as far as the wargaming. It's only going to be practical to wargame out through TDM once for our purposes. Each game turn represents one week, and it's going to be hellish to keep track of all the units.

We anticipate using 1 commander for WP aligned forces, and 1 for Nato aligned forces, with one of us taking a neutral role to more or less referee the affair. Generally, I think the flow of the war should generally follow that in GDW's published materials, however they were vague enough about most of the specifics of the 1996-97 campaigns that it gives us considerable tactical leeway, and room to make decisions, which should not drastically alter the situation come 2000.

We were planning on releasing the rules modifications, our maps, counters, OOB's and such when we begin wargaming on the forum, however you will still need the complete Third World War series from GDW to play out your own campaign the way we're intending, because you'll need the core system rules, and the maps.

As I am not a member of the DC group the following might be inaccurate. Any DC group member please feel free to correct me.

Edit:Just saw while I was typing fightingflamingo posted but I am going to post anyway :D

My understanding as an informed outsider is that the end result of the war gaming will be very similar to the canon results in a strategic sense. I believe the game itself will be used to flesh out unit histories. Who fought where? What units were in conflict with each other? Who was the first NATO unit across the Vistula? Stuff like that.

IMO the wargaming will have to be shelved at some point between 1998-99 time wise as the rules will break down at that point.

As far as running it multiple times, the game itself is immense and time consuming. When I played in highschool we had to build a 6x12 foot (2x4M) table we could stand on to get the 4 theaters running. THe DC group is running 6+ theaters and given China's involvement and full mobilization or most forces I expect they will have 3 times the units I had to deal with. We had 5 players per side (Force Commander and Theater commanders) and it still probably took us 20 hours to complete under 6 months of Game time. A large portion of the time was setup and luckily we had a dedicated room in the basement where we leave things be. With out that option, and given the detailed notes I expect them to take, multiple runs would certainly be time very time consuming.

Wow. Are you guys going to be in physical proximity for the wargaming sessions or are you somehow doing it online? The reason I ask is that I'm wondering would it be at all possible to have a podcast synopsis of the results of each sesion? I know its a big ask but that would be a truly awesome thing to listen to for many of us old school, die hard T2Kers.

I'm in NJ, Chico & Jason are in DC, about 2 hours drive. We've got two sets of the game. One will likely be set up in my basement overtop of my underutilized billiards table, and another table that I have, the other set will be set up probably at Chico's.
We've got a spreadsheet form to email back and forth unit moves, aircraft attacks, etc. for each phase/subphase.

Our plan has always been to post weekly combat reports, although we've considered asking kato to provide a subforum for that, incase we diverge too far from canon (there are some tactical problems in 1996-97 we're working out...).

If you would like another brain, I'm in fairly close proximity to you guys and would be willing to dedicate some time to wargaming some of these theater sized scenarios. My background is US doctrine is pretty good, and I'm OK with North Korean and Cold War Soviet. Not so great with Chinese as they were quite insular.

Where are you in PA kiltedguard?

In York PA myself - love to meet a fellow player who is still active and possibly close by.

I could tell you.....but then I'd have to kill you. :D