Real life evasion

Return to Tannenberg!

Last weekend's plans for research were stuffed by an inordinate workload. My only respite was the rugby so its a good job England won!

Looking forward in hope to this weekend, I have just competed another round of thinking on sources for the game. Having already got both Russian and British first hand accounts I have now turned up Max Hoffman's memoir of the Eastern front.

Max, left, and chums at Brest-Litovsk 1917

This is entitled "The War of Lost Opportunities" and is available on line. It is a very easy read and one gets a real impression of the man behind the glasses.


Being slightly frustrated by my current sources for the narrative I have returned to Amazon and with the help of a nice gift certificate have ordered today "Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914" by Denis Showalter. Denis is an American historian of whom I was unaware until I recently started looking at some books on the Red Army. He has a good rep and I'm looking forward to getting into the detail.

I have also taken the opportunity to look into my games boxes and have come up with both the 1978 SPI "Tannenberg" game and also "When Eagles Fight" from Command Magazine. Both bring back happy memories so I just have to resist them to get on with my design. 

If I'm too tired to do anything sensible tomorrow I'll get the crayons out and play with some counter designs.