Hoplite1963
Posts: 254
Joined: 7/27/2008
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While West Front II is not due out for some years. (it looks like Winter 2021-2022 at the moment) I thought it might perhaps not be too early to make some suggestions has to what might go into the base game.
Here I would suggest that perhaps less should be more here with the coverage of the original base title being confined to North West Europe and Scandinavia between January 1939 and December 1940. In regard to the nations fielded the German and Polish OOB’s will by then be available to convert for this time period from East Front III. In regard to new nations I would suggest adding Denmark Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, France & the UK.
The first DLC could then cover the Mediterranean, North African & Middle Eastern theatres down to December 1942 with Italian (which might have already had quite a lot of work done on it for the first of the EFIII DOC) Greek, Yugoslav, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Bulgarian and Free French nations slots being added in at the same time. For the invasion of Yugoslavia Romanian and Hungarian formations, (already partly created for this period for the EFIII game) could also be added if desired.
This would set you up to have the second DLC adding the war years from January 1943 to December 1945 (or whenever you wanted to finish) along with the pre war years from January 1935 to December 1938.
Nation wise this DLC could introduce the US and Canadian armies along with Pro Axis nations such as Spain, Iraq & Iran, late comers to the allied cause such as Brazil and Italy as well as for the first time introducing neutral nations such as Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland for those what if scenarios (operations Weserübung, Tannenbaum & Green along with the Turks who could have always chosen to take either side well before their eventual joining of the allied cause in February 1945.
At this point to cover pre-war conflicts OOB’s for Nationalist Spain and Italy could be extended back to 1935 and Ethiopians & Spanish Republicans could also be added.
In respect of the WF II base game as this will cover the 1940 invasion of France it might also be worth giving some thought in advance to how the fortifications of the Maginot Line are going to be handled.
Here its worth having a look at the 3rd party add on created by Greg Moore for the Avalon Hill 1970’s board game “Panzer Leader”. A full PDF set of which can be downloaded from the following dropbox link below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlh4qqhs3vrkq8d/WF%20Maginot%20Line%20info.zipx?dl=0
Here you will see that Mr Moore has categorised all of the various types of fixed and traversing weapons mounts that existed in the Maginot Line and created what are essentially fixed combat units for them very much in the style of the Pantherturn turrets that exist in the current JTS West Front and East Front games.
Further information on the layout and workings of the various types of weapons stations emplaced in the Maginot Line is also given in the 2 Osprey titles “The Maginot Line 1928-45 (Fortress)” and “Maginot Line Gun Turrets: And French gun turret development 1880–1940. (New Vanguard)” The second of these is particularly good at explaining how the French had created an innovative target information management system to get the very best out of their 75mm Maginot Line Gun Turrets and other fortress weapon systems.
No doubt the new “underground” terrain layer introduced for CSVN will also be useful for modelling French and Belgium fortifications in 1940? Finally in the same regard if the West Front II base game could introduce an alternative 125 or 83.33 meters to the hex scale this might also help here for fortification related scenarios.
Kind regards
Ian
< Message edited by Hoplite1963 -- 5/9/2019 2:31:20 PM >
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