Arnold J. Hendrick

I just got issue 7, and found it very good. If you are unable to carry on to even issue numbers, I won't feel too bad. I certainly have gotten my money's worth to date!

I noticed on page 30 that you finally got around to answering all the junk I've been sending you, which was sort of nice. I notice you included that sentence about Don Featherstone's rules being historically worthless. While I am all in favor of honesty, forthrightness, etc., etc. I'm afraid the English don't see it quite the same way. I'm expecting momentarily a bomb in the mail from Don. Well, I was bound to run into him eventually .....

As for your comments about '1944', I think you are taking your preconceived notions about modern warfare (which probably originated with Don Featherstone's rules, incidentally) and apply them to 1944. Needless to say, you come up with all sorts of contradictions.

First of all, a 30' x 30' playing surface is not necessary. We have run battles on a 4' x 8' board, and have found that to be plenty. Remember 100 meters = 1", or one mile = 16". Look through a few accounts and maps of battalion and regiment sized actions and look at the scales and distances. Except in breakthrough armored actions the area of the battle would usually fit well onto a 6' x 12' board. So you complain about vehicle movement speeds - saying that they are too fast. This is a function of the command situation. Instead of simultaneous movement and horrible complexity and paper-work, I looked at the problem from the other end. The end of the battalion commander. Battalion reaction time was rarely under 10 minutes, which is why I use 10 minute turns. During that time the enemy could do an awful lot to you while you didn't have a coordinated response. This was the reason why armored warfare was so successful. You could short-circuit the opposition's command and reaction network temporarily, allowing you to close and get the first licks in. Of course, if you didn't get him with those first licks (the initial "impetus" of the attack) you really got clobbered.

This is represented in the game by giving the vehicles high movement rates and the turn order. A fast-moving armored attacker closes with his tanks on the enemy and gets one firing round. The defender with the survivors gets gets a firing round, a move (to bring up reserves, etc.) and a second firing for everybody. Thus if the defender can withstand that initial impetus he creams the poor attacker.

1944 completely avoids the paper-work problem and the complexity problems of various infantry weapons by going to the platoon as the basic unit. I also consider each player a battalion commander, and not some sort of god who can control the individual actions of each unit. You see, you have been used to individual vehicles and squads, while 1944 deals with full platoons and companies. The difference is significant.

Incidentally, 1944 will be printed in December by the NEWA for $2.00 along with some stuff in the COURIER. I have campaign rules for 1944 too, and have run a few campaign games with them. The campaign game is very open- ended, and really just provides a starting point for each designer's imagination. But again the basis is historical fact, and not wargaming fictions. I have included in the final 1944 draft unit statistics on the German, Russian, American, British, and Japanese armies for 43-45.

Finally, before signing off, I would like to note the apparent contradictions between PANZERBLITZ and 1944. 1 say apparent because PANZER takes on a god-like attitude of a historical study. The game portrays the whole historical situation (actually 12 different ones). The players, seeing the whole of the situation, are to logically deduce the tactical problem, its nature, and its optimal solutions. For this reason PANZER has full visible units, and includes visibility and sighting questions in the combat factors themselves. On the other hand, 1944 is trying to put you in the battalion CP. As a result, there is a lot of hidden and partially hidden (the PSM - universal bane of modern wargames) stuff, and a commander rarely knows precise locations of more than 25% of the opposition's troops (although the tactical situation and terrain can lead to some shrewd guesses, especially if you know your opponent). The combat, movement, and visibility rules are detailed in order to show a battalion commander precisely why his plan did or did not work.

So, the difference starts with this: in PANZERBLITZ you are a god, looking on the whole situation with perfect clarity (you can even calculate odds before making a move). In 1944 you are a battalion commander, and the tabletop is simply a visual display of the data sent to you by your subordinate units (within a certain tolerance). Naturally in each system there are little finicky technical points that had to be omitted, but the idea is to capture the main points, the key historical factors, and consider them first and most importantly.

If you have not yet purchased PANZERBLITZ from Avalon Hill I suggest you do so. It is $8.98, but considering materials included, you are getting more for your dollar than any other AH game. Of course, S&T gives you even more per dollar, but that's another question. Besides, PANZER is the first time AH came up with a decent box.

Ed.: You are right about the playing surface. I misread a reference to square feet You are also correct about battalion reaction time. A "battalion reaction time" (all we need is a vowel and we can make an acronym out of it), if referring to the amount of time it takes a message to get to battalion HO and be reviewed and replied to, is quite fast. This depends, of course, on the disposition of the unit, volume of message traffic, etc. None of this, however, has anything to do with the reaction time of deployed front line weapons. A line of anti-tank weapons or hulldown tanks will not necessarily await orders from batta ' lion if facing an armored or mechanized attack. Any theory based on an anti-tank battery holding fire for ten minutes while being overrun by enemy armor because it has to get the word from battalion HO strikes me as "historically worthless. "

Some of the vehicle combat factors seem a bit odd too. However, the rules are apparently well balanced - such factors as concealment and unability to fire "through" enemy units - neither quite realistic, somewhat weaken the unreal first round of the attacker. A ten minute reaction time is probably valid for indirect artillery support.

Frankly, I'm puzzled by your reference to "pre-conceived notions about modern warfare (which probably originated with Don Featherstone's rules, incidentally)," but I suppose this relates to our publication of Mike Arnowitzs rules. Those rules unquestionably owe a lot to early Featherstone and perhaps Lionel Tarr. I threw in some of my own notions on K4V// period rules fairly recently (as TAG publication lapses go) and, while they were not altogether resolved in the article, they appear to me to be far closer in spirit to "1944" than to anything I've seen of Don's. The basic "unit" is of three infantry figures on a stand, three plus two two-man weapons bases and two-man staff to a company, which must make them pretty close to "platoon counters. " I do favor distinguishing between predominantly rifle and predominantly submachinegun infantry.

As for your remark about English lack of forthrightness, Don is the most forthright Wargame editor you are likely to run across. He gets annoyed sometimes, but it's an annoying business sometimes. Old issues of the Newsletter are full of Condray's disrespectful comments to the editor and those of numerous others. Naturally most of Don's ideas were all wet . After all, I didn't invent them. Since you got into things even later, it comes as no shock to me that you didn't write them either.

Derick Atwell

Sorry to trouble you, but I have found your magazine very interesting and have been looking forward to the missing issues.

I for one certainly appreciated 'The Wargame'. It is certainly a completely different approach to Wargaming from any other I have met and appears to produce a very playable game with comparatively simple rules. As you may have noticed, there is a tendency to complexity in rule-making over here, at present.

I hope you will be able to sort out my query without too much trouble.

Ed.: I've got the address as you have it in my files so that later issues should have reached you, but I'll try again.

Glad you enjoyed "The Wargame." It has its drawbacks and seems prone to chronic local modification, but I found it quick and handy when I first spotted it, even though my French then was only a little better than my German now.

As for the "tendency to complexity in rule-making" over there, I had always assumed it stemmed from exposure to corrupting American influences.