MMP Spring 2015 Customer Update

Another great WO!

Winter Offensive 2015 saw a record number of Offenders supporting the WWII Foundation: 165 paid and attending, plus various hangers on. Oh, yeah. Hakkaa Päälle made its debut and has now started shipping. And oh, yeah: Winter Offensive Bonus Pack #6 (proceeds from which benefit the WWII Foundation) went on sale and is now available.

We are happy to announce our Winter Offensive 2015 ASL Champion JR Tracy (6-0)

2nd place Jeff Coyle (5-1) was JR’s opponent in the final round.

JR and Jeff played ASL 170, “11th Company Counterattack” from the new module. JR had the Finns to Jeff Coyle’s Soviets. This is a very small scenario, with high sniper numbers on both sides. JR had to break every Soviet MMC on board, and counted on the high sniper number to pull its weight. Sure enough, it wounded Jeff’s best leader early, and killed his second best leader in the mid game. Jeff had decent luck versus JR’s AFVs though, killing one BT-42 with an ATR and avoiding the other after it dropped its transmission on a start-up roll. Despite the poor showing of the Finnish armor, JR was able to squeeze Jeff into the back corner of the map. Jeff was getting no joy from decent attacks, while JR continued breaking entire stacks with 2(+2) snake-eyes (Finns don’t cower!). In the end, the loss of leadership combined with sharp-eyed Finnish marksmanship was enough to seal a dicey Finnish win.

3rd Paul Chamberland (5-1)

4th Bob Bassin (5-1)

Honorable Mention Ray Woloszyn (4-0).

Ray played four WO Bonus Pack scenarios to lead the Pack pack. JR played four Hakkaa Paalle! scenarios while he cut down all his opponents.

Winter Offensive Mini Tournaments

As usual, we ran several mini tournaments at WO this year. These all featured brand new scenarios that needed some playtesting. This year, we used scenarios from the upcoming Korean War module and the upcoming Dinant HASL. We ran two minis for each, with scenarios and special rules carefully crafted courtesy of Chas Argent.

The Korean War scenarios had increasingly complicated rules, and both Chas and the participants put a lot of work into them. The Dinant scenarios were no walk in the park either.

Tourney winners were:

• Korean War #1: Jeff Coyle
• Korean War #2: Vince Maresca
• Dinant #1: Bob Bassin
• Dinant #2: Dave Reenstra

Congrats to the winners, and thanks to all our mini tournament playtesters. With your help we’ve come that much closer to getting these fine products on preorder.

More than just ASL…

Winter Offensive 2015 also saw plenty of action from our other game lines. Once again, the Gamers crew set up their monster game table and hosted a play through of SCS It Never Snows. The Great Campaigns of the Civil Warseries saw its usual strong turn out and even some Line of Battle andOperational Combat Series games were played.

Also in rotation was MMPs newest release, Salerno.

We want to thank to all the Offenders for their attendance and support of the WWII Foundation. With your help we raised over $10,000!

It’s looking to be another exciting year at MMP. Plenty of great games in various stages of production. At this point, our scheduled release queue will look something like this:

• Kawaguchi’s Gamble (Area Move System) – An Area Move game which simulates what was possibly Japan’s best chance to crack the Marine perimeter around Henderson Airfield and drive the Americans off Guadalcanal.
• Beyond The Rhine (OCS) – The OCS finally covers the Western Front from Sept 1944 to April 1945. Four main maps and an extra single map allowing play of the Ardennes Offensive in isolation.
• Day of Days (SCS) – A 4 map SCS monster in the footsteps of It Never Snows covering the first 10 days of the invasion. Players use an activation Command Point system to control their forces in a realistic fashion.

ASL Product Update

• Hakkaa Päälle! is now shipping! Thanks to all who pre-ordered!
• Work continues on a new Action Pack covering the American 29th Infantry Division in Normandy, with scenarios designed by Perry Cocke, Ken Dunn, and Brian Youse. Actions run the gamut from a Seaborne Assault on Omaha Beach on D-Day to the defense of Pointe du Hoc to plenty of action in the bocage. This will have two maps and a single sheet of overlays.
• The ASL Overlay Bundle is wrapping up in layout and we expect to see it on pre-order later this year. This will feature all of the non-Deluxe overlays in one package, with all art updated by Kurt Miller.
• Layout continues on Yanks, which will be the next core module to see a 2nd edition reprint. 40 scenarios, including 16 from originalYanks and Paratrooper, will be included, along with an updated American Chapter H and eight maps. Look for it on pre-order later this year.
• Work also proceeds on the Korean War ASL module following our MIni-Tournaments at Winter Offensive. In those minis, players were able to use some of the new maps from the module. One unusual feature of the four maps included is that, while each may be employed individually, all four combine with one another to form one large hill mass. Look for this on pre-order in late 2015.

From the Gamers’ Division

• The Last Blitzkreig (BCS) – The long awaited first game in the Battalion Combat Series (BCS) covering the Ardennes Offensive on four maps of exquisite detail. The BCS was originally intended as merely a scale-change version of the OCS rules, but it became much more than that… the design goal was to introduce a vision of battalion level warfare that players had never experienced before, but in an easy to learn and play format. Multiple scenarios allow the player to pick and choose the size of the game being played and what the conditions of the offensive (i.e. balance between the sides) he wants to see.
• Panzer Battles (SCS)- Applying the popular game specific rules of the SCS games It Never Snows, Bastogne, and the coming Day of Days, Panzer Battles examines the classic fight for the Chir River defense line in December, 1942. Here you’ll get to actually execute the famous fire brigade action of the 11th Panzer Division as depicted in the book of the same name. Two maps give players some maneuver room for some very wild and exciting active defense action
• Monocacy & Ft. Stevens (LOB) – This is the third game in the LoB series and is a dual title covering both the Battle of Monocacy and the potential Battle of Ft. Stevens in one package. Both are part of Jubal Early’s 1864 campaign threatening Washington DC. Players are able to use their results from their Monocacy fight to determine the forces and timing of their chances at Ft. Stevens. Obviously, as Lincoln put it ‘Mr. Early was late’ … now you can see if you can do better.
• North Africa (SCS) – Using the award winning OCS game DAK as a base, this is a monster SCS game showing the desert campaign using a very clean set of game specific rules. There has been a little confusion as to the relationship of this game to the existing SCS Afrika and Afrika II titles… well, this game is four times their size and makes use of the extensive research effort that was poured into the DAK monster game. It is a large, but very easy to play game that uses a unique activation system whereby players don’t activate units (as is usual), but rather bid on the turn sequence they want to use… in other words, they buy phases.

Odds and Ends

• Here Come The Rebels II (GCACW) – The GCACW design and development teams continue reprinting the original editions of this exciting series with updated graphics and the latest rules.
• Tetsuya Nakamura has also been busy and coming soon to IGS his first monster game on all of Barbarossa using the same system in his popular A Victory Lost series. Look for this one coming soon to prepub.
• Special OPS #6. Once again, MMP will release our annual issue of Special Ops at WBC. This year featuring the newest title to utilize our exciting “Storm Over…” system, “Storm Over Normandy”.
• Reprints. A number of out of print titles are being considered for reprint. Look for your chance to get a copy of these often sought after titles.

Brian, Perry, and the crew at MMP