Category: News (Page 4 of 12)

Jul II 1939: Murcia garrison reduced by famine

A Spanish End

September 23, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

Ken Newall finally shared the last turns of his epic game report from his For Whom the Bell Tolls game. I can only again thank him for his efforts, the awesome writing and the permission to host this great report here. And Kudos for Ken to actually follow through to the very bitter (at least for the Loyalist side) end.

Also I noticed that I still hadn’t gotten round to fix Robert Williams TDDH-report which, even though its from 2000, still makes a fantastic read. And it makes me sad that Samurai Lightning will never see the light of day. So there it is now, re-upped, Links fixed and all the posts in working order again. There is still some cleanup to do from the great migration, but then there always is.

Scanning Europa, one chart at a time

September 20, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

A big thanks today goes to Stefan Farelly, who sent me scans of the War in the Desert Charts and Counters. Another gap filled on the way to a complete digital presence of Europa on the webs (minus the sensitive copyrighted parts, of course). Thank you, Stefan!

Also, I’ve progressed to No. 52 in the TEM index, and am done with uploading, renaming and tagging the images for Gregory Bartels newest game report – so I should be able to publish this in the next weeks. Aas far as I can tell now, after that there will be a break in available material, so do not expect too many updates ion the future.

Half a move

September 16, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

In preparation to upcoming additions I’ve started moving pages and posts around: Mainly the pages on TEM and all other publications related to Europa are moving into the new library section of the Academy, whereas the Arsenal will be for information on the game exclusively. This was more of an effort than I thought – while those nifty widget-based editors are great for editing, copying content is practically impossible, so I basically had to move and swap pages and then repair permalinks and navigation menues. I also expect to severely loose some google rank because of moving content and other errors. However, screw google rank, its not like I will lose thousands of visitors a day – I dont have those. I am actually quite grateful the temptation to earn money with the site is never there, and so I will never start to think of articles in terms of SEO, maximizing reader engagement or chopping content into bits and pieces to create more page hits.

Anyway, expect some errors while browsing, and if you are missing information on how to play Europa on a Computer or where the ETO, LOC or TEMs are now, look in the library.

Oh, and I have two new link entries! And about 1000 (yes, you read that right!) pictures from a game report in my media library that need to be processed and published. But thats for another day.

Chatter in the Forest

September 5, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

Hi there,

while we are at the current speed of events, let me add another game report by Greg Bartels from 2013/14, an epic-length writeup of a short but eventful Campaign for Norway from Storm over Scandinavia. Gregs level of reporting is unparalelled in its detail, and while it might not be as entertaining as Robert William’s light descriptions, it is surly more enlightening if you want to learn the game in depth.

The Casino feels pretty sleepy these days, maybe since GR/D has absconded themselves from the Europa Group a second platform is not necessary anymore. If nothing happens in the casino, I will shut it down again in a couple of weeks.

Also, we’re now on twitter. Lets see how this works.

One Two Three Four!

August 31, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

Todays Generalstab Archive News:

A new game report, published with the kind permission of its author, Brian O’Donnell. I long hoped he would be able to finish the write up – but even the existing reports of 1937 are much better than my own write-ups, so here you go: FWTBT game report No 5.
A new game report from old times. Watch – or better read on – as your truly manages to see the mighty forces of the Spanish Army defeated by a ragtag rabble of anarchists and socialist militias, led by a complete Europa novice – game report FWTBT No 6. It took me so long to publish it because I truly got put to shame here.
The Europa Magazine-pages are under construction as I have pulled out the old magazines to add the table of contents to each individual magazine page. So far, 10 have been done, so I should be finished somewhen around December.
New Link entries, too – a tribute to Sturmpanzer.com and the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War. Their Write-up of the First one was so abysmal that I think they wanted to make extra sure no-one complained this time. So the resulting work with fifty volumes dwarfs that of some of the major combattants, not only by volume but of course also by the sheer level of detail.

I think I am gonna slow down in the next weeks again.

Byte rot and pixel dust

August 23, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

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!

The Republic in Peril II

August 22, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

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.

¡No pasarán!

August 13, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

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.

The charge of the burning camels

July 20, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

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.

Any man who must say “I am the king” is no true king

July 19, 2017 / chef / 0 Comments

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...