Big CWC game progress report

Hi! I thought it would be useful to put together a summary of progress towards putting on a big Cold War Commander game in Sheffield in the Spring of 2011.

Players

Over a dozen people have now expressed an interest to some level or other. It would be helpful if they could all join the Yahoogroup as this is likely to be the main means of communication at least for now.

Forces

I’m of the view that this isn’t a problem. There’s at least one potential player who could probably provide all the forces we need from his own resources. Now, I’m sure some players, like me, would want to use this game as an excuse to recruit a shiny new force of Danish reservists or whatever and I’m sure this can be done in the time available as soon as we have a scenario planned.

TOEs

Ian Shaw has done some excellent working on putting together period-specific CWC-based organisations for the Northern Front (Scandinavia and Finland) and for Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) on the Central Front. These are in the Files area of the ColdWarCommander yahoogroup. Given the levels of attrition during an intense round of combat operations you don’t have to follow these exactly but they are a good starting point.

Setting/Scenario

I’ve heard no dissenting voices to the idea that we base the setting of our game on Hackett’s books. I’m assuming then that we are all happy with the August 1986 time frame and Hackett’s broad narrative thrust.

We have had a suggestion that we should game the operations on the Northern Front. My guess is that this would produce some interesting games that are a bit different to the usual Central Front armoured clashes. My only concern would be that if we go with this setting we might bring back in the question of whether we have enough available models.

I’ve tried to accommodate both this suggestion and the Central Front setting in the six scenario settings I outlined at the Land of Counterpane. I’ll copy these into the yahoogroup Files area. So far, we’ve had only one potential player express a preference. If you think adopting a broad scenario now is the way forward, please have a look at these options and let me know which you’d prefer.

If,on the other hand, you’d prefer some other approach, let us know. We need a range of options before we can choose one!

Venue

Construction of the hall is underway and continuing despite the bad weather. I’ve spoken to the Headmaster (the building will double as Village Hall and school hall for the local primary school) and flagged up that we’ll want to book the hall for a weekend as soon as the arrangements are in place to do so.

So thanks all who have expressed an interest. Now let’s make some progress on deciding what we’re going to do, eh?

Richard