News
News, actual news, actually news about Europa – who would have thought. John Astell posted on the Europa-Mailing-List: After two decades of HMS sitting on Europa and getting nothing done, something is moving – Arthur Goodwin and Gar Olmsted have handed the rights to Europa back to John Banner, the original creator of the trademark. At this point it is unclear what that means, but in case of Europa, currently any news are good news.
Here is the press release in full:
For Immediate Release The Europa Series The Europa Series of division level-military operations in World War II in Europe was, and is, a staggering undertaking. Between 1973 and 1989, the legendary GDW Game Designers’ Workshop produced eleven magnificent die-cut counter and hex grid map wargames covering every major operation in Europe: The East Front, the West Front, operations in Norway, in Poland, the Balkans, and in Africa. Europa has provided hours of enjoyment for its fans across the decades, and we want it to continue to do that while attracting new fans. HMS Historical Military Services of Denver Colorado has been the steward of the Europa properties over the past two decades, and Gar Olmsted and Arthur Goodwin (and a host of others) have worked their hearts out on Europa and its associated concepts. But health and age have finally brought that stewardship to an end, and Europa has returned to its original series creator (and CS Roberts Hall of Fame designer) Paul R. “Rich” Banner. Europa fandom is an important part of this game series mystique: over the decades, its players and backers have been both dedicated and supportive. For example, the readers of Campaign Magazine, in 1975, voted the first Europa title: Drang Nach Osten! Quote: “The Best Game of All Time!” We’re trying to live up to that reputation. In every end is a beginning, and the Europa Series is now preparing to intrigue and entertain a new generation of wargamers. Watch this space.
The devastation of France
David Smiths game report of an alternative world where the Allied decided to land in Southern France instead of North Africa is slowly nearing its conclusion, with the Allied slowly closing in on the Reich itself, despite the desperate Nazis preventing al kinds of units from transferring to the East, thereby significantly easing the war for the Soviets. The posts up to Dec I 44 are here and will be published over the course of November Tthis not only gives you a reason to come back, but more importantly me the time to check that all the files are complete and in order. Also, most of you will have read them on the mailing list already, anyway. In December we’ll reach the grand finale and tally up the VPs.
Today’s link recommendation is a blog post by Ross Mahoney tracing the inception of the official histories of the Australian Air Force, from the first volumes written about the Royal Australian Flying Corps in World War I to the present. These research notes are part of a larger bibliography of Australian Air Power which while out of the focus of this website, definitely deserves your attention.
The Historiography of Australian Air Power: Official Histories
More than a decade ago, on the road to Grand Europa, Allan Tibbetts and some others did enough research to connect War in the Desert with Second Front, thereby creating an extended Scenario that would enable us to play the whole of the Western Front from November 1942 and the Allied landings in Africa to the end. David Smith has taken another shot at the issue, updating the Orders of Battle, integrating modern naval rules, and playtesting the whole monster.
David has kindly agreed to us publishing his game report, and so far we’ve put the first couple of turns and initial forces online. Expect more to come in the upcoming weeks.
Read the game report of “SF42”.
While going through some of the pages of this website, I also re-read the “about”-section and decided to rework it. After more than 20 years it seemed no longer appropriate. At the same time, putting a statement supporting free speech, science and democracy out on a tiny little page on a strategy game and World War II seemed equally ridiculous, so I shortened the text. This left a couple of things unsaid, ergo: this post.
I recently re-watched the Inglorious Basterds. This is one of the few truly antifascist movies I know , diligently examining its protagonists and showing no matter how cunning you are, or how dutiful you might be, or how much of a star you’ve become, or how brave, or how pretty: If you are a Nazi, you deserve to be shot.
Of course there is a lot more to be said about a stellar cast, historical fiction as a narrative technique, and Tarrantino being a brilliant but problematic director. But to me, this is what it all boils down to: If you are trying to violently split humanity into the idolized and the unwanted, the masters and serfs, the believers and the heathens, I will fight you.
Currently the Europa mailing list is pretty active, and we received a request to maybe host the JET/Jet replacement files. As a small preparation, we’ve uploaded all recent Vassal modules and all Errata sheets we could find onto a new Google drive, and updated most of the game pages with links to those files. The result is depressingly unremarkable, considering that alone took basically a days work. But such is life with WordPress, and besides, we haven’t done maintenance on the site apart from the technical updates for a while, so it was a good thing to start reviewing some pages. And the files are now up, and the system can be easily extended.
Most likely, if you end up on this website, you got sick of the song some three decades ago. But this is not about the Fall of the Wall, this is about my own little corner of the web, and some changes will be coming this year. I have not properly played Europa in over a decade, and I do not thing I will ever get my shipment of “Total War” I paid more than two decades ago. So all things “Europa” will be rounded out by files, and then assembled into an Europa archive for those still interested. And yes, I will continue to add game reports, but I would like to focus a bit more on military history. The library will become a place for online available sources, some of which may be a bit harder to find. There will be a new bibliography for the Austro-Hungarian military history, and some lists of available regimental histories as well, and I will structure and revisit the Link section, too.
As in the past, more important things like family and job mean I will rarely have time to create my own original content – it took me three or four months to research and write “Battle of Balakliya”, and its not even a very good essay, more of a test case. So I will do what I have done for the last thirty years: Look for cool things other people have written or done, and point you to them. Ever since I had to steer my career away from the academic work on military history, I have always been grateful to have the possibility to collect, curate, and assembling things I was no longer able to focus my work on. So if you have anything to share on the topics of the organization and equipment of military forces, I will always be grateful if you share.
Also, ask me about my other collections.
… what exactly is unclear, but the shouting got too much for us. We will be deactivating the Twitter account of the Generalstab, There is not much else to say, it was fun while it lasted, but I refuse to look at the things promoted and shoved in my face on Twitter these days.
So the plan is to move to where the Sky is blueer during this year. I admit I have been lazy posting and engaging online a lot, since other projects took precedence. But I have been busy during the past years, and will actually be able to share some of the results soon, probably on the other long-term project the Ametria site. It will be more oriented towards interaction, scientific study and historic work, and sources will be king. I hope to interest some of you for it, come the time.
I recently found some time to work on putting the U.S. Field Manual Collection on a more solid footing, going through the various FM 21-6 (Index of Training Publications) and other lists to see what manuals are still missing, and seeing if they are available online. All this for a bigger update at the end of this month, when I will add roughly 200 new FMs or variants thereof, and correct some spelling errors.
Sometimes, the search for missing FMs ends at the gates of a mailing list who’s owners remain unresponsive. Sometimes, the reply comes quick, and I get more than I asked for. The webmaster of the Coastal Defense Study Group was so kind as to indulge my request for a couple of FMs and instead handed me their whole repository of documents, for which I am deeply thankful. I do not take donations for this website, but if you want to support the amazing work the CDSG does for the military history of the United States, please head over there and have a look!
An Epic Ending
Ken Newall’s report of his solitaire game playing Scorched Earth had been a persistant source of entertainment for many readers on the Europa mailing list as well as for me. Finally I would the time to upload the last reports from the autumn and winter of 1944, concluding this monumental spectacle, and finishing with an insightful wrap up. The posts will be published over the coming weeks and conclude on February 19th. This should give me enough time to catch up with all the other exiting reporting that happened in the past years on the Europa list. So there will be no want for game reports this year, and I think I will stick to the schedule of having a new post every week for as long as I can make it last.
Hey everyone,
welcome back! I went the easy way of not completely rebuilding, but switching out the vulnerable Plugin against newer ones, updating everything and trying to fix the most glaring security holes. The alternative would have been to import 1000+ pages into a new system, which I dreaded for … three years? And then dropped the idea. For now. At some point, a major migration will have to happen again, but not just now.
So we’re back online, with some game reports and articles still missing their proper side bar navigation, and some odds and ends broken, but in a much better state than the catatonic half-life this site’s had during and after the pandemic. Of course, this means there is now a host of new things to do – links to post, game reports to add, comments to answer, and all that. Going will be slow, but: We’re so back!
Thank you!
Hello everyone,
thank you for your continued interest in my little project, even if I haven’t updated in a while. The Pandemic, while so far having spared family and friends, keeps my busy with school closings and home office, cooking and organizing. So although Ken has faithfully plodded on with his monumental “Scorched Earth” report, I haven’t managed to put any of his postings online yet. All the more new reading to be expected after the summer break!
I already called the anniversary last December, but found the time to go through my old stuff recently. It seems that this domain went online on July 15th, 2000, which means the Generalstab today officially celebrates its 20th birthday! Yay to the Europa-Community, and thank you all again for your continued interest, support, articles, comments and game reports. I cannot possibly name everyone that made this site possible – as I said often enough YOU wrote all those pages, I merely collected them and make them look pretty. So three cheers for Europa, and now back to the dugout, waiting for “Total War”.
P.S: I Hope it is in everyones interest that I won’t illustrate this post with any German soldiers celebrating.
Twenty years since the first iteration of this website went online.
Ten years since “Total War” was supposed to be published.
Currently online: March ’43 in a game that is slowly reaching epic proportions: The “Scorched Earth”-report by Ken Newall. Red the new turn reports here.
Happy New Year, everyone!
After the conclusion of this years staff rides to the battlefields of Bennigton, Fort Henry and Prospect Park, we now return to our regular schedule with news from Ken Newalls Scorched Earth game. Three turn reports in a row means we’re approaching the end of 1942, and the chickens have finally come home to roost for the Axis, with the 11th Army being in grave danger of being encircled around Velikiye Luki by a resurgent Red Army.
After this, we will take a break to recuperate from our excursions and march off some of the excess baggage we collected as a result of the excellent food found in New England.
Bleak Years
After two years and uncountable losses and destruction, neither side can claim victory in the East.
The Axis still flies the swastika from the towers of the Kremlin, and their spearheads repeatedly cut the last rail line to Leningrad in summer. In the South, the Germans repeated last years successes on a smaller scale, repeatedly encircling and crushing large Soviet Armies. 6th Army finally captured Rostov, the gate to the Caucaus, after a swirling, gruesome campaign across the vast plains between Dnjepr and Don that lasted the better part of the year.
However, the Axis failed to reach its declared campaign goal of cutting of Leningrad, Russias second largest city, starving it to death and thus securing its Finish ally. In frozen Karelia, the Finns are fighting a desperate rearguard action, their divisions reduced to regiments, regiments to bataillions, the army ruined along with the burning wrecks of 19th Panzer XX sent to stop the Soviets. During Autumn, the Soviets pried the Panzers from the last open rail line before the German infantry could close up, reestablished supply and secured the continued flow of reinforcements to the cradle of the revolution. Now, its winter, and the Soviets grow stronger: The new tank corps armed with the T-34 rolling of the assembly lines in the Urals that now are back into production managed for the first time to take on a German Panzerkorps head on and force a retreat. The Germans frantically equip their famed Panzer divisions with newer and better tanks, but there are never enough of them around.
The parade to commemorate the October Revolution is a grim specacle this year. In Kubychev, a small crowd is commanded to watch the parade, its listless cheers saluting regiments that will be committed to battle barely two days later. However, the German soldiers guarding Moscow’s Red Sqare can already hear the rumble of tanks and artillery as the First Guards Tank Army advances through the eastern and northern suburbs, poised on liberating the capital.
Despite the exhaustion, neither side seems yet approaching collapse.
Ken Newall takes a look at his truly epic Scorced Earth report after two years of campaining: 1942 Game Commentary
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