September 17 is ‘Ladislav Day’ in Lodowice. When there isn’t a war on, citizens gather on North Bridge to commemorate a Catholic priest drowned by Protestant rioters in 1621. After tossing little decorated crucifixes into the Vistula at precisely midday (Saint Ladislav was lashed to a crucifix before his fatal baptism/cruise) locals hurry down to South Bridge clutching long-handled nets to see whose crucifix has completed the journey first. Strictly speaking, Poohsticks was invented in Poland in the Seventeenth Century.
I’m regaling you with this chunk of irrelevant local lore, because, to be frank, without a bit of padding today’s turn report would be awfully thin. Turn 13 turns out to be unlucky for precisely nobody. Absolutely no-one is killed, wounded, or fired upon during this sixty-second burst of play-by-comment PVP Combat Mission: Red Thunder.
Although there are some fairly dramatic vehicular developments, none lead to violence. Observed by the spotter planes of both sides…
The Tiger ambles onto Warsaw Street, advances a short distance, pauses, then reverses westward into the lee of the planetarium.
The SU-100 scurries north along the map’s righthand edge before pivoting onto East Street. It finishes halted next to the alley where, a few seconds earlier, the Soviet halftrack also came to a stop.
The German truck arrives at its destination (f16N) roughly halfway through the sixty. Like the Blue Team’s HT, perhaps it was dropping off personnel, perhaps it simply fancied a Sunday drive.
Invisible to the spotter planes were this turn’s numerous infantry movements. Only one person – yours truly – knows the current location of all of the scenario’s footsloggers.
^ Rough guide to current AFV positions and recent movement
Next order deadline: Saturday night
Well, I’m back from the food stands. Did I miss anything?
I got kaszanka – you can’t go wrong with something fried, right? Right?
Just a little tip: avoid the soup counter.
Avoid standing downwind of the soup counter.
I absolutely love the lore drop!
Thanks.
I can’t imagine it’s easy to write when you have to hide both sides from your audience.
I almost feel like it would be more fun for those watching to know all that is going on and get to watch the dominoes fall in predicable but epic ways.
But keeping folks from cheating would be a real dilemma, and it would greatly increase the amount Tim would have to do to write three versions.
> I can’t imagine it’s easy to write when you have to hide both sides from your audience.
To be honest I hadn’t planned to run Lions of Lodowice like this. My original intention was to manually control the infantry units of both sides using pre-written AI-style instructions (‘Move quickly to XXX then attempt to ambush anything crossing YYY bridge’-sort of thing) but the fairly rapid demise of the majority of the armour prompted a rethink.