of about ten years he eventually settles down and gets a job with the British Council. This draws him into a meeting with his old student protest chum who is now an East German security type. There follows a cold war double agent story, which in itself is excellent. The falling of the Berlin Wall brings an end to that episode and our protagonist…