Produktbeschreibung
The Intelligence Handbook For January - August 1944
It contains:
Histories of the Western and Eastern fronts.
Welcome comrades. It is the beginning of the end. One way or another the coming events will decide the final outcome of the war. Germany is reeling from its first defeats since the start of the war, but is far from a spent force. The Allies are gathering strength and have learned their lessons well. The fighting will be bitter and the outcome is uncertain.
Festung Europa is our first late-war book. It covers the first eight months of 1944, from January to August, in Italy, France and on the Eastern Front. Personally, I think it is one of our best books to date.
The first thing I'd like to cover is why we have made the late war a separate period from mid war. The answer is two-fold. Firstly, I have a personal dislike of grossly ahistorical matchups. Secondly, and vastly more importantly, it is the only way to keep the game balanced.
The way to understand this is the balance between infantry and armour. In the early days of the war even the lightest tank was a formidable weapon as anti-tank weapons were weak and scarce. As the war progressed, the anti-tank weapons improved as the tanks improved to match them.
Tanks like the Matilda that were unbeatable in 1940 are just slow and under-armed medium tanks, barely able to stop a decent anti-tank weapon, by 1943. By the end of the war, the Matilda (if it was still fighting in Europe) would have been a slow and under-gunned light tank of almost no military value. If we kept the price of the Matilda constant across all periods, then it would be dirt cheap and unbeatable in the early part of the war, but massively overpriced at the end.
Instead we keep the cost of infantry fairly constant, but keep lifting the bar on armour. In the early war a M3 Stuart tank is pretty good, so it is 125 points. Mid war the M4 Sherman tank is pretty good, occupying the same mid-range slot, so it is 120 points. By the late part of the war, the T26E1 Pershing is pretty good, now occupying the same slot as the mid-war M4 Sherman, and costing 125 points. The result of this is a different flavour for each period. The early war has lots of light tanks racing about, barely able to hurt each other. The mid war period has medium tanks, slugging it out in pitched battles. The late war period has powerful heavy tanks making careful, coordinated advances, afraid to step into the open for fear of dying a sudden death.
That then is the flavour of late war - firepower in abundance. Even light tanks mount guns with firepower 3+ and there are plenty of guns that are instant death to all but the toughest heavy tanks.
Bearing that in mind, the biggest change between mid war and late war is simply that tanks and guns get cheaper. You can field a full company of 18 Sherman tanks for around 1250 points. Unfortunately for them, you can also field a company of eight veteran Panther tanks for just 1500 points!
What does this mean for those of you with existing mid war forces? For some infantry forces the answer is "not much".
They get bigger anti-tank guns or a few extra toys, but stay basically the same. For tank forces the answer is that they retire their obsolete equipment and get more of their better equipment, or if they want it a small amount of the latest and greatest just coming off the production lines.
What are these latest and greatest?
- Well for the Germans, it's the new Königstiger and Jagdpanther, with the mid-war heavies getting more reliable and affordable (a 215 point Tiger I E anyone?).
- For the Soviets, it's the new T-34/85, IS-2, ISU-122 and ISU-152. The IS series of heavy tanks and assault guns are awesome. They pretty much guarantee a kill on a Panther at any range!
- For the British it's their Cromwell fast cruiser tank, Churchill VII heavy tank, Crocodile flame-thrower (truly a fearsome beast!), and their 17 pdr-armed Sherman Firefly VC and M10C SP.
- The US players don't get much in the way of big guns, but their speedy new M18 Hellcat brings a new meaning to tank destroyer and massed M4 Sherman tanks are devastating. They do get two new tanks though, the M4A1 (76mm) Sherman appears in a few tank companies along with the M4 (105mm) Sherman assault gun.
These new Sherman tanks have taken advantage of the lessons of the North African fighting and have better designed front armour and protected ammo stowage as well as new guns. Their thicker, one-piece glacis plate gives them an armour rating of 7. Unfortunately the bulk of the Sherman tanks available are still the same old models as the mid war period. Despite the typo in the book (and you wouldn't believe the amount of checking we did only to have this mysteriously appear after proofing!), they still have a front armour rating of 6.
German Forces 1944
~ PanzerKompanie
~ Panzergrenadier-kompanie
~ Gepanzerte Panzergrenadier-kompanie
~ Panzerpoinierkompanie
~ Aufklarungsschwadron
~ Grenadierkompanie
~ Pionierkompanie
~ Waffen-SS
~ Fallschirmjager-kompanie
British Forces 1944
~ Armoured Squadron
~ Armoured Recce Squadron
~ Motor Company
~ Armoured Car Squadron
~ Rifle Company
~ Commando Troop
~ British Empire Troops
US Forces 1944
~ Tank Company
~ Armored Rifle Company
~ Rifle Company
~ Cavalry Recon Troop
~ Ranger Company
Soviet Forces 1944
~ Tankovy Batalon
~ Motostrelkovy Batalon
~ Rota Razvedki
~ Strelkovy Batalon
~ Kazachya Sotnya
~ Soviet Guards |
