While browsing though the Kriegsarchiv I noticed there are still game reports not available or badly formatted. So I took some time to clean up some of the game reports, and the FWtBT, WiD and WD game reports should be fine to read now. With a new table plugin installed and in use the overview pages look much nicer, too!

Additionally, I finally swallowed my pride and re-upped an old game report written in 1999 by yours truly, in which I got served expertly by my then flatmate and still best friend, who, despite being a complete novice to Europa, showed me what happens if the Loyalists manage to link up with the Gubernitos of the North in FWtBT. Its not a pretty picture, and I am sorry we never got to finish the game. Which was by and large my fault. Anyway, I am sure there is a lesson in there, even if it is only that I never will excel at strategy games. Enjoy the read!

More news from Ken Newall’s game report on For Whom the Bell Tolls: The last spring has come for the Spanish Republic. As the first green returns to the hills of the Serrania de Cuenca, the fascist forces finally have stretched the ressources of the Republic to its limits. While factional strife erupts in the streets of Barcelona the black- and brown clad columns of Generalissimo Franco descend from the hights, the optics of their Zeiss-manufactured german scissor scopes trained on the beautiful prizes along the Spanish coast: Valencia and Barcelona. In Andalucia, the unbowed Anarchist brigades slowly retreat from one hill to the next, pursued slowly but methodically by the nationalist brigades that keep up the pressure relentlessly.

This turn of events is especially tragic since the Nationalists only narrowly avoided a linkup between the forces of the Republic and the beleagured Gubernitos of the North last autumn. Demoralized after what was seen by many as the last chance for a defeat of the Insurgents, the Basques and their allies finally succumbed to Franco in the winter of 38/39.

Read the full reports here.

Back from summer break, we added more turn reports to the ongoing game of FWtBT by Ken Newall, and some exiting developments come with them: Despite relentless atacks by the Nationalists, who continue to enjoy their lavish support in weapons and munitions by the fascist powers in Europe, the Republic refuses to concede defeat in 1938. Its desperate attempt to link up with the besieged Gubernitos of the North failed in Autumn in a series of spectacular battles around Zaragoza, but the defense tied up so much Nationalist ressources the beleaguered Basques hope to survive another winter.

To the full game reports.

More work done: I’ve enlarged the Academy and created sub-pages for essays and documents. The library now contains links to nearly all available official histories of World War I, while the page about WW 2 is being built. The corpus of links has grown sufficiently I believe to justify converting it into permanent pages.
Also, the title of this post refers – of course, to the victory of the great Timur Tamerlan over the Indian Sultan in 1398.

Yes, its this time of the year again. I’ve rummaged around in the underbelly of this website quite a bit, but the only recognizable changes are an enlarged website footer with two navigations, and some additions to the links to official histories of World War I. I still hope its usefull to have them all in one place.

Ken Newalls game report of FWtBT continues apace after a short break, and even though the republic has been on the defensive for a long time now things do not look good for the Nationalists, who are slowly exhausting the patience of their black-clad sponsors. But see for yourself...

No, not current politics I am talking about: Ken Newall’s game report of his solitary “For Whom The Bell Tolls” has progressed into the summer of ’37 now, and I can only recommend reading it!

Thats all for today :)

Just a small update: Besides adding more pages to Ken Newall’s game report of his solitary For Whom the Bell Tolls-Report I’ve also finally found some time to add the official Italian History of World War I to the link section (thanks again to Alex for the link!), and added links to the British Official History.

What E-Readers really need now is the ability to project a map onto a screen or wall while I am reading the battle description. Else I am just gonna keep reading on a laptop with a second screen attached.

Godspeed!

As a little experiment I’ve installed some more plugins (breaking my vow to not overload the poor site with gimmicks) and opened some forums. You’ll find them in the main navigation under “Casino” – I thought that would be a fitting name. Also, I´ve copy&pasted&adapted some rudimentary forum rules, but in the end I will have little time and motivation to police, so it comes down to:

1. Be respectful
2. Do not do anything illegal
3. Talk about Strategy games.

If you need an extensive rulebook to understand these guidelines, the General Staff is not for you, and, since it is my little fiefdom, I will ban you, quicker than you can say Sturmgeschütz.

But aside with the nasty talk, I hope you´ll enjoy this little adition. I am still thinking on how to best add a files section, for now its a simply another forum.

A testament to the dedication and loaylty of the community. There, I always wanted to write such a sentence, and today I honestly have a reason for it: Robert, a member of the Europa mailing list, assembled a TW playtest set by using the TW maps and counters, and updating the FitE-rule set to modern Europa standards. His report of his solitaire game can be found at tw17playtest.blogspot.de, and it would have made Winston proud.

To start the New Year properly we have a brand new game report of For Whom the Bell Tolls, written by Ken Newall and reporting from his solitaire game featuring a variable start to the revolution. Thanks to Ken who allowed me publishing his reports here. Enjoy the read!

Just a short but sad news today: As of Oct 18th the Website of HMS is down. Since we also haven’t heard from anyone at HMS in some months , we fear this might just be yet another step in Europas slow demise. Lets pray to the gods of cardboard wars that everyone at HMS is okay, and that Total War still might see the light of day sometimes in the not so far away future.

Update, 22.10.2016:
Looks like the site is back, alas the last update is still from February 2016. So while there is no catastrophy, the agony continues.

The epic Grand Campaign game of MtV/OT by Todd Jahnke reached May 1917 this Summer, with the Allied pounding furiously at the southern coust of Austria-Hungary while burning through their equipment at the Western Front. As usual, you find the reports for May I and May II in the Archive. Thanks to Todd, and enjoy your read!

We are grateful to announce that Eric Pierce has graciously given permission for his MTV Battle Scenario “Battle of Liege” to be published on these pages. The less-than historical achievements of the German side in the initial moves of several “March to Victory“-playtests have been discussed for years on- and offline. As usual, several fixes has been advanced and rejected.

Today Eric, one of the designers originally involved in the great War Series, shares his take on a more balanced (if the term is approriate for a steamroller stomping a small neutral neighbour into submission within a couple of weeks) approach to the first moves of any “Great War” game. Wether it manages to resolve the issues plaguing the German Juggernout – find out for yourself!

…gnaweth at my posessions, just as it eats everything else. We had some water damage in the cellar, a broken pipe leaking directly into the box with my Europa-games carefully propped up on plastic boxes to protect it from water on the floor. When I came into the basement and noticed, the whole box was mouldy and most of my Europa-games are now a soggy slush of paper. And so it goes.

The insurance will cover the damage, thereby relieveing me from my new years resolution on selling them all on Ebay.

So, a little bit of Second Front may be salvageable, and so might be some maps and rules here and there, but most of my Europa is gone – making me realize again I didnt play those games actively in over a decade now.  And since there are a lot and more personal pages now hosting game reports – wordpress enabling mortals to throw up a reasonably well-looking page in some hours – I think the Generalstab slowly ceases to be relevant and useful. I wont take the site down just yet, but dont expect a lot of updates coming. I might publish some more of Eric Pierce OBs – if I get his permission – and clean up the archive (in which some game reports are still a mess), but I dont have any bigger plans anymore. Which is not a bad thing itself, I will concentrate (yet again) on the military database. Maybe one day I can show you :)

Hi everyone,
thanks to the kindness of Eric Pierce, I was able to add his well-reasearched new Order of Battle for the Soviet Union in the Winter War (1939-40) to the Academy pages. Of course its inofficial (When did the last official material get published anyway – 2002?), but in Eric´s words its “pretty close to what A.E. Goodwin would produce”. Which means it takes into acocunt all the new research and sources that have been published in the past twenty years and should be up to date, and on the same level as the TW OBs (if they ever see the light).

I took this as an opportunity to clean up the War Academy main page and insert some pictures. Hope you like it,