Collected Works of the DC Group

[pmulcahy11b]

Just an aside, your Hogan's Heroes avatar always brings a smile, Chico. People will often hear out of me the phrase, "You ought to be shot and sent to the Russian front..."

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Just an aside, your Hogan's Heroes avatar always brings a smile, Chico. People will often hear out of me the phrase, "You ought to be shot and sent to the Russian front..."

Oddly enough, I most often find myself saying "I know NOTHING!"

Must be the supply sergeant in me...

[Graebarde]

Thanks for the clairification Chico.

[Jason Weiser]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Just an aside, your Hogan's Heroes avatar always brings a smile, Chico. People will often hear out of me the phrase, "You ought to be shot and sent to the Russian front..."

Shouldn't it be "sent to the Russian Front and then shot?" I mean...if you're dead before you get there...unless the Russians are intimidated by scarecrows...I don't see it...then again, I am more of the "HOGAAAN!" type!

[Twilight2000v3MM]

Kinda off topic but one of my favorite movie quotes is "I learned in Stalingrad. Natural body oils, combined with dirt, can keep you waterproof."

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Jason Weiser

Shouldn't it be "sent to the Russian Front and then shot?" I mean...if you're dead before you get there...unless the Russians are intimidated by scarecrows...I don't see it...then again, I am more of the "HOGAAAN!" type!

Well. that's what made what Colonel Klink said so ridiculous! Besides, I would think that if you want to punish someone, sending them to the worst front in the war pre-wounded would do it!

[chico20854]

Well, given the discussions about Iraq and Asia I thought I should update this thread.

Obviously, the characterization of our effort has been changed in the year and a quarter since it was written. I'd rather not re-open that discussion, instead I'd like to bring you up to date on where we are and what we're working towards.

At this point, we have completed orbats at brigade/division level for almost every army that is (1) in NATO or the Warsaw Pact (2) their allies, like Iran, North Korea, and Mongolia or (3) in combat against one of the previous two. We've described those units in Third World War wargaming terms and have revised the rules to take into account the special situations that the T2k scenario present. The unit list is 19 pages or so, three columns of 8-point type... so far. (And that's probably 2000 or more hours of work at this point). I've slowly been posting most of the orbats over the years; The tank-net NATO orbat is detailed enough that for many nations I haven't written up a seperate orbat, although the various vehicle guides will have complete orbats.

I've worked up maps of Manchuria and Korea suitable for Third World War use (some need more work but are playable as long as the Chinese 1997 counterattack doesn't get too out of hand). I'm in the midst of determining garrison locations and mobilization timelines for reserve units, based on RL 1989 information or extrapolating from the Soviet Vehicle Guide.

Considering the amount of effort that has been put forth in the last three and a half years, we're damn close to being able to start wargaming things. Hopefully sometime this spring we'll begin with October 1996 in both Germany and China and things will go from there until we get to the TDM. (We'll have to pause then and figure out where to go from there, as the Third World War rules say everything falls apart at that point, which is true but obviously not so far that there isn't a 2000 Summer Offensive; but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it...) Kato and I have discussed weekly sitrep maps using his mapping tools; given his situation and the amount of time he's had to devote here lately I'm not going to say he's agreed to do it but it may be a possibility.

The end result will be much as envisioned in November 2008... a new version of the US Army Vehicle Guide, Soviet Army Guide and NATO Vehicle Guide and several new works - a Warsaw Pact Vehicle Guide and a US Maritime Guide, covering the sea services (USMC, USN & USCG). Given the near-violent reaction to the portions of the Survivor's Guide to the USA posted here and the scope of the work, with multi-page descriptions of each state, I've stopped work on it to concentrate on other parts of the project. In addition, we have or will soon be creating enough material for three additional works - an Illustrated Guide to the Third World War that brings together many of the images & captions from my website and the various works we're working on, plus a lot more. It's a very incomplete draft right now but will be a lot of fun... I work on it when I'm getting burned out on orbats. The other two works are a CENTCOM Sourcebook (hence the recent thread about Iraq) and a Northeast Asian Sourcebook, concentrating on the war in Korea and China.

Unfortunately, this is all a huge amount of work still to be done. We all have busy lives (Flamingo is finishing up a MBA, my job has become especially hellish, Law is prepping for another deployment and Jason is really busy with his family) so it may be quite a while before you see any of these works. But there is definitely a method to our madness...

And, as always, if you see something you like in this for your campaign please feel free to use it. If you think it's crap, toss it out... we just want to turn out well researched, good looking and fun work.

[Raellus]

You definitely put out the best looking fan-generated material I've ever seen for this game, or any other for that matter. I can't adequately express how much I am looking forward to the vehicle guides and illustrated history. Do keep us posted.

[Legbreaker]

How will the wargaming be carried out? Is the aim to replicate the end result we're presented in the books with both sides still roughly equal in strength and the fronts as published?

Will the war be played over several times, with different people controlling the various participants so that differing scenarios can be explored?

[fightingflamingo]

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.

[kato13]

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

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.