Single Malt Strategy: Episode 80 | Wargaming the Eastern Front | Ft. Wolfpack345 and Charcoal Cheetah - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello everybody, it's the Historical Gameronce again. You can call me Matt,
and welcome to episode number eighty ofthe Single Malt Strategy Podcast. We've
got a bit of a bigger crewtoday. We're going with four people.
First off, I've got my Idon't know if I want to call him
my trustee co host anymore, buthe's certainly my co host, Tortuga Power.

(00:21):
Oh, this discord has really goneto hell. I just slowly hate
the video game industry more. Whatabout regulation? I feel like maybe this
is the place where regulation could actuallystep in. I feel like this is
one of those Star Trek episodes whereyou meet your clone or something. It
was me talking, but it wasn'tmy mouth moving, you know. Just

(00:43):
the Greatest Hits compilation for episode numbereighty. I will say I was quite
confused, and I was worried therewas an issue on my end because I
did not I did not see Tortigalighting up on the chat. Well,
we have not introduced you yet,sir. Excuse me, you have to
wait in the queue. Don't worry. We've got We've got hit pieces on

(01:03):
everybody, wolf Pack. It makesme feel like a real pilot. I'm
gonna get crucified by slaps kind ofhard though, hellfires of the school had
to do it. Man, I'mjust a big disappointment. Oh my gosh,
where'd you get all this? Ohmy goodness, I believe you got

(01:26):
all that? What is that?Is that from? That's from Shreams,
isn't it? Yeah? I meanthere was there was a bit of infor
stuff from from multiple things. Wasthat for the the you know, application
to be I'm an officer in mydiscord? I don't honestly know. I
just know you sent me a clipof some embarrassing things that wolf Pack had
sent and I pulled some of it. Oh that was from the Aisle two

(01:46):
stuff. Then and then we've alsogot our fourth person on today's episode.
Uh do we call you finish?Do we call you a charcoal? Do
we call you cheetah? I don'tknow, but welcome back, finishakor who
were these ladies? Hello? Ithink I need to buy a R Lane
artbook. I've been banned from allof us Amtrak train services. Kind of
garbage? Is that? Hello?Hello? You can call me finished Jagger,

(02:14):
you can call me charcoal, cheetahor if you've been like wolf recently.
You can call me finished Jaguar.Oh yeah, not just not just
wolf Pack. Don't worry, Idid myself too. You can ask Tortuga.
But if you do ask him,just know that he is in fact
a communist and a trader and hehates America and so his opinions don't matter.

(02:35):
Okay, hold up, that's noteven that's not that's not even self
incriminating. Yeah, you got yourselfeasy. I love the fact that you
have dirt on all of us andthen you just rose Tortugas and your sound
bit. That's a bush. Thisis the last time I am on this
podcast. No, I mean,honestly, I don't record myself with a

(02:55):
lot of incriminating stuff. And ohyeah sure without giving it, without giving
it all away, I couldn't reallyask you guys for stuff. Yeah,
well, you know, I'm sorry. I don't record my friends, you
know, behind their backs. Well, let's just say that if I had
help with what I was doing,at least I had, I had an
editor, and I ran things byfinish before I before I put this all

(03:20):
together. Yeah, that is factual. But I think that you know,
podcast should be over. Wolf Tortugaand I were gonna go play some video
games together. Oh what's new?But anyway, it's good to have the
four of you, I guess threeof you not including myself back on single
malt strategy once again. We've gota big topic to discuss today and that

(03:42):
is going to be Eastern Front wargames. But maybe a little bit more
we might we might delve into thesimulation area as well. We've got a
residence sim expert wolf Pack here today. Wait, wait, what what not?
Me? What the hell? Imean? Look at before wolf Pack
made it big. I just wantto let you know that my Silent Hunter
three series was probably still inferior tohis earlier content, but it was out

(04:06):
there, so Simulation Expert maybe not, but I remember that series. You
went, You're right at scalp ofFlow and the series ended. It was
a good one, man. Imean, once you've climbed Mount Everest,
what more is there to do?Hey, I think we can all agree
that it wasn't the worst Silent Huntercontent on YouTube. Anyway, Moving on,

(04:28):
what's everyone's opinion of the Barbie movie? I have not seen it,
but I am going to a Barbiethemed party in a couple of weeks.
You know what, I'll say it. I thought it was fine. Thank
you. Wow, you really putyourself on a limb there. Well man,
Geez, really brave guy for sayingthat. Geez put everything I risk

(04:48):
with that opinion side certainly better thanthis podcast so far. Oh absolutely.
You know, if you're listening tothis, stop, Hey, what are
you doing listening to those dribble?Go? Go buy a ticket to the
Mary Barbie movie. So I've beenplaying suzerin a bit lately, which is
a strategy role playing visual novel game. Too much visual novel for my taste,

(05:12):
too much visual novel for your taste. Yeah, okay, I mean
it's definitely story driven, but yeah, I enjoy it. It's a political
sort of narrative game where you're thepresident of a country that's undergoing a lot
of crap. It's got similarities,i'd say, to Turkey, but also
a bunch of other countries in thenineteen fifties, And it's in a fictional
world, in a fictional universe,in a fictional cold war. But I

(05:35):
enjoy quite a bit, I haveto say. I mean not to just
step on the game and then moveon. It looks like a very good
game. In a lot of ways. I like the graphics, the art
style looks good, all that,just even watching you play. If they
took out that constant intrusion I calledintrusion, for a lot of people might
be welcome of those like little shortstories, choose your own adventure decisions.

(05:56):
I think it would be a littlemore compelling for me. Yeah, I
mean it's definitely a lot of reading. There's not a lot of like you're
not like playing with sliders or otherthings like that, right, Like everything
is sort of presented to you ina textbox and then you kind of make
decisions through there. That's why Iuse the term more of like a role
playing. It's almost you know,it's almost like if you just had the
cut scenes and something like well,it's nothing like Skyrim, but you know

(06:16):
those kind of games where like yourun into people and then you get cut
scenes that come up and you haveto make decisions and make whatnot based on
like conversations you're having. It's basicallyjust that it's it's like a movie where
everyone's just talking in a room andthere's no there's no real like gunfire or
action or whatnot. There's not aton of interaction for the player. But
the atmosphere is incredibly well done.I think the narrative is very compelling.

(06:39):
And there's not a lot of politicalgames out there these days, I don't
think if they've ever been, Andit's kind of an interesting change of pace.
You don't get what you're saying.There's not a lot of political games.
What do you mean by that?So let me step back. There
are a lot of games where you'relike a god mode leader, where you
know everything and you just play withsliders and and you kind of control everything

(07:01):
in a not very realistic or compellingway. There's not a lot of games
that actually delve into interactions with otherindividuals, other people in your parliament,
in a realistic sort of a way. Boy, this is a perfect segue
to a game I'm and talk aboutlater interactions with other people. Yeah,
I mean, I know what you'retalking about. Crusader games. No,

(07:21):
Yeah, that's my top One ofmy top Eastern Front games is Crusader Kings.
Yeah. I love playing as Keevanand Ruth. I like to play
as Georgia. That's on the EasternFront. I didn't realize the game Towards
or THHD was talking about. Wasan Eastern Front game too, suserin,
No, that's just what I've beenplaying lately. Good point. Good point.
I could have been talking about inmy recently played now this is for

(07:42):
the Eastern Front. But anyway,moving on, what about what about our
illustrious guest, Wolfpack. What haveyou been playing lately? Lately? I
as in the past couple of days, I've been I've been playing a lot
of boulders Gate three, famous EasternFront game. Yeah, the very a
lot of strategy involved, currently playingas the Soviets. But no, yeah,

(08:05):
the game's really fun. I've beenenjoying it quite a bit. I've
been streaming it. You can catchme on wolf Fact three, four or
five live. Whoa, whoa,whoa. The plugs come at the end
of the podcast. I'm not surewe ever even really introduced anyone at the
start of the podcast. But yeah, I've been playing boulders Gate three and
having a lot of fun with it. I'm probably going to go play it

(08:28):
once we're done with this. Ialso saw you playing in different game which
is an Eastern Front game, whichmight come up later. Oh yeah,
Gates of Hell Offs Front. I'vebeen playing quite a bit of that with
Finnish Jaguar. Here, what aboutyou, twar two get what have you
been up to? Oh man?Several things. I had played this ant
colony simulator game called Empires of theUndergrowth. It's pretty fun. I think
that it's got like a good fiveto ten hours it can give you that

(08:52):
are pretty thoroughly entertaining. It's gotalmost kind of like a tower defense plus
colony. Man. It's you know, it reminds me a little bit of
what's the Evil Genius and the dungeonKeeper. It's almost like Dungeon Keeper in
a way where you're building up yourbase. The way you mine out the
Jason tiles is how you connect withenemies and all that. It was pretty

(09:13):
fun. Played a little bit ofAdvanced Tactics Gold and I was I think
I'm finally done with the Long Dark, but that's been an I just wanted
to play through some of the scenarioswith that. I should actually mention with
these games are Advanced Tactics Gold isone of those old at this point X
base war games. It's a purelya custom map generator engine and then allows

(09:37):
you to play and the custom mapthat you've generated so there's no like without
mods or downloading other people's scenarios,there's no like historical content. You're just
playing as like fictitional randomly generated scenarios. But it's it's really fun, really
good game. And let's see thelast one, Icarus. Been playing with
Finnish Yager Icarus, which is anotherspival game. Basically, I moved from

(09:58):
The Long Dark over to Chorus andwe're doing we're doing a mission in that
one, trying to build a seventhstory. I don't know what is it.
What are we doing there? Observationtower of some kind? Observation tower.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Ilearned about that in Sunday School.
They called it the Tower of Babel. Oh but what is that? Why

(10:20):
is an airhorn? Oh my god, I think you need you need to
step that up. That that's nota very right here. I got a
better one. I wanted to findthe cricket one. Sorry, sorry,
Tortuga. You're you're playing Chorus andyou're building a giant tower. I have
also been playing. I mean,this is game number five, I know,
but I play a lot of differentthings for just I mean, you're
a gamer, I am man,I'm a true gamer. Yeah, everybody

(10:43):
else lives like one game. Tortuga'slike, up, let me get my
almanac out. Look, it's beena long time. So this only goes
to show you that it has beena long time since we last played,
because I mean last did a podcastsince I actually keep track of the games
that I've been playing since the lastpodcast. And I've also been playing Balloons
TD six And that's what I thoughtabout when you were talking about the ant

(11:07):
game. Oh yeah, do youhave you played Bloons? Oh yeah,
it's like so childish but just awesome. In fact, the reason I play
that is because something I can actuallyplay with my kids. I didn't think
like showing them Icarus and you know, stabbing a wolf to death. They're
just, you know, being liketwo and four years old, they're probably
a little bit young for that.I don't know when you start exposing kids
to stabbing wolves to death, don'tyou know? As someone was zero kids

(11:30):
of my own, and I'd sayabout now, yeah, okay, good,
Probably it was already too late.I should have exposed them earlier,
show them the game, and thenshow them the movie The Revenant. Well
that's all I mean, I've onlygot those five games. That's all I
can remember for this time. Solet's move along to the topic or unless
wait, we haven't. We haven'tasked finished, but he's been playing my
God the just a forgotten individual year. Hey, now you know how it

(11:52):
feels? Right, it's like we'regonna have a YouTube channel. We don't,
we don't care about you. Iforgot finished was on this What have
you been playing? Finish, Illustriousand U and welcome guests who is an
important and included member of our community. Thank you, thank you. I
finish to let them have it.So, yeah, so I've been playing
Gates of Hell offs Front with Wolfpackon Wolfpack Twitch dot tv, slash Wolfpac

(12:16):
three four five Live. And thenI've been playing Icarus with Tortuga on Twitch
dot tv slash Tortuga Power. Soyou can find me there and then give
views for the other two. Andyou might notice I haven't played any games
for a historical gamer. Oh man, frankly, I mean, the only

(12:41):
reason my streams are watchable is becauseof finishgor So, and even then they're
not really watchable. It's like Finishis just a great guy who you can
definitely find it Twitch dot tv dotTV slash Charcoal Charcoal underscore Cheetah, that's
right. Should we discuss the lorewith the weird naming convention with charcoal underscore

(13:03):
Cheetah? Yeah, and then wecall you Finish Yeager, finished Jaguar in
here and hey, no personal questions. Yeah, I have a lot of
online aliases. You got to becareful. You never know when people might
dig up some dirt on you.Who are these ladies? Yeah? Who
were these ladies? Especially after Idownloaded TikTok to my phone? I have
to make sure that you know they'retracking someone other than the real me,

(13:26):
right, Yeah? Having Charcoal Chinaand Finnish Yeager as different names will really
throw off the CCP. That's whatI'm told, that's what they promised.
You know, I got a VPNand everything. Wow, what a security
minded individual. I can respect that. Just podcast, you know, talk
about games at all. We've beenkind of talking about games more about each

(13:46):
other. Can this podcast get scrappedat the point this is not going well?
So Eastern Front war games, that'swhat we're here to talk about today,
I guess if you're still listening.Yeah, So the Eastern Front gets
I think it gets its fair share. Maybe not it's fair share. It's
covered in war games, but itcertainly is overshadowed and other topics. What

(14:09):
wait, it's probably the thing that'sovershadowing everything. You think the Eastern Front
overshadows everything? You don't think theWest Front gets a bias? Yes,
I think that there are a lotof games made about the Eastern Front.
I'm not sure. I'm not goingto have set a definitive stance on whether
it's overshadow or not, but Ithink that it's I mean, it's certainly
not as maligned as the Pacific Theater, that's for sure. I mean,

(14:30):
I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily say Iagree with you. You don't speak for
all of us when you say thatthe Eastern Front is underrepresented. Okay,
okay, well why don't you.I don't know where to go from here
anymore? Then, So drama early, I love it. Let's talk about
the games that best represent the EasternFront, and maybe any of the games
that do. I mean, there'sso many strategy games that do you know.

(14:50):
I'm gonna I'm gonna say this.I think I do agree with TS
in a way, like in termsof games like strategy games. I think
it may be overrepresent and are representeda bit more because you have like Warren
the East too and whatnot. Ithink as a whole in Western countries it
is underrepresented for how important it was. I think there's no doubt that in

(15:11):
mainstream pop culture it is underrepresented,right like Normandy. Every other movie that
comes out about World War Two,with like three exceptions are Normandy or something
with the Americans or maybe the British. Yeah, but that makes sense,
doesn't It wasn't. I mean youhave yeah, because you have Western nations
who are going to identify with liketheir grandfathers and the people who fought in

(15:33):
the war. And guess what,the American people did not fight on the
Eastern Front? Are you sure so? Yeah? I think there's there's a
obviously a correlation there. I thought. I thought I came here to talk
about games, not conspiracy theories.Didn't Jude Law fight in Stalingrad? He
sure did. Sorry, I don'tknow where I'm going with this, but

(15:54):
anyway, Eastern No, But it'sokay. I think it's fine to say
that I think that the Eastern Frontis underrepresented. If you want to talk
about what World War two was maybethis is This is obviously an entire separate
podcast series that could be done onjust this. But like the Eastern Front
is pretty much what one World Wartwo, and everything else was kind of

(16:15):
like the trimmings around it. Idon't know if I'd agree with that,
but we could discuss that another time. It certainly is the It is certainly
the theater where the most people foughtand the most people died. Most people
fought. You sure that wouldn't beChina? Okay, maybe I don't know.
I haven't looked at the math.Yeah, give me some statistics.
I don't know how many people.The population of China certainly greater. I'm
not sure about combatants. Yeah,I don't know if I had GroE with
myself. By the way, aboutman, well, well, mister mister,

(16:41):
hey, Barbie was a fine movie, guys, I'm going it was
fine. I'm going to sit onthe fence too. It was good.
I'm really bad. Okay, Barbiewas good. You know what. I
enjoyed it. I thought it wasfunny. Okay. I did not come
prepared to this podcast to lead usthrough this quagmire of but you know,
it's it's much like, like theSecond World War on the Eastern Front,

(17:02):
Germany did not come prepared to fightthe war that ultimately it falls. Yeah.
I love that this podcast is gettingcompared to one of the greatest struggles
in human history. It's pretty good. Oh, I mean, we can
edit out like half this, butno, why don't we let's at least
talk about some video games? Then? Yeah, maybe we should do that,
all right, I think we should. Just you know, let's start

(17:23):
with what games did you want totalk about today toward twoga in terms of
the Eastern Front and if you feellike they accurately represent the Eastern Front and
what they do well and what theydon't. Okay, I want to start
with the video game that we Ithink we've all played, so that it
can kind of be like group discussionbefore. Some of the other games are
going to be a little more nicheand not everyone is played. I want
to start off with Hearts of Iron. I think Hearts of Iron does a

(17:45):
really good job of representing the EasternFront. It's not Eastern Front specific,
but I remember that, like,one of the most memorable experiences in my
gaming history was Hearts of Iron three, in particular, playing as the Germans
and like gearing up for Barbarossa,and then I'm not sure, Like again,
I'm not sure how much we canconsider that Eastern Front because it's obviously

(18:07):
it's a much different version of Barbarossa, considering I built up forces differently,
it's not like the historical Barbarossa.But I mean, as far as the
Eastern Front goes, it still deliverson being a huge, huge front,
tons of people involved. You know, Germany, Russia, it has all
this, or Germany Soviet Union.Yeah. So I think Hearts Iron it

(18:29):
does a pretty good job of likealmost all of World War Two, but
also specifically for this podcast, Ithink it does a good job representing the
Eastern Front. Yeah, I thinkI think heart what Hearts of Iron does
a good job of, in myopinion is and it's not, as you
said, it's not Eastern Front specific, but it really I think it shines
when the Eastern Front starts. Andthat's because I think at its core,

(18:51):
it very quickly becomes a game,especially the newer Hearts of Iron, where
like Stockpiling is a bit different,it becomes a game about production and about
manpower, and I think that tellsthe story of at least you know the
story we think about when we thinkabout the Eastern Front pretty well, and
it shows how quickly the war transformsfrom what feels like a manageable conflict to

(19:12):
something that if you're not ready forit can really be overwhelming. And I'm
rapidly decreasing my options as things kindof get out of hand. I think
playing at least Hearts of Iron three, either the real time kind of like
strategy is always I think it's kindof unique in the sense compared to some
other war games that we'll probably talkabout with the big Eastern Front in real

(19:36):
time, but you have like morefluid movements of your units on the map
the map, so you're trying toencircle enemy units to eliminate them from the
field. And I think that's somethingthat Hearts of Iron three did really well.
I'm not gonna knock Hearts of Ironfour too much here, no,
I think it's fair. I wasgoing to make the same point that the
Hearts from four, I don't actuallyget the same feel from that one for

(19:56):
me. Hearts from two, eventhough it had bigger provinces, like even
bigger than Iron four, it stillhad that feel though, surprisingly I don't
know why. I mean, Ireally like Hearts Iron four's production system,
but the actual troop combat, Ifeel like they really wanted to take that
as much as they could out ofthe player's hands, and for me,
that does remove the feeling of like, oh my god, the Eastern Front,

(20:17):
like I'm in control and there's somuch to do. So they might
have thought that's a good thing,but I actually enjoy that feeling of being
overwhelmed, like, oh my gosh, this is the entire game. Writing
on this front, I think whatworks well with Hearts of Iron four though,
is it really? To me?It feels like more of a war
of production and a war of material, and I think that's to a point
anyway, an accurate and accurate summationof the Eastern Front. Yeah, but

(20:41):
does the logistics in for work?I mean Hearts Burning Through they had you
actually have logistics issues, which Ithink was like, you know, if
you want to talk about realistic problemsbeing modeled in war games, I think
logistics is when you cannot overlook.Yeah, I don't think it does it
good of a job as it should. I also struggle at a game of
its scale of how much should thesupreme leader be worrying about logistics like it.

(21:06):
I don't know, because the EasternFront very much was a logistics wars,
as all wars really are. ButI also think sometimes games try to
give you too much control as theas the supreme leader. And that's why
I actually I like I like agame called Caldrons of War Barbarossa, and
then there's a Stalin Grad version ofit as well. Yeah, I knew
you were going to mention that game. Yeah, it abstracts so much,

(21:29):
but I think it does it ina really well a good job that allows
you to feel more appropriately disconnected whilestill being in control. And like,
the number of trucks you have isrelevant, but it's again, it's all.
It's not like it's it's getting youinto the nitty gritty. It's sort
of like, your troops in thisarea have this many trucks, they have
this much, this much ability toattack through something called command points, you

(21:55):
only have a certain amount of airpower and you kind of have to choose
which sections you're you know, whichareas of the front you're going to deploy
it too, within like the battlegroup. Within the battle groups, if
you will or I'm sure, butI can't remember the name army groups,
army group areas. But I thinkit does a really good job of abstracting
what's not as important for a theateror if I guess it's a theater or

(22:18):
commander, and what is important.And I think a lot of games tend
to try and just be like,oh, well, this thing, you
should control this, and you shouldcontrol this, and you should control this,
and you end up being a fieldmarshal who's ordering around individual regiments,
which doesn't feel quite right. Yeah, I feel the bigger strategic picture that
game adds a different level of difficultythat you don't see another Eastern Front video

(22:41):
games, since you're dealing with thebig picture you have to deal with you
know, your true placements differently andthings like that. And I think does
that game have like any sort oflike card system. Do you like,
have to play cards on a turn. It's been a little while since I've
played Barbarossa. I don't think so. There's random events that you have to
make, not random, there's likehistorical events that you have to make decisions

(23:02):
that influence the game in the waythat like a card system might. Units
are represented like on a card,but there's not it's not like a card
drawing system. You're not like playinglike Supreme Attack or something like that.
I don't know. Yeah, Wolfand I actually played the multiplayer Stalingrad version
of that game. I think weboth tried the Germans and the Soviets.

(23:22):
I think I'm I'm going to speakfor Wolf here, but I had fun
with that game. I think itwas sufficiently challenging. I guess it's just
a different look at the ballastaling Grad. I don't think you see too many
games like that, like the streetfighting a Stalingrad and fighting over the sectors
of the city and dealing with thereinforcements across the river. I think it
was pretty good. Yeah, Ihad a lot of fun with that game.
Actually, it's one of the firsttimes I really did play by email

(23:48):
and was really engrossed with it,and we were flipping turns back constantly,
and I think what it does areally good job of that is important in
an Eastern Front game is the limitationof resources and the ability of the need
to like really pick your spots ofwhere you're going to go because you only
have so many command points to useand you only have you know so much

(24:10):
in terms of your units get wornout pretty quick and they will lose considerable
combat power. And then, atleast in the in the Barbarosa version,
you got to pull them off thefront. You know, you can't just
be like, all right, we'regoing to refit you in place. You
got to pull them off the front. That takes a command point. You
gotta refit them. That takes acommand point. And again you don't you
don't have a ton of that togo around. So it I think it

(24:32):
really lends itself to this concept ofyour troops rapidly getting attridded, even in
the Barbarosa campaign, and just nothaving enough resources to keep the momentum going
in every spot, which I thinkspeaks to at least what I've read of
the German struggle in the Eastern Frontin forty one and forty two. Did
you play much of Stalingrad? Iplayed it once or twice. I didn't

(24:55):
play it verse anybody, and Iwouldn't say I know it anywhere near as
well as Barbarosa. I think,well, did we play multiplayer player Barbarossa
as well? I don't believe Ihave played that one. No, the
couldrons of War Stalingrad has like theDrive to Stalingrad. Yeah, okay,
yeah, like case blue and such, and that's probably what you're thinking of.

(25:15):
Yeah, it is. And theDrive to Stalingrad scenario is very similar
to what Barbarossa looks like in termsof like the game. I know,
the Battle of Stalingrad itself becomes avery different sort of look, at least
on the map, and so it'sit's a bit different, which I thought
was awesome. I think I thinkthat is very interesting looking. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. What I willsay though, is I don't I don't

(25:36):
I think from a multiplayer perspective,I have a hunch that Stalingrad would be
more interesting to play the battle itselfin that system. My main complaint with
Barbarosa when I've played as the Russiansis the Germans have all the initiative until
the very very end of the game, and it just playing as the Russian
player, it kind of it doesn'tfeel like your choices matter in the same
way as playing the Germans. Yeah, it's an interesting time frame to do

(25:57):
a game like that, like justBarbarossa. Like you said, the Germans
do have the initiative I really thinkthey intended for the first game to be
primarily played from the German point ofview when they added the Russian just because
you know, people wanted it.But to me, the games systems feel
optimized to be on the offensive.Makes sense. And I'll mention with Culdron's
award Barbarossa and then later when wetalk about decisive campaigns Barbarossa. Both of

(26:22):
those games end, you know,with the Soviet Winter Offensive, and I
always wish in both of those gamesyou could play out the entire Eastern Front
to like to forty five. Itmakes me feel like I'm missing something.
I want to play more. Iwant there to be a new release and
expansion. It just feels like,ah, there's so much more of the
war to fight and I'm missing out. Yeah, that's interesting. That Why

(26:42):
why are all the Eastern Front gamesfocused primarily early war, because that's generally
opposite of what like a lot ofsimulation games, like like a lot of
people like them, you know,best Equipment or whatever whereaboos. Yeah,
I think they want the Germans theirchance to win, which is funny because
like the Russians have no change,like the Russian chance of winning in those

(27:04):
early games is the same as theGermans would be in a game that focuses
on forty four forty five survival,like survival is winning, Oh yeah,
yeah, what's the winning I meanwin conditions? And all these games like
Hold Moscow. I think that's kindof what makes maybe stalin Grad a more
interesting topic from a game perspective tohandle, is because the Germans do get

(27:26):
their initial drive and then they needto try and take the city, But
the Russians do get the opportunity toCounterPunch in a meaningful way and sort of
get a win condition if they canif they can capture the sixth Army.
Right, I mean, like ina sense, you've got a more contained
story with more clear cut victory conditionsone way or the other, whereas like
in any Barbarosi game, it's justsort of like, all right, well
you survived if you're Russia, howbadly did you get hurt? Is kind

(27:49):
of like whether you win as Russia. Right. I think it makes sense
though, right, I mean inall of these games, it's almost like
if you can kind of visualize apendulum swinging up, that's like the German
offensive and if they can just climbover the top and reach the point where
let's say they caught captured Moscow andLeningrad and even like Stalingrad and Baku and

(28:11):
everything. Maybe that's enough that thependulum actually makes a full rotation and swings
in the German favor and they winthe war. But as soon as the
Soviets have stopped their initial momentum,that pendulum swinging back and there's no way
the Germans will ever come back fromthat. And we all know it's very
similar to like the Pacific War.Once the Japanese player has lost its momentum,

(28:32):
we know that the snowball is formingand it's just a matter of time
before the US player wins. Sofor me, it is more interesting to
play to see if you can changehistory. But if you were to start
at the point where the Soviets havealready halted the German advance and you're just
like playing as the Germans. Imean, some people do like playing the
Germans a fighting defense all the wayback, but I don't think that's very

(28:53):
popular, simply because it's an unwinnablescenario. If you do a forty four
operation migration scenario like the German victorycondition is pretty similar to the Soviet victory
condition, and a lot of theseBarbarossa style games set in that time peris
just like hold on the ground.But to me, it's more about like

(29:14):
the fact that in like the contextof this scenario, we know that whether
the Germans are win or lose.This the Germans lost, that's already the
point where there's it's completely lost forthem. But when you're playing as the
Soviets, there's like this idea thatif you lose this or if you win,
if you win, you know youwin, but if you lose,
you could actually lose, like itmaybe it would have changed the war.

(29:37):
Again, this is a little unrealistic. I'm not sure how much we want
to talk about how potentially impossible itwas for Germany to ever win. But
in theory, if there was someway for them to win the war,
that's what you're witnessing when you playthe alternate scenario yourself, is you're giving
Germany their win. I think thatopens up an interesting discussion of Eastern Front
games that compare the strategic level versusthe tactical level, because there are different

(30:00):
types of war games. But beforewe go into that, Ortuga finish.
I know you guys wanted to talka bit about decisive campaigns and finish.
You kind of already did a littlebit. But why don't you guys talk
about that, because that's definitely onthe strategic level. It's a more contained
game, kind of like Cauldrons ofWar, and that you don't have the
whole Eastern Front, unlike something likeWar in the East, which we should
probably mention. Yeah, we havetalked about War in the East, But

(30:22):
why don't you talk a little bitabout decisive campaigns? First? I guess
I don't know where to start.Well, you were talking about people,
you were saying not enough I wastalking about how not enough games have people
talking to other people. That there'sa lot of a lot in decisive campaigns
which is done to put you inthe position or you're a person controlling.
You're actually in the chain of commandand you're not like god Mode like most

(30:45):
games will do. So you actuallyhave to operate with relationships with the other
parts of the Wehrmach Like you haveto talk with Goring and make decisions which
he wants oil. So if yousay, hey, by the way,
Wagner, can you deliver that oil? To me and not to the Loofwaffa.
You'll piss off Gooring and then hemay not be available for some supply

(31:06):
mission you want him to run.I mean, there's this very cool staff
relations and interactions with people, whichI kind of hate. I mean,
I love it because it's very itfeels more realistic. It makes you feel
like you are an actual person inthe chain of command instead of just being
the normal god mode. I dislikeit just because it's it's a lot of
pressure. There's a lot of Rand G introduced in these their decisions.

(31:27):
So this is another VIC game,just like Shadow Empire has that decision mechanic
and you have to basically choose betweena rock and a hard place. A
lot of times it's tough decisions whereyou're going to hurt somebody you know,
and just try to minimize the damageyou're doing to the entire Barbarossa push.
Yeah, I will say with thedealing with those personalities, the game is

(31:47):
very German centric in that regard.You're not going to be experiencing that same
dynamic as if you play as theSoviet Union. Oh that's disappointing because it's
not like the Soviets word shy ofpersonality or it's not I mean, it's
not white as heavy. The Sovietmechanic is a little bit different because you're
supposed to be role playing as Stalin, so you are the top of the
chain of command, and what you'retypically dealing with is I mean, I

(32:10):
guess you are kind of maybe evena little more god mode because you play
cards. I mean, the systemis that you're trying to minimize Stalin's what's
the word they use, paranoia,that's right, Yeah, so you're trying
to minimize his paranoia. And there'scertain officers which were closer to Stalin and
they have higher loyalty ratings or aforget what the statistic is, but basically
when they're involved in things, Stalin'sparanoia does not go up. But like

(32:34):
they're really good generals. In orderto get them, you have to typically
make Stalin more paranoid by giving themmore power. So anyways, there's an
interesting game balance there's it is true, it's definitely not the same interactions,
but there's an element of it.At least. What is the game So
you're talking a little bit about thepersonalities, what's the game like? How
would you compare the game, Yeah, I think the best way to visualize
this game is if you know anyof Vic's games, for example, like

(32:57):
Advanced Tactics Gold, It's it's likethat, but it's these in front.
And if you don't know VIX games, but you know War in the East,
it's a slightly more abstracted, slightlyeasier to play, like less detailed
version of War in the East,Like I don't think it probably has a
slightly lower hex total hexs count.I mean know in that game you typically
operate with like brigades that you canyou can actually like split your division into

(33:20):
different brigades and actually move that way. But this is purely at the division
level, so the total number ofunits under your command is less. You
mentioned going to Guring and asking orsomeone and asking for oil and diverting it
from the Luftwaffet, Like do youcommand the air forces or do you Is
that sort of abstracted out or automatedor like how did the person do the

(33:42):
personalities come out at all when you'refighting or is it just in terms of
resource allocation and interactions with Hitler orwhatnot. Well, I guess I'll say
that you cannot play as the airforce for either side, the Soviet Union
or Germany. That's an abstracted thing. Yeah, you're playing as Halder for
the Germans and you don't have anycontrol over the air force directly. You

(34:05):
have like something similar to political capitalknown as political points, and you can
use this to influence people. Soyou can use your political capital, so
you spend these political points. Youcan ask the LOOFWAFA to run supply missions
for you. So it is aresource that you have to use your political
capital, and you have a verylimited political capital, so you don't want
to use it all the time.So that's the way that it works.

(34:25):
It's like a resource that you candraw upon, but you don't have direct
control and the LOOPWAFA is typically justsupporting your units. It's very abstracted,
so you just get some generic bonusto your attack roles and defense roles that
you don't actually see the bombing campaignsor anything like that. And how do
you like, as the Germans,do you win just by taking Moscow?

(34:46):
Or what's the victory conditions? Ohthat's another great part of the game.
Oh, I love that part.You get to choose your victory condition and
you have like a couple of options. So the first turn for the Germans
is I forget what it's called,and finis just jump in at an end
point in time. It's like calleda Berlin or something where you go and
you talk to Hitler and you haveI think it's three main options. You

(35:07):
can tell him to stuff it andgo f himself, and you're going to
control the Eastern Front however you want. And the ramification of that is one
that you don't have to You getto choose the objective. You got to
choose what is the city that youwant to take, and if you take
it, you win. The negativeside of that, though, is you
get a lot less political points,which means that because you just told,

(35:29):
you know, you gave him thebird, Hitler's not really going to be
like trying to do you any favors. So you have a lot less ability
to influence the other aspects, gettingtrucks, getting railroads running and all that
stuff. You just can't do asmuch of the other stuff. But I
mean the benefit is that you canchannel all your focus into just one theater
south central or North and just gofor one, because you know you only

(35:52):
have to take the one objective thatyou want. The middle option, there's
some kind of like middle ground option. I actually don't even remember what the
option is. It's kind of boringto me. I think it's like you
tried to persuade Hitler to make Moscowthe main objective. I believe. Yeah,
that's right. I don't know.I've never chosen that one. It
doesn't seem fun to me. Ifeel like I did the first time I
played, the first time I havewon as the Germans. I did that

(36:13):
when it's your your middle middle option, that you have like a middle amount
of political points for that one,because you're kind of like influencing Hitler's decision,
but he has a chance to sayno to you, doesn't he.
I'm not well anyway. The firstoption, which I think is pretty cool,
is that you get to let Hitlerdecide your objective and he'll just give
you a list of priorities for priorities, you know, south central, North,
and then also what priority he considerscapturing Army headquarters, the Soviet Army

(36:38):
headquarters, and it's you know,it's a random role under the hood.
And then Hitler comes back and hesays, okay, I'll want you to
take Lenagrad as your first objective firstpriority. Second objective is Rostov, and
third objective is capturing HQ's and thenfourth is Moscow. And in my experience,
by the way, it's almost alwaysthe Moscow is still number four.

(36:58):
And that's cool because Hitler also hasa chance to change his mind at several
conferences as the war moves on.And I don't know, I mean,
whether it's realistic or not, it'spretty cool to have this idea that your
commander can like change your objective onyou. You know, you're getting really
close to capturing Glenn and Grand becausethat's what Hitler told you to do.
And then come November he's like,by the way, I want you to
take Rosstop instead. Now I dolike that. It's just a fun mechanic.

(37:21):
You can only win as the Germansif you complete Hitler's orders, like
if you if your orders your focusis a capture like Moscow and Leningrad,
but Hitler's focus is a capture Rostovand you don't do that, then you
still lose as the Germans. It'sinteresting to me that victory is defined by
what the Germans say. That's aninteresting like mechanic is that, Oh,

(37:45):
well, the Germans get to winif they just accomplished the objective they set
for themselves. Kind of begs thequestion with where's the Russian agency on this?
Yeah, the Soviets have their ownobjective under the ho so you're,
you know, you're picking and choosingthat. But then as the Soviets,
Stalin chooses an objective and then that'slike the main one you have to hold.
But if Germans, at any pointin time capture all three objectives we

(38:07):
learned through finish his play through,they lose. Yeah, so I played
as the Soviet Union and we werereally holding the Germans back in the north
and in the center. But theGerman objectives was to capture Sevastopol Rostov and
like Kursk, and they achieve thatand the Germans automatically won. They got

(38:28):
an automatic victory, and that's that'sprobably like one of the disappointment disappointing things
about that game is like there's noway the Soviet Army is defeated in the
field, but the game just automaticallyends because the Germans have completed their victory
condition. Sounds like a game designedby holder. Do you, as the
Soviets. No, the German victoryconditions. It apparently can be leaked,

(38:50):
I believe, but no, it'sit's kind of hidden for most of the
game, unless there's it's it's leakedsomehow. That's interesting. Yeah, the
same thing can happen if you playas the Germans, because it's like Western
media has leaked the Soviet objective ofholding Moscow, and then if you take
Moscow, you didn't deny the Sovietside those points of completing their own objective.
Okay, that would be interesting ifit wasn't like totally in the Germans

(39:14):
hands. Like it'd be interesting ifyou had to try and figure out,
like what are the Russians trying todo? Here's what I'm trying to do,
and then you had to like accomplishboth. I do wonder though that
just like the Germans getting the abilityto say we won because we said we
did, Like, that's an interestingLike I said, it's almost like a
game designed by the German high command, like the Russians would have surrendered,
we swire. It's it's still apretty German focus game. Just like we

(39:37):
mentioned before. Have you guys,have either of you or any of any
of you played Case Blue. DecisiveCampaign's Case Blue? Is that an older
game? In Barbara that's the French, that's the invasion of No. They
have a Stalingrad one. Case Blueis the yet drive to Stalingrad. Oh
Man. So there's a blitz Creekone, which is like France. But
then they also have Case Blue,which is earlier. It's Stalingrad, but

(39:59):
it was made earlier, and I'mcurious if it has all the same interaction
with Hitler and the other things likethat, if that's part of the game
or not. I don't know now, I haven't played it. It's it's
like twenty twelve, it's much older. It might have been this first game
in the Decisive Campaign series that hemade. You know if that was also
done with the co designer. Ido not. You're more in tune with

(40:20):
with Vix Games than I am,so I'm not aware of who he co
designed with. But anyway, weshould probably move on to another game.
Let's talk about something else. Whateverybody so, I do want to talk
about the tactical games and Gates ofHell and if there's anything else we want
to talk about. But before weget to that, I would like to
just ment, and I think wewe can't talk about the Eastern Front in

(40:40):
war games and not talk about Warin the East. I agree, sort
of the big Daddy, if youwill. It's the exception to the rule.
I mean, there's other games thatgo forty one to forty five,
but but it's the ultra grog sortof Eastern Front war game. And I'm
curious what you all think about itand how you think it models the the
theater. And I've played a littlebit of two, a little bit of

(41:04):
one, and then i played actuallyWarren Russia, which was its predecessor,
quite a lot. But I'm curiouswhat you all, what your thoughts are.
Tortuga, Well, do you wantto lead off because you've I don't
know, I don't know between thetwo of us who's played Warren the East
more, but probably you. Didyou play against XTRG. No, we've
been discussing setting a War in theEast two series up Insider information. Oh

(41:25):
yeah, hell a little little teethyeah, But anyway, so I've played
a bit of War in the East. I wouldn't say I played a ton,
but it's obviously it's a huge It'sa Gary griggs By game. So
it's it's absolutely huge, and itcovers the entire campaign from you know,
the initial German invasion up through Ithink it goes into forty six hypothetically,

(41:45):
if the Germans survived that long.It's a Griggsby game, so it's not
terribly concerned. I don't think aboutbalance. The Germans start off able to
do a lot of stuff in fortyone, but by forty three it's they're
pretty much screwed. A quick question, do all of these games start on
like June twenty second? Yeah?I think so. Yeah. Okay,
interesting, I was wondering if youhad any, like I don't know,

(42:06):
way to build up your forces ina different way, or if all of
your units are deployed in their historicallocations, things like that. I guess
I'll briefly say, with decisive campaigns, you can have the option to set
up your units in an a historicalfashion, so I have different concentrations.
Yes, for that game. Atleast, you can't move divisions outside of

(42:27):
their theater headquarters, so you can'tmove units out of Army group center to
Army groups south, but you canrearrange where they're placed on the front lines.
For the start of the invasion.Interesting. So in terms of what
you're talking about, Wolf, Idon't know that any I can't think of
any Eastern Front games that are specificto the Eastern Front to give you that
option. I think the big whatif is like, what if Mussolini hadn't
invaded you know, Yugoslavia and Greeceand the Germans hadn't gotten sucked into that

(42:51):
conflict or whatever? Right? Well, actually, well, but I can't
think of any games that do thatthat are not in the grands strategy sort
of a genre. What I meanby that is like Strategic Command, War
in Europe or World War two,World at War, like those games.
You can attack Russia early, right, right, right, same thing as
Hearts of Iron, right, Like, if you want to attack Russia early,

(43:14):
you can if you're ready to doit. But those are theater or
global games that are not specific tothe Russian campaign. Yeah, I was
just wondering, because I guess Idon't remember. But War in the Pacific
starts on it doesn't start on Decemberseventh, yes, And so there's two
scenarios with War in the Pacific.There's one where you have the historical attack

(43:35):
that plays out like simulated and it'sgenerally pretty close to what happened, but
there's a little bit of variants anddamage and things like that, but you
can't control who's attacking where. Andthen there's a scenario that allows you to
as the Japanese that allows you tochange things around. So there's special movement
orders on the first day, soJapan theoretically could use their carriers to attack
elsewhere in that version or in thatscenario, or they could, you know,

(43:58):
send different concentrates of troops. It'slargely everything starts where it started on
December two or December six, butlike naval task forces can move so far
in that first day that you canyou can have a fair bit of variants,
but you're still starting effectively in theDecember seventh attack. It's just where
you attack. Cool. I actuallylike that, but I was just curious
how these games did that, becausealthough I admire War in the East from

(44:22):
a distance, I have yet totry it. You know, with every
Griggsby game, they're kind of overwhelming. Like if you're not a Griggsby aficionado
and you just look at it andyou're like, how do I get into
this thing? Like how do Ilearn how to play. They definitely can
be a bit overwhelming. I thinkthey've tried over the years to make the
war in the series more approachable.I definitely think you see that start with

(44:45):
Warren the West, which came outbefore Warren. These two came out between
Warren the East and Warren the Easttwo, and I make more approachable.
You mean that they added all theair control into War in the West,
which made it twice as hard tolearn, wasn't it didn't they have air
con roll in in the previous Warin the West game. You mean more
in the East. It was Warrenin the East and then War in the
West. Right well before that therewas there was a Western Front, which

(45:07):
was also by Griggsby. Yeah,yeah, I create years and years ago.
In any event, I guess I'mokay, so fair. They added
the air combat element. I don'tthink you can do the West Front without
the strategic air campaign. So that'smy counterpoint to saying that they shouldn't have
done it. But that being said, yes they did add that that component.
They certainly streamlined some of the UI, and they streamlined some of the

(45:30):
like some of the way that orderswork with with units. But it's overwhelming.
It's Griggsby anyway, so like there'sno way around it. It's every
single division, every single air group, every single everything, and then like
production is also on map and thingslike that and matters. I mean,
I actually somewhat preferred War in theEast worn with the East two just because

(45:52):
of the additional overhead of the aircampaign stuff. Just so everyone knows you
can. You don't have to control, right, I'm pretty sure that you
can automate the air stuff. Correctme if I'm wrong. THG. I
think that once the option is there, I have such a hard time not
using it that I like basically spunmy wheels trying to learn it, trying

(46:12):
to play like, you know,a good first turn. I want,
like a really good first turn asthe Germans, and you know you can.
I don't think you can do thatunless you get involved with the Air
force yourself. I was when Ifirst played Warren Russia, which was the
predecessor, very very old game,and for a while Matrix had it downloadable
for free as sort of like amarketing gimmick for a War in the East.
When I played Warren in Russia thatfirst game, I was so overwhelmed

(46:37):
and didn't know what I was doing, and there was so many different units.
I just decided, you know whatI'm gonna do. I'm gonna play
as the Russians because I'm not goingto lose on day one. Like it's
the Germans. If you have abad day one, you might not be
able to recover from that. Ifthe Russians are probably they're they're supposed to
have a bad day one. Yeah, it's good. It's a good way
of learning. I've done the samething. Was I had a bad day
one at my job. Do youstill work there? I do? Yeah,

(47:01):
Okay, so it wasn't as badas it could have been. That's
right. It wasn't like the Myexperience wasn't like the Verrmacht inety one to
nineteen forty five. It is morelike the Soviet Union. I guess it's
just a long It's more like theWestern Front nineteen seventeen, endless struggle.
You don't know what that meant,but okay, yeah. So my approach

(47:22):
to learning the game was always tobe like, all right, I don't
really I'm not obsessed with doing thingsdifferently than history, Like I'm if I'm
going to play this game and it'sas big as it is. Like I'll
plays the Russians and I'll win infour years. I don't care. You'll
you'll beat the crap out of me. I'll learn the systems, and then
by the time I've got the powerto counter attack, I'll be just need
to learn it well enough not tolose in the in forty one, which

(47:43):
you've got a couple of You've gota couple of months to figure that out.
And so that's how I approached it. I was just like, all
right, let's i'll kind of tinkeraround with the front line units. I'll
set up a second line already backaways, and then like begin filtering units
in for a third last ditch linejust in front of us. Scout.
I knew enough to be like,all right, I'll try and position units
behind rivers, you know, asmuch as I can to try and like

(48:05):
use terrain to give them some defensiveadvantages, which for the Russians don't matter
that much early, like you're goingto get rolled. That's kind of how
I approached it, and it worked. But Warren Russia was like being a
much earlier game and computers being muchweaker a lot. It was a lot
more abstract than Warren the East orWarre in the East too, and I'm
still a bit overwhelmed by both ofthose games. I don't love Warren.

(48:30):
Warren the East has a I GoEUGO system, so I'm a big fan
of Warren the Pacific because it haswe Go, which basically you issue your
orders and then orders are simultaneously resolved, so it's sort of like you can
witness everything as it's happening, whereaswith Warren the East you've got the air
operation phase and then you've got theground operation phase and each turn each side

(48:50):
has its own turn as well,So to me it feels a little clunky,
like for something that big, it'svery hard for me to keep track
of what's going on, especially whenyou divide effectively, you divide a turn
up into four segments. I thinkthey did that to try and be more
approachable. To'll be like, we'llput air first and then you can focus
on that. We'll put ground nextand you'll focus on that, then the
other side will go or whatever.But to me, it actually makes it

(49:14):
harder to keep track of what's goingon in the game and to know what
I'm trying to do because it's sucha long gap between when I shoot orders
to my planes and then when I'mback issuing orders to my planes again,
or when I'm issuing orders to myground units. There's just it's too fragmented
for me. I don't think Ihave enough time to like really devote that

(49:37):
I need to devote to a gamelike War in the East too. But
I would still pitch it to anybodywho has the amount of time to learn
a very in depth game. Ithink that you'll be you'll feel very rewarded
for actually getting over the learning curveand playing It's it's just like War in
the Pacific and all these other games, you know, the very detailed games.
In my opinion, they do givethe greatest reward. It's just I

(49:57):
don't have time to play it.It's funny too, because I I saw
there was there was a negative Ithink it was a negative review on so
on Steam, and the review effectivelywas it's too hard to play. As
the Germans after forty three they're justlike, yeah, yeah, it probably
should be, but can't imagine whyreally, Yeah, your standard, your
standard played by email opponent who justquits, Oh, yeah, I mean

(50:20):
that's true. For Yeah, okay, if we could, we could start
talking about war in the Pacific.But you know, doesn't Gary Griggsby realize
that the Germans had the Panther atthat point? Oh my goodness, And
don't forget the King Tiger later obviouslynot if he knew. If he knew
SS did for super Soldiers, hewould have made the game a whole lot
different. Hey, do you havean option to give your soldiers meth in

(50:40):
the size of campaigns like meth upand then they can move twice as many
hexes Hitler has the stockpile of methlockdowns. Unfortunately you cannot. Yeah,
but the game actually does take thegloves off as far as like it does.
It has the most brutal treatment.I mean, can you played the
Dirty War option? Didn't you finish? Maybe you should talk about it.

(51:04):
Yeah. I played Geneva Convention offin my current oh no, current play
through as the Germans. So there'slike war crimes that appear, and you
have like the decisions that manages theGermans. I guess there's some sort of
like intensity or brutality factor in thegame, and the higher that goes up,
the more bonus Soviet units get,you know, Caldrons of War has
that too. I didn't know thatat least the bar the barbarosa one,

(51:27):
there's a there's a barbarism counter.And as you get different events, you
can like do you execute the commissarswhen they come into your you know,
into your hands, or do youjust treat them like POWs? Or do
you accept partisans and Ukraine who wantto fight for you, or do you
you know, just treat them likeeverybody else. And like, the more
decisions you make, and they havedifferent effects on units, suppression, movement,

(51:49):
supplies, but they can they alsoinfluence barbarism. And as the barbarism
goes up, it becomes harder andharder to break units to get them to
surrender things like that, And soyou you kind of have like a dirty
war sort of decision there too,or you've got to make decisions that you
know are are horrific in the realworld. But I think those are the
only two games I can think of. Like usually that those kind of things

(52:13):
don't get supermodeled in games because well, there's probably good reasons to not want
to be like we're going to recreatethe Holocaust or whatever. Yeah, exactly,
Yeah, touchy subject. But anyway, on that uplifting subject, we've
been talking pretty much exclusively about strategygames. There's a whole nother genre of
games that focus on the Eastern Front. There's actually multiple genres. Wait,

(52:34):
or we are we done with strategicgames? We're not done with strategy games
yet, are we? Because II am more a hell is this a
podcast that's gonna last for another twomore hours or something? We're talking about
war crimes. I figured we neededto get Wolfpack involved in here. I
mean, his intro had him shootinga health fire into a school. I
don't know if you heard that.There were people laughing. Let's let's listen
to that again. Health fire intothe school. Had to do it?

(52:59):
You hear that right there? Todo it? I think he was playing
as the Russians in Syria. No, that was that was call of duty,
I believe. Yeah, I rememberthis when you were obliterating that Mexican
village. You know that does thatdoes sound like a DCS moment for me?
But uh, yeah, that oneI found on a clip. Oh

(53:22):
gosh, I can't believe this hashappened to me, Like how you're mostly
silent for like thirty minutes, andthen we just immediately, you know,
just bring up you nuking a school. It was I remember that moment now
that you mentioned it, I didtoo. That was, you know,
I am speaking of Eastern Front games. Call of Duty. Wow, call
of Duty too. You know myearliest Eastern Front moment en potatoes at people.

(53:45):
Yeah, Call of Duty was thegame that the Eastern Front consisted of
the Battle of Stalin gred in theBattle of Berlin, and I think that
was about it. You know what, Hell yeah, brother, that works.
So I was going to suggest thatwe talked about tactical games and oh
yeah, yeah, yeah, let'sget called whatever the I don't even know
the title, yeah, Wolf takeit away. Well, called to Arms

(54:07):
is, I guess like a spiritualsuccessor to Men of War. Have you
played that in Tortuga? Oh yeah, Ben of War two Assault Squad.
Yeah, so it's very similar tothose games. I think I may be
wrong here, but I'm pretty sureit uses the same engine, kind of
the same same publisher. It's prettyfun. I've been having a blast with
it. They have a dynamic campaignmode, which is kind of cool.

(54:27):
So your units, you know,if they take damage that carries over into
then following battles and such and playingit with co op. It's pretty seamless
and pretty fun, you guys.A little clunky, like it is with
all these games, but you getused to that pretty quick. Well on,
let me ask a hi you,what did you compare to again,
Wolf? You compared it to Menof War? Yeah, Men of War,
Assault Squad, Yeah, Assault Squad. That's right. It also reminds

(54:51):
me a lot of Company of Heroes. Yeah, I haven't played Company of
here. I've played it. I'veplayed maybe like twenty minutes of like Company
of Heroes too. It was likethe Stalin Grad mission. It was like
the Stalin Grad movie essentially, whereyou're just mowing down your own conscripts or
whatever. That's kind of goofy.So I didn't really care too much for
that one, but maybe if Iplayed it more, I would have enjoyed

(55:13):
it more. Yeah, the Companyof Heroes in one I think was Western
Front. But anyways, it's asimilar gameplay. Yeah, Like you control
your squad, like you know,it's you control multiple squads and vehicles that
are attached to these squads, andyou know, it's very tactical. You
fight over capture points right pretty much? Yeah, yeah, towns, villages,
things like that. There's a deam using quotes here, dynamic campaign

(55:34):
in that game. How does thatwork? Well, there's like a research
tream and it's it reminded me ofFaster than Light, like a roguelike where
you pick where you go each time, and then you fight your battles against
like the Germans for example, Likeyou attack and then they attack, and
then you've captured that point, andthen you move on through this little map

(55:55):
until you reach the final victory point. Huh. That's that really a cool
analogy. Did you just come upwith that? Because that's I can actually
visualize it. I've kind of thoughtabout that like that when I saw that,
like that map, that's immediately whatI thought of because I've I've played
Faster than Light with our other esteemedguest here. Hello. Yeah, yeah,

(56:15):
he's the person who introduced me tothat game. But but yeah,
it works like that. And youknow, you say you have a you
capture a tank, you get thattank, you will that tank will carry
over in the future battles until saidtank is destroyed, and then you can
purchase new units. And such asyou progress. Yeah, that's pretty neat

(56:36):
how that that aspect of it works. I like the persistence of it.
Someday we're gonna have someone on thepodcast who I've actually played games with.
You know, by the time thiscomes out, I may have been ghosted
and stood up by two individuals onthis podcast. Maybe they won't even Maybe
they'll just tell me they're in town, and I'll go and I'll try to
visit there and they won't be there, and it'll be a big joke and
everybody will laugh and I'll feel sad. I forgot I was meeting on a

(57:00):
couple of weeks. A couple ofweeks, it's like next week, Holy
krow. I've been having nightmares aboutit. To be honest, Hey,
for the record, it was noteven my idea. You're like, hey,
we're gonna We're gonna be there,so we want to see the man,
the myth, the legend himself.If it helps you are phg The
one time we've gamed together, itresulted in a clip that is by far

(57:21):
the most popular clip on wolf Talkthree four five. You know how many
times have I been stabbed in theback by wolf Pack? First of the
goddamn logo. Second in this inthat game, someone's gonna be stabbed in
the back. I'm just like,oh, yeah, yeah, it's good
to me. Anyway, I interrupted, But anyway, Call to Arms pretty
cool. It can support up tolike six players. Also, they have

(57:45):
like scripted campaign missions like you seegeSevestipole and then you use like the oh
gosh, the sixty centimeter German orderThor and whatever odin. Yeah use Thor
though, but what there's an actualname for those more? Was it the
Carl Garratt? Yeah, that's it, thank you. But yeah, and
like the amount of units they haveis crazy. Their recent DLC was they

(58:08):
also added the fins and they've announceda new DLC and they're adding the Western
Front. That's all pretty interesting tome. I don't know, as someone
who looked at the Men of Wargames, I was like, I mean,
that looks fun, but I don'twant to learn it. I'm glad
I've gotten into Call to Arms.It's been a blast. Comparable to Call
of Arms a little bit is probablySteel Division. When I first started playing

(58:30):
Call to Arms, I like SteelDivision more, and now I think my
opinion has reversed. I like Gatesof Hell offs Front a lot, Yeah,
Steel Division. I guess this ismy issue with all of those EUGEN
games is it's just it's like toofast paced to where it's silly. Yeah

(58:50):
yeah, And it's like, well, if I wanted to play StarCraft,
I'd play that, yeah, andnot have the World War Two skin over
it. And I really just likethat. You can't watch any of the
action if you're not constantly micromanaging andclicking and like moving around. You can't
ever just take in a moment andjust watch what your people are doing.
That's my problem. Like I wasthe last time I played what Red game

(59:13):
or game Red Dragon or whatever,Like, I was like I was looking
at my units like a fool,and my helicopters get blasted out of the
sky. I was absolutely the worstperson. I was deadweight. I just
wanted to look at the pretty graphicsand I'm sure someone put a lot of
effort into but you don't ever lookat it. And you actually haven't even
mentioned will if one of the coolestfeatures of Gates of Hell is the first

(59:36):
person infantry and tanks and everything.That's exactly what I was thinking of when
I said that. Yeah, likethey have optics modeled for all the all
the tanks, so you can drivearound like, oh, what's a good
comparison like World of Tanks or warThunder or whatever, Like you have better
than World of Tanks for sure.Yeah, I mean like and they have
like realistic ballistics and armor penetration.It's pretty believable. I will say.

(59:59):
I do like maybe the scrambling thecapture equipment can be kind of overdone,
so I do restrict myself in someways doing that. It's like, oh,
we just knocked out a T thirtyfour, let's let's run to it
and capture it. All of mortarsare going off in the background. It's
kind of goofy. So I kindof wait till the battle's over before I
start capturing things. But how doyou feel the game models like one of

(01:00:21):
the big stereotypes of the Eastern Front, which is kind of true and forty
one and forty two ish, butbecomes rapidly less true as the war goes
on, is this notion of likethe Soviet soldier was shit and it was
all human waves and oh my goodness, the Wermach just was buried under a
sea of bodies. I mean ifyou want to do that, you absolutely
can. There are like conscript divisions. I don't know if there's like an

(01:00:45):
execution mechanic or anything like that.I mean, you can't get commissars and
stuff, and they helped boost morale. I don't know if they'll blow someone's
brains out, jeez, but there'sno like a morale system. I guess,
I guess I wouldn't. I wouldn'tsay the game is like this super
realistic simulation of the Eastern Front becauseit's a human player playing against the AI

(01:01:06):
and every battle is going to bedifferent. You're just moving you You're moving
your guys around the map. It'snot like gravity tactics. That would be
an interesting mechanic though, like havingmen break under combat, like under artillery
fire or as you know, anothersquad approaches, like they surrender. Yeah,
Steel Division has that. Steel Divisionhas that? Okay, well you
know actually yeah, yeah, Imean that would that would be a pretty

(01:01:29):
cool mechanic. And then like sayyou have a commissar there, and like
the commissar just pop somebody like it'sWarhammer forty K. So you really want
to get into this killing your ownsoldiers are out here you put a hell
fire into a school. What areyou talking about here, I'm just saying,
I'm just saying it would be cool, Like that's a good way to

(01:01:50):
boost morale and keep your men fighting. But no, there are consu conscript
squads. The Soviet infantry can getpretty good later on. Obviously, definitely
when we do the description for thispodcast, a lot of times I'll put
a little name next to each individualperson on the you know what they represented
on the on the podcast, andit's it's definitely gonna be wolfpack war crimes.
You know, it comes to visita war crime connoisseur. Oh that's

(01:02:14):
a good one. Oh my gosh, it could work for the Germans too.
I'm just say a morale mechanic wouldbe good. Well, honestly,
when you mentioned that, it mademe think of close combat, which I
don't think I intended to talk aboutat all, but at least the classic
close combat games were some of theearlier games that brought that concept of morale

(01:02:37):
and the ability for soldiers to justrandomly break or lose it or become heroic
and like you lose control of them. And they had they had an Eastern
Front. I think close time atthree was The Eastern Front. I didn't
play it much, but I knowit's kind of like you basically fought over
the same map over and over again, or a couple of maps, but
it tried to model the whole EasternFront. I don't think it did a

(01:02:57):
terribly convincing job, but it isone of those as a close combat games.
Well, that's one thing I mustsay. Like in Gates of Hellos
Run, one thing that's really impressedme is the amount of maps in this
dynamic campaign mode. Like we've played. I've played sixty some odd hours of
it now, and I get duplicatesor whatever. It always feels pretty different.
Yeah, you can get the samemap and then just fight over different

(01:03:19):
points or you're you're coming in froma different angle on the map. And
well and it has destructible environments too, which is cool. Yeah, I
mean it's and then like obviously allthe different units you can play with obviously
adds variety as well, Like aT thirty four and where they replace the
bow machine gun with a flamethrower thinkspretty fun. Don't drive an I S
two across the bridge and get Ammoracked that game. It's it's a lot

(01:03:43):
of fun. It's way more funthan I thought i'd have in something like
that. That's probably the most oneI've had in a game and quite a
bit of time. Frankly, it'sbeen hooked on it. Tortuga. Did
you want to talk about any tacticalgames. Probably at least we should mention
Gravia Team Tactics. I think theone that I the most of was MIAs
Front. Yeah. I think itjust does a very good job of representing
tactical combat in the Eastern Front.It's a bit of an older game,

(01:04:06):
and graviteam Tap Tactics has this realstigma that they're they're using your interfaces almost
undecipherable. It was raw. It'sit's like the it's hard. Yeah,
I brooted that bad boy off andall. It's like I should probably watch
a tutorial and it's like, howdo I get to the gameplay? Even

(01:04:26):
that is difficult, Like, yeah, you know, you've got to have
a translation of an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphto understand the UI. It's so bad.
It's just like pictures. At leastthat's what the grave. My only
experience with Gravit Team is it's yeah, what's their what's their other game?
Once you get beyond that, it'sgood. I remember trying to play their
tank game or like Middle Eastern Tankgame. They had an Africa core.

(01:04:49):
I think that's it. Yeah,is that one just as bad? With
U? I? I think so, oh, okay, no, it's
the same. I think that's somethingthat's a shame. They're always games.
When I watch people, they lookthey're very visually impressive and I'm like,
wow, that looks like something thatwould be really awesome to dive into.
And then I turn it on andI'm like, I don't have time for
this. And that is the struggleof gaming. Like I know, everybody

(01:05:13):
like Hearts of Iron. Everyone complainsthat they dumped it down, but like
I get it. It makes sense, like not everybody has time to learn
this stuff. It doesn't make anysense to me. Well, yeah,
it's a gradient, right, everyone'sa different spot on the spectrum. Right.
Some people like Heartspireing three. Iprobably liked Hearts Fire and three,
but my life has changed since then. I probably can't like Hearts Fire and
three or I can appreciate it,but I can't play it. You know,

(01:05:35):
I don't have time, I wantto mention a few more things about
Graviteen tactics before we move on,though, I just want to say that
the campaign of it, the essentiallythe thing which connects to your tactical combat
maps, is really cool. Ithink it's it's well done. It's so
you have like a I don't know, it might be like an eight by
eight or sixteen by sixteen grid squaregrid, and the front is defined,

(01:05:57):
and move your units along the frontalong this grid and the and the front
shifts as you know, the Russiansmay attack this square and then you fight
over that square and the actual tackicalcombat. So it's almost like total war
where you have the turn based stuffat the top level. Everyone shifts their
forces around. If one side commitsto attacking another grid, then you'll you'll
go down into the have a tacticalbattle in that. And I just think

(01:06:21):
it's it's pretty cool because it's likegot this Obviously it's persistent, right,
if you lose units, you haveless units of the you know, they
retreat. You don't lose everything,So you have to be smart about pulling
your troops back. If you're goingto lose the grid, you just don't
waste troops holding a grid you can'tyou know, possibly hold, just pull
them back right away. So ithas a lot of really cool elements of

(01:06:43):
tactical gameplay. That man, it'sjust basically a really great game. And
I think that the engine for penetrationand all that, like the way they
do armor combat is really realistic.It's extreme. It's basically a great game
that is completely mired by its interface. Yeah that's a shame, because,
like even you're just talking about itmakes me want to just boot it up

(01:07:04):
and figure it out because it looksamazing. If you want to investigate it,
go ahead. I actually enjoy justwatching other people play it because that
way I don't have to I'm watchingsomebody who already learned the interface, And
even just watching someone else play itis fun to me because the game is
it is pretty good. Well,I guess that's something like as someone who
I would want to make YouTube videoson it, and I'd only want to

(01:07:27):
do that if I were proficient atthe game. I just feel like the
amount of time I'd have to putinto it to even get proficient with the
UI would be quite a bit.So that's something else I kind of weighed.
This sounds like a John Tiller game. It's not because it's it's got
beautiful well I'm not beautiful, butit's got pretty good graphics. I mean
they look pretty good. I thinkfor games like this, they look pretty

(01:07:48):
good. And the way they dothe like artillery strikes. You have to
have a spotter who will help yourI mean, everything is very well done.
You call on a moat to strikehere, but it may not land
right there. You may see that. You could do a spotting round and
then every subsequent round after that wouldbe closer. They have a lot of
a lot of the really realistic gameplayelements are in there and compelling. Just

(01:08:10):
unfortunately again it's it's really hard tolearn the game. How does it compare
to something like or combat mission?Oh my gosh, that's exactly what I
was thinking about. It's about toask, isn't there a combat in an
Eastern Front combat mission game? Imean, the best one was Barbaros at
of Berlin, which was which wasthe Eastern Front. They've had a couple
of other like the last one,Red Thunder, was the bag Gracian Red
Thunder. Yeah, bag Gracian,which is like The newer Combat Mission series

(01:08:34):
just focused on forty four to fortyfive, so you get a lot of
late war equipment. Sorry, holdon, I'm an idiot. Which one
is combat mission? Is that?The one top down tactical two D?
Or is that is combat mission?The like turn based sixty seconds at a
time, so they have real timenow too. The classic combat mission was

(01:08:56):
issue your orders, end your turn, watch it resolved simultaneously over sixty seconds
where you have no control, andthen it stops and your issue orders again.
Right, Okay, Okay, that'sthe super realistic one now, Okay,
but with the second with the secondgeneration of those games, which has
been out for like fifteen years now, so it's not like it's not new.

(01:09:16):
The later games, starting with ShockForce and including Red Thunder, which
is Operation back Ray Shan, thosehave the original sixty second option. But
I think most people play in pausiblereal time where you issue orders, everything
happens in real time, and youcan pause if you need to, but
otherwise it's like pause, play,pause, play pause play. Okay,

(01:09:36):
I was thinking of combat or closecombat, but no, yeah, Comba
Mission. I haven't played any EasternFront version of that. Yeah, I
have it, I've I've just playedShock Force too, I guess. Oh
actually no, never, man,I take that back. I have played,
but only a very little of it. Yeah, I think it's it's
kind of similar, except for thefact that this is like really meant to
be much more real time ish,and that one is at least the game

(01:09:59):
I played for the Eastern Front wasyou know, you issue orders, you
watch the term play out, youknow, just as ts she said.
I wonder if you played Barbaros atof Berlin or if you just didn't know
you had a setting and could changeto change that on the newer games,
because you can change that. Ithink by default it's real time on the
newer ones. Yeah, I'm curioushow it compares from what I've seen.
I think combat Mission is a littlebit smaller scale. Like Combat Mission tends

(01:10:23):
to be battles at the battalion orless level. Graviteam feels like maybe up
to the regimental level, at leastthat's what it looks like to me.
Maybe I'm wrong on that. Well, the whole front is probably probably a
battalion, no, maybe maybe yourbrigade, but the individual battles, I
think it's a it can be comparable. Probably, you're right, it's a
little bit bigger in Graviteam tactics,But it also depends on how many how

(01:10:46):
many like units are in the onegrid do you order like individual tanks and
squads around or how much micromanagement controldo you have in Graviteam. Yeah,
it's you're down to the individual tankor to individual squads. Okay, so
it's similar to Combat Mission. Thenthe user interface, in my opinion is
it's still pretty dated in Combat Mission, but it's more discernible for me,

(01:11:08):
so it's easier to pick up andplay. My biggest complaint with Combat Mission
is I never really feel like theircampaigns are very well done. Like it
feels like if I want to justjump in and play a one hour or
two hour long contained scenario to takea hill, that I can do that
pretty well. In Combat Mission,it has a lot of the same limitations
that you're talking about. In termsof to call an artillery you probably you

(01:11:28):
don't have to, but you shouldprobably use a spotter if you do a
If you do like a non spotter, you get penalties in terms of accuracy
and time generally, like you wantto use a spotter. You only have
so much off map artillery. Youknow, there's delays between when you issue
orders. Like it sounds like there'sa lot of similarities with Gravi A Team,
But my biggest complaint with Gravi aTeam is that or not Gravi A

(01:11:49):
Team with combat Mission, I typicallywant to play more than just like one
battle. I'd like an operation.I'd like a campaign. I'd like a
sense of continuity between battles, buildyour own band of brothers type story,
right, like where you're telling thestory of a unit over the course of
a campaign or a war or whatever. And while combat Mission has gotten better,
in the original games, it wasjust like an operation that was like

(01:12:11):
once you were in the map expandeda little bit, but that was about
it. Now they're more scripted scenarioswhere it's like you have multiple battles linked,
but if you fail to win thebattle, there's no like failure path.
It's just you lose and you gottaplay again until you win, and
then when you win, your lossesdo carry over to a certain extent,
but that's about it. Like there'sno real sense of dynamism in the campaign.

(01:12:33):
I'm curious how either either gravit teamhandles that or does Gates of Hell,
Like, can you lose in Gatesof Hell? Then you fight another
battle after losing, Yeah, youcan. If you lose too much,
then the campaign will end. Sure, like you have your own like you
have the German objective or the enemyobjective for example, but also the enemy's

(01:12:56):
pushing to yours. So gotcha.What about in graviteam torture? You know,
I don't know if I've ever finisheda full campaign of it, but
you know, in any given tacticalsquare, you can certainly lose. And
I feel like what you described acontinuous persistent campaign. That is what graviting
tactics is. You know, whenyour forces take losses, you have to
pull them back and then pull themback like all the way to the edge

(01:13:18):
of the map where and then spendlike a couple of turns waiting for them
to get reinforced. But if youdon't do that, when they fight the
next battle, they're in the sameshape they were when they left the last
battle. Does a logistics play arole like ammunition and things like that,
Yes, but I don't I honestlydon't remember. It's been a while since
I played, Like how how AMMOreinforcement works. I wonder if you have

(01:13:42):
to go to the edge map forthat too. Frankly, I don't remember,
because like there's an ammunition. There'sa factor in the campaigns or whatever
they call campaigns and combat mission,where depending on the campaign, you'll get
either like different levels of supply basedon the situation in the war, and
you might not only get partial supplyor full resupply or other things like that.
But I was curious how graviteam handlesthat, since it sounds like it's

(01:14:04):
the campaign at one. It soundslike the more you talk about it,
the more it sounds like I shouldreally go try and figure that game out,
because it sounds pretty cool. Imean, I hope I'm not.
I'm not. I hope I'm not, you know, putting on my rose
tinted goggles and only remembering the goodthings about it, I mean, I
what I from what I remembered,I actually did play enough of it.
I still just didn't like to usetheir interface. And actually one of the

(01:14:26):
downsides of it, I guess thisis kind of like my comments about War
in the East. It is kindof a longer game. It takes a
long time if you want to playit correctly. When you start any tactical
battle in the grid, you haveto set up all your forces, which
means you're positioning every vehicle, everysquad. So there's the strategic map which
has that like whatever, sixteen bysixteen or ten by ten square grid.

(01:14:48):
But then we go to the tactilemap. It's comprised also of like a
huge maybe like two hundred by twohundred grid as well, and then each
one of those is a potential placewhere you can put in placements down.
You can put trenches, you canput like I don't know whatever, and
also you can put your troops there. Do you put your troops at you
know, grid one oh seven ordo you put them at one oh eight?

(01:15:11):
That one has better? You know, you have to make all these
decisions. It means essentially for somebodylike me who's very min maxi and kind
of like bogs down in those things, the game takes a long time to
play. So if you're if youcan just do it things a little more
quickly rashly even, you probably enjoythe game a little bit more. Are
there any other games any of youwant to talk? About I'm not sure

(01:15:32):
I have anything else on my list. We talked about pretty much everything finish.
Do you have anything you want totalk about? No, I mean
that pretty much covers it for me. Didn't THHD You mentioned IL two?
Oh yeah, I wanted to talkabout IL two. You guys play IL
two a lot. I know it'snot really like a traditional war game in
the sense, but it's obviously it'sa flight sim and it's also tank sim.

(01:15:53):
More people need to be playing tankcrew. By the way, I
remember watching the stream of your wolfas a while ago now and you like
was the drug stream? You knowthat tends to happen when he plays that.
I don't maybe he's just bringing hisinter rushing out. But you had
like you had like a formation.I think it was like six tanks,
like all the breast of each other. Yeah, no, there are way
more than that, even like wegot we got like over ten tanks,

(01:16:16):
like almost there were no Germans.Oh yeah, oh yeah, we were
all playing as a Soviets. Butbut yeah, no, that that was
that was pretty cool seeing that manylike played player tanks and like, I
don't know, it's a realistic tamegame like that just like hell let loose,
Yeah, tank combat and hell Iloose or something. I don't particularly

(01:16:38):
enjoy it, but i'le two youcould, you could almost say i'le two
has I mean at least some someof the community service that are up the
one that we are playing, eventhe one you do the tanks. There's
objectives that can go back and forth, and it's kind of like almost like
an MMO. Yeah, oh yeah, that's how it is. I mean,
you can capture different objectives and everyperson's only one person, but it's

(01:16:59):
you're watching the tactical battle play outright. No, yeah, for sure.
One of the things I really likeabout IL two is how you can
have like a career as an individual, and it does give like a sense
of permanence and a sense of storyto a game that like something like DCS
doesn't have. I enjoyed that alot, because like I love simulation games,
but I also really enjoy RPGs,and that that pilot career mode is

(01:17:24):
like, I don't know, theclosest you can kind of get to building
the two and where it lacks ina lot of areas, and that's where
I kind of like writing my ownpilot stories. And stuff. But yeah,
no, it's enjoyable, it's neat. I do wish DCS had something
similar to that. Maybe someday they'llhave a dynamic campaign. They're they're working
on it, and I said,they've been working on it for a while

(01:17:45):
because I stream quite a bit ofDCS. It's just like making YouTube videos
in DCS is like the way Iwant them edited and such is difficult.
Well, I'll two, lets yourecord the entire hire map, right,
like everything that's going on in themap, so then you can go in
and edit the video and like changewhere you want the camera angles and things

(01:18:06):
like that. Right. Yeah,DCS has something like that as well,
but it's it has problems. Whatdo you like about Aisle two finish?
You you played tank Crew quite abit with wolf Pack, right, that's
right? Yeah, I love Iguess I love the realism of the tanks
with your range. You have tosit in your range, get accurate shots,

(01:18:26):
lead your targets. I think thedamage model is really excellent. Tanks
look great, interiors landscape does notlook landscape does not look that in great.
Yeah, but the interiors are beautiful. Yeah, the landscape is not
good. But and that's what playingGates of Hell. It's like, Man,
if a tank game had even thislevel of detail on the ground,

(01:18:47):
I would be happy. Like thebar is so low, does give me
something that's not worth under I guessLittle Gun or Heat PC is kind of
working on that. But I likethe World War two setting. Sorry,
I just won. One of myfavorite thing is about Isle two Tank Crew
was when I would run into thoseinvisible trees that would break my treads.
That sucks, but I do thinkback to I think the first time Wolf

(01:19:08):
and I played multiplayer Tank Crew andI don't even know a tank where we
in like pans or threes or tthirty fours. Anyway, we saw some
enemy players on a bridge and therewas kind of like the panic and there
was the excitement, the adrenaline.I was like, man, it's really
experienced that moment once. That's yeah, And that's the feeling that evonline used
to give me and it and likeTarkov kind of gave me, and like,

(01:19:30):
I don't know, I chase thatthat rush that a game can give
you. That's Pan Crew kind ofdid for a while, which I enjoyed.
Yeah, but the Cat and Mouse, man, it's it can be
intense a senseful. It's just likeskill versus skill. We were in pans
or fours and we were fighting ina town. I remember that. That's
like one of my favorite memories ofASLE too. Really be cool if it

(01:19:50):
had like actual infantry as opposed tojust like fix position whatever. Didn't they
say something about that? Yeah thatI happened anymore? What's going on with
that dev team? That's the question. Yeah, I don't even know anymore.
Yeah, I mean, we're talkingabout tanker and how great it is,
but I think I'm not sure theirdevelopment plans in the future. Did

(01:20:11):
they ever release like when Normandy cameout for the I L two Air Combat,
was there ever a tank crew equivalent? No dress A few more if
you guys just done, Just justgive me a twenty more minutes. I
got a few more twenty minutes Ireally need. There's like a what's that
like old timey movie sound effect whereit's just like for a mon like someone
who won't stop. Did Charlie Brownwant Want Want on the phone? Yeah?

(01:20:35):
Yeah, maybe I was thinking moreof like it's like the comedy things
where like you were going through likeseven different things where the guy just keeps
hurting himself. What are you talkingabout? I can't what is this?
What is this crazy man going onabout? Yeah, I don't know what
you're talking about. Do these filmshave sound or no sound? I think
it's a man? Yeah? Ohyeah, it was talks you see real

(01:21:00):
Yeah, a fold of talk.Ye? All right, old man,
give us an outro. I don'thave an outro, Tortuga. I wanted
to talk about it. You go, tourtuga. All right. Well,
anyways, this has been a veryentertaining podcast to record. I hope it's
been entertaining to listen to. Althoughsuppose that's up to tcheet to edit this
into something whoa reasonable to listen to? Will we see this podcast in twenty

(01:21:24):
twenty three? Probably not. Letme just do this real fast, then
finish. Do you have anything youwant to say? Conclude with you want
to pitch your charcoal underscore cheetah twitchdot tv account. You didn't for me,
that's it? Follow me, don'tfollow me. I don't, I
don't care, I don't stream,So you're WHOA. I think I said
that last time. He's playing Decisivecampaigns Barbarossa on his Twitch stream you can

(01:21:46):
go watch it there. Wolf Yeah, I guess I'll plug my twitch wolf
Pack three four or five live.I'll pug my, I'll plug. I'll
plug my YouTube channel, wolf Packsix seven eight. That's where you got.
I should go and check that out. You're about to have Balder's Gate
three content on that channel, right, I think so. I think our
will. But if you want tosee wolf Pact three four fives, I'll

(01:22:11):
two content that'll be on three fourfive still right, I don't know that
person. Actually, you got thewrong guy on the podcast. Whoa I
mean, at least they can gowatch your Gates of Fell stuff, right,
I'm not Wolf Pact on wolf Pactthree four five live. You can
but the wolf Pact three four fivechannel. I don't know that guy.
What would you like to plug theHistorical Gamer? Well, we don't plug
anything. We're the hosts. Theyplugged the next episode of the podcast.

(01:22:35):
Please come back. It won't beatthis bad, I swear well. Thank
you very much everybody for tuning into get another episode of the Single Malt
Strategy podcast. This was podcast episodenumber eighty where we talked about the Eastern
Front. I don't know why I'msaying that because you just presumably listened to
two hours of that, they probablydidn't know what it was about. After
all, we talked about, whatwas this about. I do appreciate everybody

(01:22:57):
for tuning in to get another episodeto make host Tortuga thank you for coming
out, and to our lovely guestswolf Pack three four five but not apparently
on YouTube by that same name.Uh and uh and oh we cut that
bit? Oh we did? Okay, I don't even remember reading the outro.

(01:23:21):
I don't know well. And there'ssomeone named Finish Jager on this podcast.
Might also be Finished Jaguar or couldbe a charcoal cheetah. I don't
know. He's he's a man ofmany identities. But thanks again for coming
out, guys,

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Single Malt Strategy: Episode 80 | Wargaming the Eastern Front | Ft. Wolfpack345 and Charcoal Cheetah

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Single Malt Strategy: Episode 80 | Wargaming the Eastern Front | Ft. Wolfpack345 and Charcoal Cheetah