New to GMing T2K

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

Like how many people knew that just south of the town of Kalisz is a major dam that people can blow to flood the streets and slow down pursuit?

How did the new guy just waltz in here and notice something we've been missing for 20+ years? That dam's just begging to be blown!

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Zalew Szale - Szale lagoon, not so much a dam as a flooded river plain used as a recreational lake for bird watching, fishing and swimming.
It's about 6 or 7 kilometres from the Kalisz city outskirts and from the best I can find, isn't particularly deep, something like 6 to 8 metres

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Zalew Szale - Szale lagoon, not so much a dam as a flooded river plain used as a recreational lake for bird watching, fishing and swimming.
It's about 6 or 7 kilometres from the Kalisz city outskirts and from the best I can find, isn't particularly deep, something like 6 to 8 metres

Are there any levees or steep banks that could be blown?

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Zalew Szale - Szale lagoon, not so much a dam as a flooded river plain used as a recreational lake for bird watching, fishing and swimming.
It's about 6 or 7 kilometres from the Kalisz city outskirts and from the best I can find, isn't particularly deep, something like 6 to 8 metres

I had a bit of a search around last night myself and came to the same conclusion. This isn't so much a dam as a flooded depression as SSC mentioned. The wall looks to be a gently sloping mound toped with a hard walkway/road surface.

Blowing it is likely to require many, many tonnes of explosive dug into the wall and the result wouldn't be a catastrophic flash flood, but a relatively gentle flow (I've seen very similar events IRL when earthen wall dams breach, and had the very unfun job of trying to block the breach with sandbags, rocks and loose earth).

The best that could be hoped for is making the downstream area a bit wet and marshy after about a day thereby preventing wheeled vehicles crossing the area. Tracked vehicles would also be wise to avoid it, but they might actually still get through.

In my opinion, breaching this dam is a waste of limited resources, especially in light of the extremely short amount of time the 5th has at the end.

[Cdnwolf]

??? I thought this was fiction.... IN MY CAMPAIGN its a whooping big dam and it helps delay pursuit when the commander uses all the excess ammo to blow it up.

[pmulcahy11b]

Well, fiction is good, in a measure. I personally wouldn't, under most circumstances, do wholesale earth resurfacing.

So it's sort of like Medina Lake here in San Antonio -- a flat-bottomed, shallow, really big pond that's more wetlands than anything else?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Poland doesn't have a lot of traditional style dams in those areas because much of the terrain is flat or low hills. Someone once said that it's not surprising that it got invaded all the time, it's so flat that cavalry can sweep through most places.
I cannot be arsed arguing the whole "How you play your game/canon vs non-canon/fiction vs reality" debate. Suffice to say I was presenting the information that I had found - the GM can decide whether to use that information or not and should not think that my presentation is a criticism of their plans

As for levee banks and so on, no there are none that I could find, it's literally a flooded river plain. If you have Google Earth you can access some photos people have taken around the lake

[Legbreaker]

I'm with Stainless on this. The RL situation is that the dam is unsuitable for blowing, however do what you want in your own game. If however you're looking for as close to RL as possible, expect to need several tonnes of explosive planted deep within the earthen bank to blow it.
It might actually be simplier to just dig the bank away with a backhoe...