Return to the Third World War: A Review of the GMT
Games Edition of MBT
by Jim Werbaneth
Fictional Battles, Fictional Game: Battalion-Level
Battles of World War III, in Dawn’s Early Light
by Jim Werbaneth
Line of Departure Support: Anti-Aircraft Counters for
Avalon Hill’s Victory in the Pacific
by Rev. Jack A. Werth
Raiders of the China Seas:
Additional Scenarios for Avalanche Press’ U.S. Navy Plan Orange
by
Jim Werbaneth
Second Front Now!: The Campaign
in the West, in Fortress Europa
by Jim Werbaneth
Guns in the Forest: The
Climactic Battle of Pontiac’s Rebellion, in The Battle of Bushy Run
by Jim Werbaneth
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by Jim Werbaneth
Welcome to the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of Line of Departure. It
has come a long way from the early nineties, when it was written and laid out
with WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, CGA graphics, and a dot matrix printer. I know
that WordPerfect is still around and has its loyal fans, but rest are not things
anymore. Honestly, back then I had no idea that the magazine would last this
long. I had no plans to fold it in a few months or years, it was always a
long-term project, but a lifespan of decades was beyond expectations.
Nor
do I have any plans on stopping.
The one struggle was to get the
publication schedule back on track. This issue was supposed to come out just
before Halloween, but then some medical issues came up. None were life
threatening, nor even really bad, plus some were not even mine. But they did
divert my attention. Well, most of those problems seem to be in hand, and I’m
collecting material for the next issue even now, which has always been my
preference from even before the beginning. I’m getting back to it.
As I
was writing articles for Issue 79, I was conscious that this was going to be a
landmark issue, and thus I should be doing something special. It was one time
that the maga-zine had to have a theme. Besides, Line of Departure
started with a theme, as the premier issue concentrated on naval gaming. This
time, I decided to return to a theme that I’d used before, a couple of times,
and make this the third Amer-icans at War issue. Almost every issue of Line
of Departure has at least one project featuring the United States in some
way, involving Americans, pre-independence colonists, or American territory in
some way. The Battle of Bushy Run counts that way; there were Americans
in the British force, and the battlefield is in the middle of Westmoreland
County, Pennsylvania, a bit more than an hour east of my house.
It just
seemed natural to return to this theme. Then in the spring, I’ll step back from
embracing an overarching theme, and return to a wider range of subjects.
As promised in Issue 78, this issue marks a transition from one
frequently-appearing fan favorite to its successor. The summer 2016 installment
of Line of Departure made its farewell to the Avalon Hill edition of
MBT, with scenarios profiling the West German army. The expectation was
to support the newer version of the game, recently published by GMT. This issue
leads off with a review of the new game, starting what I expect to be years of
coverage, including new scenarios, and projects on the planned expansion sets
too. In addition, I see no reason why Line of Departure can’t cover the
GMT editions of the Panzer series as well.
That goes to one of
my long term plans for the magazine’s scenarios and supplements. Overall, there
has been a heavy reliance on modern topics and Avalon Hill titles for that,
especially Firepower and MBT. More recently, Line of
Departure has started to give attention to SPI modern games, specifically
the original Red Star/White Star and TaskForce. I certainly am
eager to look to other eras and publishers in addition to these old reliables.
With this issue, I offer some new scenarios for the Great Pacific War That
Didn’t Happen, in Avalanche Press’ U.S. Navy Plan Orange. I definitely
intend to expand the magazine’s supplements and scenarios further in the future.
There is one change that I have to make, and I do this very reluctantly. For
the first time in over eight years, I have to raise prices, effective March 1.
Postage has gone up steadily, and so have the costs of getting the magazine
printed. While I have always been stubborn about holding prices down as much as
possible, there comes a time when I have to give in to basic economics. This is
one of them.
So effective March 1, the price of a subscription for
addresses in the United States and Canada will go up to $30.00, and for those in
other countries the price will be $38.00. The basic domestic and Canadian price
for single issues will be $8.00 each, and $11.00 for everywhere else. As before,
Pennsylvania residents will have to pay seven percent state and Allegheny County
sales tax on single issues, but not on subscriptions. Therefore, I definitely
encourage readers to resubscribe before the new prices kick in.
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