My plate is a little full right now. It seems that Thanksgiving has already come. In the next week I will publish a review of Flying Pig Games '65'. If you like to game the Vietnam war, pick it up. You won't be sorry.

 Minden games has sent me 'NavTac: Coronel and Falklands' to review for those of you who are into WWI naval games.

 I also received a huge care package from Worthington games. It was comprised of these games:

Holdfast: Eastfront
Grant's Gamble
Pemberton and Grant
Hold The Line: The American Revolution
Hold The Line: The French and Indian War

  Upcoming games will be:

 Flying Pigs Old School Tactical Volume II

 Lock and Load's 'A Wing and A Prayer' will also be landing.

 Turning Point Simulations has also agreed to let us start reviewing their games.

Dubno 1941

The Greatest Tank Battle of The Second World war

by

Aleksei Isaev

translated by Kevin Bridge

 Here we are again at Kursk in 1943: 'The Greatest Tank Battle'. Wait a minute, the name of the book is 'Dubno 1941, The Greatest Tank Battle of The Second World War'. Could we have been mistaken all along?

 Turns out, yes we were. In 1941, 800 tanks of the German Army Group South, and 3,000 tanks of the Soviet Red Army Kiev Special Military District collided into each other. The Germans were trying to get some running room to break out into southern Russia, while the Russians desperately tried to stop the German flood.

 The author and translator have done a fantastic job of bringing these little known battles to light. Many times the fighting in central Russia takes a front seat to the other two fronts in 1941. The Soviet forces were untried and faced German troops who had almost two years of war behind them.

 The Soviets forces were also hamstrung by two other factors. One, the paranoid psychopath Stalin had gutted the Red Army's officer corps in the purges of the preceding years. Two, the Red Army, which was actually technically ahead of the rest of the world in 1938 with their armored formations, had actually broken them up and changed direction after the Spanish Civil war. Due to the German armored victories in 1940, the Soviets were in the process of switching back to their pre-1938 ideas. So the Red Army was already fighting on its back foot and with one hand tied behind its back.

 The author's premise is that the Germans were able to deal fairly easily with the Soviet armor because the German armored (Panzer divisions) were combined arms units, and not just tank heavy units like the Soviets.

 The Germans had to deal with not only much larger numbers of men and machines. The newest Soviet tanks (T-34, KV-1) were technologically much more advanced than the German ones in armor and armament. The Germans were lucky that most of the Soviets' newest tanks had just been assigned to their units, so the crews were unfamiliar with them. This, along with the fact that all German tanks had radios and almost none of the Soviet tanks did, allowed the Germans to deal with the changing situations of battle. The Soviets, on the other hand, made battle plans before contact and then stuck with them come what may. A lot of people are not familiar with the adverse effects Stalin had on the first six months of the war. Stalin was just as foolish as Hitler with a rash of 'stand and die' orders early in the war. However, and a bit unbelievably, Stalin learned to trust his generals' judgment. We know how that worked on the German side.

 The author shows us that the southern part of the Soviet Army was the strongest and most able on June 22nd 1941. The author believes that the Soviet self sacrifice in these early battles enabled the Soviets to win the war. The author also makes a good argument that the frontier battles of 1941 were the swan song of the German infantry. He believes they were bled white, and that their capabilities just continued to grow worse as the war progressed. In the author's 'conclusion', he shows not only the Soviet mistakes, but also the German ones.

 The book also list some faults of the T-34 that I have not seen written up before. The T-34's clutch plates had a tendency to warp. Repairs on the main clutch plates rarely worked and the entire assembly needed to be replaced. The transmission itself was under undue stress having only three forward and one reverse gear. The German Panzer III had ten forward gears. The following is from a report of the commander of the 10th Tank division:

"A) The armor on the engine and on the tank body could be penetrated from a distance of 300-400m with a 37mm armor piercing shell. The vertical plates on the sides could be penetrated by a 20mm armor piercing shell. When cresting a ditch the tank digs in due to it being low set. Contact with the ground is insufficient owning to the relative smoothness of the tracks.

B) The driver's forward hatch caves in after a direct hit from a shell.

C) The tracks are weak and any shell would be able to break them."

 This book is filled with pictures from the battle, and also has a good number of maps to help the reader visualize the different actions. It is another superb Helion & Company volume to add to your collection.

Robert

Book:  Dubno 1941

Author: Aleksei Isaev

Translator: Kevin Bridge

Publisher: Helion & Company

Distributor: Casemate Publishers

Ogre is a turn-based game of strategy which has been around in tabletop form for 40 years. It was first released in 1977 and has been updated with numerous editions since then. I've only been a boardgame fan for a couple of years now, so I didn't know much about Ogre going in to this review. I did take the time to check out the various tabletop versions, so that I would have an understanding of where this game was coming from.  From what I've gathered, this is a very faithful rendition of the classic Ogre boardgame, which is great for fans. At the same time, Ogre suffers a bit from the double edged sword which is strict boardgame-to-PC adaptations. However, any game which remains popular over the span of four decades has certainly got something going for it, regardless of how you are playing it.

Ogre succeeds unequivocally in one aspect, which is the presentation of playing a boardgame in a digital medium. The visuals are simple and clean, while giving the distinct feeling that you are looking at a hex-map covered in models, all set up nicely on a table. The game runs buttery smooth, which isn't surprising given the level of detail, but does make the presentation all the better. You want to feel like you are looking over a boardgame table, and smooth camera movement is key to that. While the units only have limited animations, they are adequate for the job, accompanied by equally simple explosions and other effects. The sound effects were rather less impressive, with most being extremely repetitive. On the other hand, I found the music to be surprisingly good for this kind of game. It's not Command & Conquer, but there are some decent techno/rock type of tracks to give the game some ambiance while you play.

Ogre, according to the lore, depicts a futuristic world where humanity does battle with each other using tactical nukes as the standard weaponry. This is because armor has advanced so rapidly that nothing else can make a dent. Even the armored soldiers are closer to nuke launching tanks than infantry, Starship Troopers style (the book, not movie). Deciding that wasn't enough death and destruction, the humans of this world invented the Ogre, an armored machine bristling with enough weapons to destroy a city or three, and piloted by an AI. As you might guess, the story of the game involves that AI going all Skynet and attempting to wipe out humans for good.

While the game features a variety of armored units for the human forces, like light/heavy/super heavy tanks, long range artillery, fast GEV's, and infantry, the Ogres completely dominate the battlefield and shape the gameplay. An Ogre can only be disabled by knocking out their dozens of tracks and each individual weapon, rather than being destroyed outright. The Ogre comes in a series of models, from I to VI, with the relatively small Model I Ogres requiring a dozen units or so to defeat, and the big bad versions able to take on entire armies alone. This creates a stark strategic difference between the Ogre and everything else on the battlefield: most of the other units can only fire once per turn, but their sheer numbers give them flexibility of movement, while the Ogre is often alone, but able to engage many targets at once.

Combat follows a set series of phases, where the player gets a chance to move and attack, and then the other side goes. Maneuvering around the Ogres, such that your units can get close enough to attack, while maximizing their chances of surviving the opponent's turn, is at the center of the game's strategy. The game seems extremely simple at first glance, but there is much more subtlety to the tactics than may first appear. I actually had to research some common strategies just to get through the first mission, but once I had a better understanding of the mechanics, a mission which seemed impossible became far easier. That isn't to say that the game throws you in blindly. There is a solid tutorial to start things off, where you learn about moving and attacking and so on. However, after that the ten mission campaign drops you straight into the deep end of the pool. If you are like me, several attempts will be needed for each mission before a winning strategy emerges. In particular, I enjoyed stacking my forces with the quick GEV's, since they get to move again after firing. This lets them zip in, take a shot at an Ogre, then flee out of range of its wrath. 

The UI for handling all of this moving and attacking is mixed bag. On the one hand, it is perfectly functional and clear about what you are doing. Click to select a unit, click a highlighted space to move, click to select a target, select the units you are using for the attack, click "Fire" to attack, and so on. The problem is that you are very often moving around quite a few units, and each one requires this slightly too lengthy series of clicks to function each turn. The movement animations are also a touch too slow, and you can't do anything else while they play. This makes moving a stack of five tanks from one space to another a real chore. If you were playing the tabletop game, you could just pick up a whole pile of units and, assuming they are all the same type, move them to another space in the blink of an eye. In the PC game, this could take a good thirty or forty-five seconds of clicking. The developers have been steadily sending out patches to address feedback, and I hope they will add in some means of speeding up this area of the game. 

The combat, while for the most part compelling, had some stumbles for me as well. There is a lot of good strategy here. How you position your units, what priorities you set for targets, and the composition of your force all matter a great deal. More than once I lost a mission and felt frustrated, but then immediately jumped back in with the thought "Well, what if I did it this way instead?" From what I've learned on my own, and gleaned from reading online, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy here. The simple question of "How does one kill an Ogre?" has all sorts of answers. With that said, the boardgame origins of the combat mechanics don't always feel right in video game form. Rolling the dice always introduces luck into a game like this, and you will see a lot of dice rolled in Ogre. Part of the strategy is balancing the odds. Do you go all in on one sure-thing attack, or do you make several lesser attacks, with the chance of destroying multiple targets? One aspect of the combat which drove me crazy though, was taking out the treads on an Ogre. Unlike the weapons on an Ogre, the treads are targeted by each unit individually, with a rather low chance to hit, and there are a LOT of them to destroy. Sometimes this boils down to watching fifteen units pew-pew at a weaponless Ogre for multiple turns in a row, slowly grinding away the treads until you win or run out of time, with no skill involved whatsoever. I'm sure a long time fan of the game could jump in here and tell me that I'm approaching it incorrectly, and they might be right!

If you want to flip things around and take command of the Ogre yourself, that is certainly possible. Besides the campaign, the game features skirmish maps which include several different generic scenarios. Some are balanced, while others involve lopsided forces, like a human army and a small Ogre defending against an extra dangerous class V Ogre.  While the AI is decent enough, and will give you fits in the tricky campaign, there is of course the option of online play against a human opponent, the sort of match that Ogre was originally designed for. I didn't get to experience this myself while playing the game for review, but it seems to be functioning based on reports from other players.

It feels almost wrong to render any kind of verdict on a game that is been enjoyed by thousands of players longer than I have been alive, especially after only spending a week or so with it, but here we are. Ogre will most certainly please fans of the tabletop game. Everything is here, presented in a very clean and functional digital wrapping. There's online play for beating up your distant friends, and a couple of modes for solo play that will keep you busy for many hours. For players coming into it strictly as a PC game, it may feel constrained in some ways. The luck of the dice which can turn the best laid plan on its head, and the at times clunky UI could drag down your experience. Despite those criticisms, there is a very solid core of strategy gaming to be found here. New tactical layers reveal themselves as you get familiar with the mechanics, and usually reward your improved approach with much better results. I think any fan of turn-based strategy gaming will find something here to sink their teeth into.

Developer: Auroch Digital
Website: http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/products/ogrevideogame/


- Joe Beard

Twenty years ago I read the seminal work on Nazi Germany: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. I am glad I can now cross Rising Sun by John Toland off of my book-bucket list. Rising Sun is every bit as authoritative and detailed as Shirer's work and I consider it the Pacific companion to Shirer's earlier work. In fact, I think that the lineage between the two books is quite clear and I am almost certain that John Toland was inspired by William Shirer's book.

The Pacific Theatre holds a particular fascination for me. Despite the number of books and documentaries I have read and viewed, I found Toland's book to be the most well-explained and detailed analysis of the pre-war period I have experienced to-date. I must admit to struggling with the sheer volume of names and political shenanigans but in all, I learnt more from this one book than I did from nearly all of the others I have read combined.

Iwo Jima: D-Day

To the typical European* audience, the Normandy Landings of June 1944 are rightly reserved for our greatest remembrance of bravery and sacrifice. The European D-Day claimed approximately 4,000 casualties. In contrast, the Pacific Theatre records 126 separate D-Days, none at the scale of Normandy, but all told causing American losses of over 50,000 troops. The sheer lunacy and bravery, in equal measure, shown by those amphibious troops beggars belief of the modern-day observer. I know I'm definitely not made of the same stuff.

In reading this book I feel I have attended The University of the Pacific Theatre, although I would probably graduate with a measly third or two-two at best. I feel wholly unqualified to review this Pulitzer-winning magnum-opus. The sheer quantity of information, especially Japanese names, left me stumped on a few occasions ("Who was he again?") but I got more comfortable with it and was fairly fluent in my Togo's and my Tojo's (very different people) by the 600th page, or 2/3rds of the way through this half-a-tree book.

Marines on Tarawa

I was continually amazed at the sheer volume of research that must have gone into this book. Incongruously, there were several jarring sentences regarding soldier's genitalia which, aside from feeling out of place (it happened on several occasions), made me wonder 'how on Earth did he find that out?'.

In most books about the Pacific Theatre, the behaviour of Japanese soldiers is often held up as barbaric and our Allied 'heroes' are paragons of virtue. As Winston Churchill himself wrote, 'History is written by the victors' and this book does an excellent job of not just recalling those well-known crimes, but explaining and humanising them without excusing them. It also counterbalances that with some appalling accounts of actions of US forces which are not often mentioned in accounts of the Pacific Theatre.

Bataan Death March

I found the book to be very well balanced, some may find it has gone too far and is more sympathetic to the Japanese forces than they deserve credit; it came as no surprise to find out that the Author has a Japanese wife. Still, for me, it was fair and it introduced the concept to me that the war in the Pacific Theatre was long precipitated by the colonisation and subjugation of South Asian and East Asian countries by Allied powers. It certainly did come across that the inexorable decline into war, opposed (mostly) on both sides, was almost inevitable. 

During the war, many Asian nations, sought self-rule and viewed Tojo (the Japanese Prime Minister) as a figurehead of Asian power and a model of how to fight against their 'masters'. There did appear to be several senior Japanese politicians and military men so averse to give Hirohito, the Emperor, any bad news that the war continued in vain. Toland makes it quite clear that the Emperor attempted many times to extricate his country from a War Japan knew it couldn't win even before it started.

Hirohito

The author covers everything about the war in the Pacific in great detail, from before the beginning (it wasn't Pearl Harbour...!) to the very definition of the bitter end and it was enlightening the entire way through. Rising Sun, first published in 1970 has several disturbing parallels today which we, as the western world, need to re-learn from our own history. The author made me question whether my own prejudices, as fair as I think they are, are justified.

Apologies for getting all philosophical, but this is a weighty book, dealing with a heavy subject, not just that of war but also of national and personal identity. It shows how simple mistakes and misunderstandings can cause events to wheel out of control very easily, given the right heady-brew of personalities... 

I can recommend this book it to everyone, unfortunately, it's only going to appeal to a very small niche of society, although it has probably found a much wider audience in American and Japanese markets - I'm glad I've been in that audience. 

広島平和記念碑 - Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Thanks to Pen & Sword Publishing for providing this review copy. It's available on their website for £19.99

*I'm including Great Britain and Northern Ireland in that statement still...