Greg
asked for a short Bio, so here
goes!
Since my first Dinky toys and on
to balsa wood navies with my
brother, George, I guess I have
always been intrigued with
things military. We used to do
war games on the floor (Terrazzo
in FL) with the die cast toys
and then entire navies of balsa
wood. My first official war
game was AH's Tobruk I found in
a bookstore in the late 1970's
me in my late 20's at the time.
I'm a geographer by training
(work in GIS) and have always
been fascinated with the lay of
the land and its affect on
battles of all types.
My first scenario was the "Raid
on Hammelburg" that appeared in
one of the last Generals.
Greg has it on his website for
those interested. I introduced
the Jeep MB counters to the
gaming system. (I have a 1958
CJ3B Willys Jeep) I was really
excited about taking a
historical battle (event) and
putting it into the PL/PB game
system. Having always been an
avid reader of military
history you can't help but begin
to visualize the actual history
into the game system. I like to
think of wargaming as a 3-D view
of the history of the event
including the time slice and the
topography all rolled up so
nicely.
In the mid 1990's someone said
to me "some times defeats can be
a learning experience also." I
took that to heart and began to
study some significant military
failures. I started
reading/research about
Hammelburg, the Maginot Line and
Dieppe. Were they failures or
were they learning experiences?
The scenarios (coming soon on
Dieppe at Greg's web site)
showed how powerful the PB/PL
game system is to simple
enhancements and extensions.
The "what ifs" and the
"historical" scenarios go hand
in hand to fully develop the
context of the actions and
battles. One thing for sure,
you don't have to make anything
up.....just use the history as a
guide. Look for the rest of
Maginot Line scenarios, four
Dieppe scenarios coming soon and
a major extension for US Marines
at Tarawa....new maps, new
equipment--the amphibious
tractors were truly amazing
devices for warfare.
I hope you enjoy the work and
please share your experiences
with us. Thanks to Greg for his
support and comments, we both
hope you enjoy the new scenarios
for an old favorite!
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