Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Three Battalions of Himmlisch Drachen Stamm

Episode 8 of War Journal: Flames of War was release over the weekend. If you haven't heard it yet you can listen to it here. The episode is a week late due to various issues, some of which I will discuss in the future when the pain is not as raw. I do want to expand on Episode 8's "Our Hobby" segment. I was a little nervous and I don't think I explain my three Battalions very well.

First I said I was going to named my army the Ruby Dragon Army. I misspoke. What I should have said was that I was going to named a branch of my army the Ruby Dragon Army. I also failed to mention that at this stage all my ideas have a historic mirror. The mirror for the Ruby Dragon Army was the Heer. I'm also toying with names for other branches of my army; Emerald, Sapphire and Diamond. If I go with these names Sapphire will be the mirror for the Luftwaffe and Diamond for the SS. I am more up in the air for what to use Emerald as. If I eventually go into more supernatural fantasy the Emerald Dragon Army could be the force that has steam punk elements like mechs or I could go into the mundane and use Emerald as the mirror for the Kriegsmarine/Navy. As far as I know Kriegsmarine is not in Flames of War in any way so it doesn't matter how I use Emerald Dragon until I bring Himmlisch Drachen Stamm to another game.

I touch on this lightly but the reason I am putting so much effect into the design structure of my army before I paint or even put anything together yet is because it does affect how the model looks. For example take the 3 digit number that is on many German tanks. That first digit refers to what company that tank is from so I need to know what company that tank belongs to when I'm painting it. I am sure there will be other things that are battalion or company specific that will affect the look of the model, either historically or of my own creation.

Bridge at Remagen has 4 German list to play as. Three are Heer and they work together. By working together I mean under the Support Platoons section of each list you can take elements from the other two. The fourth list is a SS one and their options for support are completely different with the exception of the 512th Heavy Tank Hunter Battalion 3rd Company. And the 3rd Company didn't work with the rest of the 512th. This basically means I have a choice between two separate webs/interconnected choices. Of the 4 lists the 512th is my favorite to play with so I pick the web that the 512th was apart of. So those three Heer list are 512th Heavy Tank Hunter Company, 654th Heavy Tank Hunter Battalion and the 506th Heavy Tank Battalion. All three are battalions so I am making my fantasy versions also battalions (the game list name for the 512th is Company but the description refers to it as the 512th Heavy Tank Hunter Battalion). I decided to call my versions of the Heavy Tank Hunter Battalions the Fire Dragon Battalions and for the Heavy Tank Battalion I call mine the Red Dragon Tank Battalion. I haven't decided on numbers yet. However to me it is more important to know what will be my unified forces.

Next I was going to break down what options can be used in other list but at this point it will not matter much. I will be starting with the 1st Company of the 512th and they have no options to take 654th or the 506th (they do have the option to take 512th 1st Company). At my current rate it will be many months before I would be ready to pick up anything from the 512th 2nd Company, 654th or the 506th and there is no telling if my plans will remain the same then. Say nothing of the fact that I still want to build an Italian force at the same time. Nevertheless I think I have address the elements I wanted to talk about. The big thing was the deal with Ruby/Heer which I completely failed to mention in the podcast. Hopefully my ideas are a lot clearer here but I am not sure if that is the case. If not, I'm sorry. In any event I hope you enjoy the podcast as well as this piece. Until next time!

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