brian brian
Posts: 3191
Joined: 11/16/2005 Status: offline
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I've always thought 'Tanks in Flames' was released in about 1978. It was called "Squad Leader: Cross of Iron" (ironically originally a game about infantry combat), and was actually the 'Gold' edition of a game from the late 1960s called "PanzerBlitz". But kidding aside, this is a slippery slope in WiF. Personally, I don't like seeing the game get overly tacticalized, which my browser tells me is not a word. Planes in Flames was a big hit and improved the feel and flavor of the air game, compared to the generic counters in use up to 5th Edition. But ever since the air combat rules have been led down a path towards it becoming a tedious dogfighting game (and still kinda generic). If I wanted to play one of those, I'd pick up an aerial shooter video game. If the armor units had actual tank models associated with them, I could easily see an argument late in a game about whether the German Pz Jg 1 armored anti-tank division the Germans have had since the first turn of the game shouldn't be allowed to get double bonuses against the 1st Guards Banner Armor Army, because it now has JSU-152's and there is no way a Pz Jg 1 could penetrate the armor on one of those beasts. In short, WiF is an operational/strategic game and it is important not to lose sight of that. Such thoughts have also led a lot of players back to playing WiF Classic rather than WiF Super Deluxe. As a result, more than a few people have daydreamed about the idea of Tanks in Flames, without anything ever happening. Nevertheless I think there are avenues that could be explored in the game. This question always reminds me of the late-period SPI game "Desert Fox", which I believe only ever existed as the insert in one of the last few SPI issues of Strategy & Tactics magazine. In that game, the armor units such as the 1st Regiment of the British 7th Armored Division, had multiple counters. When the theater commander historically received a new shipment of improved-model tanks (such as Churchill's beloved "Operation Tiger" convoy sailed straight through the Med, ironic given what the Allies discovered they would fight in 1943 in Tunisia), the player could replace the original tank unit counter with a newer version with higher factors. Something like this could work in WiF I think, perhaps in conjunction with the added production detail recently added to the game in Factories in Flames. For post-1945 gaming, a system is in place for atomic weapon research & development. Many given generic multi-player build-colonize-conquer game has a system for spending part of the player's "money" on R&D. WiF could use something like this. The Allies and the Germans continuously put a lot of effort into this. From what I can tell, the Russians preferred to badger the West into giving up their secrets, or learning them the hard way from the Germans, while the Japanese hoped to crib from the Germans via delicate long-range naval contacts. (Not my area of historical interest really). Anyhow, the technological race could be a nice part of the game. What would happen to the convoys or the strategic bombers if Germany had led the race towards centimetric radar? WiF seems like the perfect game to explore those possibilities, as long as it is kept simple and playable. Perhaps a set of combat modifiers for the results in the technology war? To some extent the generally unpopular Intelligence rule is supposed to represent this, but I think there is a lot of room to work on something like that. But I've drifted far from the shore of the excitement of the Germans running into the first T-34's and KV-1 in July 1941 and deciding they better get in gear on that Panther project; sorry I can't help you there. Harry does like being handed free content though, that's for sure.
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