Yep, my first event ever was the fall 1996 eastern front at North Vernon. I mentioned the "crappy trenches"... those that have been there have to know what I'm talking about! For those that weren't: the water table was so shallow there, that you couldn't dig much past 3-4 feet. Some industrious people actually built a couple small bunkers on higher ground (and they were good), but for the most part, we didn't have trenches deep enough. We made up for it by building up the front of the trenches & emplacements. Also, the lines were so close together that at one point a Soviet unit expanded their positions within grenade range of our lines! It was especially bad when the leaves were not on the trees... you could easily look through the woods and see most of what the enemy was doing. BUT, in the end, between Dan Welch and a few others, the managed to keep us having a blast. I'll never forget one event when I was doing Wiking, we had one end of the line, with barely over a Gruppe holding it...... next thing we hear is "ZA RODINA!!!!" and 70-odd angry Russians immediately yelling "UURRAAHHHH!!!!". fraking shite!! The best part was when they overran the trench we were in, a couple of us were still kickin', and up comes 2 Reds with PPSh-41's, emptying their drums at the remaining Wiking & all the rest of us "dead" for good measure. Spine-tingling, I tell ya!
We had a few eastern fronts at Rensselaer... started off alternating, with the fall event western, and the spring eastern. The first one was 100 Germans vs. 25 Russians, but the following year we did a "battle of Narva" scenario, where I limited the Germans to portraying the 3.SS Panzerkorps (regular W-SS from "Nordland", Estonians, and Dutch). It seemed to work, as the Germans were about 70 strong, and some of the guys that would have normally shown up as German did Soviet (60 of them that day). It was not the best event ever, but probably one of the most overall successful that I ever had the pleasure to run. We'd even managed to set up a BA-10 armored car turret as a pillbox... the one that was actually found in the woods around Narva being used as such! I love that kinda stuff....
But yeah, my point was that maybe the scenarios that have special invites or authenticity rules for the Germans are the way to go. I haven't heard too much about Newville these days... I know that GD still does it, and apparently it's just them and a couple "buddy" units, and open invite to all Soviets. (I gotta get out there one of these days and do a raid on Bob's bunker!!) Whatever kind of limiting factor you can come up with is probably the ticket.
Yeah, why do people spend hundreds or thousands on stuff that they play with for 1 day like that?? Soviets spend way less and maximize it... maybe the decadent ethics of the capitalists are showing through
I do miss Rachel.... lost track of her after her divorce. And I certainly miss Dan too. Last I heard he's been running the Russian side at the Zavalla, TX events (Howard's farm).
