Sunday, October 25, 2020

1958 Cold War Campaign Progress

Despite my day job's attempts to relieve me of  all of my free time, this week I managed to make tremendous progress on the strategic side of my Cold War campaign.  I managed to work out unit values for most 1958 units based on the system presented in the old GDW The Third World War (TTWW) game, which will function as the framework for my campaign.  In the process, I worked the stats out for all four periods in which I hope to game the Cold War, so the later games will come with a little less preparation.

Next week I hope to create the counters for the game, and fill in some of the gaps that I am aware of.  I still haven't decided if I am going to keep the traditional military unit symbols on the counters, or switch over to vehicle silhouettes on the counters.  I'm thinking that the vehicle silhouettes will keep my mind more in line with the period,i.e., thinking M47 and M48 during play, rather than M60A3 and M1.

The current plan is to start the campaign on the TTWW map, selecting interesting battles to play in miniature, while playing out other less interesting or repetitive battles with the counters on the boardgame map.  

I plan to use old 1950s vintage US Army maps of Germany to layout the tactical situations to set up on my table.  This will involve plotting tactical movement of the units represented on the TTWW map on the US Army maps, and then playing out the miniature battles generated on the Army maps.

I'll need to develop a system of translating combat losses to units on the big map, to actual equipment losses to units on the small map.  I have some ideas, but need to get farther along on this, before working out the details.

Now I'm off to the basement to actually work on some miniatures.  After trying to clean up my game table, my painting table is over-flowing again.


6 comments:

  1. This project is going to be great, I'm really looking forward to it. I agree about the silhouettes for the counters they will help to get away from the '80s theme. It is all going to be a lot of work but the more you put in the more you get out.
    Regards,
    Paul.

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    1. I'm pretty excited. I enjoy the work, just wish I had more time to focus on it.

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  2. Neat idea (I was born Jan 11 1958 so this has some personal relevance. Speaking as a retired US army artilleryman, don't forget Atomic Annie! Of course the Soviets knew exactly where that beast was at all times!

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    1. Masters of Military has the M65 available on Shapeways. I don't have any yet, but may pick up a couple if anything interesting happened with them in the game, and may pick one up just to have it. It is a very nice model.

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  3. This sounds like a fascinating project. Just by chance the other day, Space Rumsfeld's Twitter account was talking about this MMP game which allows you to fight for West Germany in several different periods, from 1945 - 1989. Very tempting. Your use of US period maps sounds fascinating. Looking forward to seeing this come to your gaming table.

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    1. That sounds very interesting, gonna have to chase it down.

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