Your definitive favorite ETO wargame

[BanzaiCat]

That'll work.

I missed the other 'Hitler's War' thread you started back in 2012 and found it through here - only because I Googled 'Hitler's War Board Game Map' and came across your excellent redesign.

Can't find a suitable image of 3R though, at least not through Google, and only after a few minutes of searching. I don't want to spend too much time in the office Googling 'Third Reich' or 'Hitler's War.' :)

[GJK]

....
I am curious about Unconditional Surrender as I've read some great reviews for it.  I'll have to investigate it once I've played around with TSC a few times.

There's a free print n play version of Unconditional Surrender on BGG  that is just Case Blue. Shows the combat system really well.

Perfect...a boardgame demo...love it....thanks!

[Grimnirsson]

Totaler Krieg (both Totaler Krieg and Axis Empires: Totaler Krieg, the latter being a refined and expanded version of the former, but the core game engine is the same) - clever mechanisms, abstractions for naval and air that work really well to have the focus on the good ol' panzer pusher we all so love, politics and reinforcements/building forces nicely done via cards (that allow both a strictly historical gameplay narrative and what if scenarios), manageable counter density with still enough units to portray ETO with all the details we want, great 3 player game  :)

[GJK]

I have read a number of good things about TK!  I have the original Krieg! (unplayed) but I understand that it's quite sub-par, especially when compared to TK!  That would be something to look at if I can find a good deal on a copy.

[GJK]

Sorry for the delay, but here's the dropbox link to what I'm working on for an "enhanced" Hitler's War.  The VASSAL module is incomplete (has the original Army-Group level counters) but it does have the new map that I created which is basically the Third Reich map modified to work with HW.  I've added rivers in case I want to add some rules for those.

There's a folder called "counters" where I have the artwork for the new counters.  It's not corps level that I was aiming for but army (not group) level.  I think that might work as there was just so many corps for Germany, America and the Soviets.  These pieces need to be added to the module.

Let me know your thoughts-

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cl0uchpilz0pk6o/AABnPQ-s0idpIZ09nvTx_LOma?dl=0

[BanzaiCat]

I'm not all that familiar with VASSAL - so as I do not see a map graphic in your Dropbox folder, I'm assuming I can only view it through VASSAL and not as a separate image?

The counters look good, though the swastikas won't fly overseas of course. My preference is to keep it historical. I'd suggest changing some of the German counters - make the black background counters SS armies and dark gray ones regular Wehrmacht armies. Maybe that just adds a level of complexity the game does not need (I'd think SS armies would have better combat ability than normal Wehrmacht armies).

Army-level counters, now that I think of it, look like they'd work really well given the scale. Tell me how I can view the map and I'll let you know my thoughts on that for sure.

[Staggerwing]

Try to unzip the VASSAL file with a zip utility and see if the graphics appear in the folder(s) inside. IIRC, a VASSAL mod is much like a zip file that the game temporarily unzips for you when you play that mod. If it doesn't work change the extension to .zip.

If that doesn't work then I'm out of ideas...  :-\

[BanzaiCat]

Thanks, Stagger. Didn't work though. I opened VASSAL on my PC (I've had it for a long time but I've never played it), and it's giving me errors. I downloaded all the files and tried each of them but it keeps telling me...

Bad Data in Module: Global Control Marker (Basic Piece) - Map not found mapid=Main Map
Bad Data in Module: Could not find map Main Map

...so I'm assuming said map is missing somehow?

[Barthheart]

B_C
1. Take the .vmod file and change the extension to .zip.
2. Extract everything in the .zip to an empty folder.
3. There should now be a folder called "images". In there will all the graphics in the module.

[BanzaiCat]

Thanks, Barth. That works.

Gary, I really like the map. Looks like it's twice the size of the normal HW map? I'm counting 17 hexes for the Soviet Union fronting on their western border, whereas in HW it's only 8 hexes I think. Army units on this scale should work great.

[GJK]

You probably need the latest version of VASSAL B_C but I'm glad that you were able to extract the map/images.  Yes, it is exactly twice the scale.  I discovered that when I first started to explore doing this; I found that the HW map was made at exactly half the size of the map used in Third Reich.  So I simply traced the outline of the Third Reich map (which looks much more like "Europe" than HW, even though not perfect) and then made it Hitler's War-like for use with an upscaled version of the game. 

Yes, I think Army level units would work great here and a playtest to experiment with the total values that each army can hold would be beneficial.  Do we keep them at 10pts per type each or limit it to 5 due to the downscaling?  I think that if we basically double everything from HW (in effect halving the values for unit containers) would just work.  Hopefully.

[GJK]

Here's a way zoomed out view of the map for those that want to see it but don't want to go through the trouble:

[BanzaiCat]

I think downscaling is appropriate, but maybe set the limit to 7 or 8. Or go a step further and limit the size depending on nationality and the time period to reflect better units. So, say the Germans would have a cap of 8 or 9 in 1941, and the Soviets a 6 or so. I dunno.

Might be beneficial to playtest it from the HW perspective and stick with 10 to see, but I'm thinking that'll be too much.

What did you use to create the maps? Looks like a vector done in Illustrator.

[GJK]

Nope, it's all raster in Photoshop but it prints out nicely crisp.

I like your idea on coloring the Germans their usual gray and black for SS.  What's neat about HW is you can build your armies however you choose (and can afford) - so if you want the SS to be stronger units to be more historically accurate, then you simply just do that.  I don't think that there needs to be a rule making them so.

As far as restricting the strength of the units (below the 10 per category as is in the RAW now), HW does that already by setting a base income level for each nation based on what it is they could produce (whether that is at all accurate or just made to fit the game I don't know).  By the way, I did double the amount of production centers for each country on the map so as it is now, there's the potential for double the builds allowable so there could potentially be twice the number of armies on the map but with only up to double the points available that came with the original game to spread around.  So I think that we could keep it at "10" per category per army.  The reason being is that with a larger map you're going to want more armies to fill the gaps and with that limit on production points available, you're not going to have 20 "all 1o str" armies running around.

[BanzaiCat]

Ah yes, I'd forgotten some things about HW. I too really liked how it modeled being able to fill an army group with whatever you wanted.

You're probably right - keeping it simple keeps it more in line with the original HW, so avoid doing force multipliers for combat or different unit capacities.

Photoshop? Nice work. As you say, very crisp. I have P: CC on my work laptop and love doing large-scale images like this. :)