German Biased?

[Smersh]

steel panthers is not a german army only game. and it shouldn't be. I think people would perfer more variety than a focus on a single nation, which the polls shows.

[Pyros]

Smersh said:
steel panthers is not a german army only game. and it shouldn't be. I think people would perfer more variety than a focus on a single nation, which the polls shows.

Smersh,

If you can find me 4-5 Russians that are willing to work hard as historical researchers, map designers, scenarios designers and play-testers; then I will be happy to initiate a project concerning a Russian campaign.

So, what do you think?

cheers,
Pyros

[Mobhack]

I second Pyros' post.

We could do with a user campaign from the Soviet POV, as well as maybe a British one. If I remember, I may borrow my dad's copy of "Bugles and a Tiger" and "The Road Past Mandalay (?)" from his John Masters collection. As well as being an author in the post war time, Masters was an officer in the Ghurkas, and commanded a column in the Chindit operations and these 2 books concern his Ghurka service.

But stuff like that is not easy to obtain in English for the USSR in the GPW. Maybe in Russian, there are histories available of batallion/regiment level stuff?.

Cheers
Andy

[Mobhack]

It isn't a "German Only" game.

It is a fact though, that most WW2 type games originating in the USA from the 70's on whether cardboard-shuffling or computer tend to use German-related names. Like Panzerblitz, Cross of Iron, Tigers on the Prowl, Panthers in the Shadows, PanzerBlitz, Blitzkreig, Steel Panthers etc etc.

Here in the UK, we tended to avoid paper hex based games as wargamers, and concentrate on "proper" tabletop games with model soldiers and rules books. US imports were rather expensive (£30 for each module of Squad Leader, when I bought my first Honda 125 for about £370, which if I had bought all the modules, would be about equivalent ISTR !) Commercially available wargames rules here tended to the prosaic, like "Wargames Research Group Rules 1925-50" and about the only "snappy" titles were the late Bruce Rea-Taylor's "Firefly" (WW2) and "Challenger" (modern) from tabletop games, or "Cambrai To Sinai" in the 70s (1914-80s) by London Wargames Club (or was it Reading?). A book of rules cost about £3, enough troops for an army in 1/300 were a fiver, and the local wargames club provided the tables and terrain.

Perhaps from a USA-oriented "marketing" POV the Germanic-centred names in games titles were seen as "sexy" or "kewl" ? - who knows?. This side of the pond, certainly not.

Cheers
Andy

[Panzermeyer]

I will agree with Smersh regarding the fact that the long campaign of random battles is not nearly as interesting as a well designed campaign. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of fun with long campaigns because they can cover much more time and geography than most designed campaigns will. But the random maps and VH placement is very generic, you sometimes feel like you are fighting the same battle over and over except with upgraded units. And any scenario will suffer if unit purchasing and deployment is left up to the AI.

I did not mean to imply that this is a one country game, just that it is natural that a game named after a German tank will favor the Germans.

[Warhero]

Well how about those guys who did Russian Steel campaign into SPWAW sometimes? It was great campaign, very accurately made maps/battles... Maybe Pyros could try to contact them and start to convert that into WinSPWW2?

[Pyros]

Warhero,

Russian Steel campaign is truly an excellent campaign!

But my point of view concerning a Russian WinSPWW2 campaign is that if Smersh manage to assemble a Russian team, then the outcome of the Russian project may be better.

I base this remark on the fact that WinSPWW2 CD version is providing very advanced designing tools that most of the users have not yet discovered (since the CD version is not yet released ).

cheers,
Pyros