A nurse, even in German uniform, seems like low value target, yes?

Red Army does not have bullets to waste. Is why we use snipers. One shot, one kill, yes?  Your SS officer friend, on other hand...

And thank you all for the warm welcomes!

You know the best part of this whole thing may be that I'm learning some great German words, like fünfhunderfünfundfünfzig.

English doesn't have good words like that.  Words like syzygy, floccinaucinihilipilification, and quintessance are wacky and all but they'll never be half as cool as trantüte.

You are learning these excellent German words and I am learning about Eastern Front. Some of the interesting things:

https://mashable.com/2016/07/30/soviet-women-snipers/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Uranus

There's more, of course, but you will need to learn later.

I look forward to shooting Nazis in heads.

And by the way, this-



-is excellent word.

Let us see how many ways I can say 'good-bye' to the sniped during this game, yes?

---

And seriously, earlier today I commented to our esteemed GM that it's amazing how often coming up with backgrounds for characters causes me to do research and learn new things. In this case I knew that there were a decent number of Russian women that were snipers in WWII (though I didn't realize it was in the 2,500 range), but I certainly learned a bit more about them. Particularly Lyudmila Pavlichenko.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko

That's one of the things that drew me into gaming, oh so many years ago.
The research you do. Like you really want to wield a sword two-handed and do extra damage and the GM would say know, and lo and behold - all of a sudden you sit there learning about sword-wielding techniques of medieval Japan.

Since we got now four players and I think you're more or less ready: How about we start with the actual mission? We can keep the Preludes going in parallel, too. Yelena's has just started, but Arthur's is pretty much done already. Lena is getting there, too.

Fine by me!

torschlusspanik

Fun fact: A lot of people think it's Torschusspanik, not Torschlusspanik. Completely different thing, though.

Sorry for the dely, folks - just spent 15 hours behind my laptop, working through customer requests.
Give me a day or two!

In reply to Warmaster (msg # 38):

I’ve been running and playing in games here since 2006 and RL (real life) comes first.

Also, this has given me time to watch some WW2 documentaries on Netflix (at least the episodes on the Eastern Front). And read The Communist Manifesto.

You're all doing better than me.  I had a weird dream I was back at work (I haven't been in the office for months now due to the 'rona) and instead of  having a regular meeting it was a meeting to plan to kill Hitler.

Hopefully your dream was set in, like, 1935? From what I can tell, once 1942 rolled around, his military decisions did far more good for the Allies than the Axis. Seems like he got lucky with France and then bungled every important decision the rest of the way. Almost surprising he was eventually allowed to shoot himself.

The Communist Manifesto is interesting, btw. And not terribly long. At some point I'll need to ask my mother why she had a copy of The Portable Karl Marx among her old books.

I raised several objections:

• Hitler was already dead for well over 7 decades - ignored, because it doesn't matter if he's dead he needs to be killed now
• We're in America and Hitler would be in Germany anyway even if we were contemporary - I was told we'd wait until America passed underneath the bracket holding the globe, jump up and catch it, then hold on until Germany came underneath us.
• We needed some kind of superweapon to possibly hope to destroy his fortified installation - talk began about how to acquire the ability to fire death lasers from space on Amazon

Those would have been my answers to your objections as well. Silly American.

Alright, I'll be "finishing" up the prelude threads, but as I mentioned in two of them, I'll leave them open when we move on to the actual main mission.

If you have an idea for a short story or scene that happened between the end of your prelude and before the start of Chapter 1, just add it there :-)

Arthur, Ralph and Yelena were privates or low-level NCOs during the Preludes. Your experience will have gained you the chance for a promotion or two.

Each of you three please draw three cards.
2-10 does nothing (rank wise)
Jack, Queen or King will gain you a promition by one rank.
Ace or Jokers gain you a Battlefield commission.

Any Clubs net you a distinctive wound of some sort.

Lena: You draw too. While you won't get promoted, we'll treat this as interludes for you.

07:24, Today: Yelena Malkin drew the 3 cards: QD, 3C, 5D using a deck of 54 cards.  Rank-up?

Looks like I will be Mladshiy Serzhant Malkin (Junior Sergeant) in 1945?

Mladshiy Serzhant Malkin indeed!

I see how it is, everyone hates the spy.

11:07, Today: Lena Vogt drew the 3 cards: QS, 8C, KD using a deck of 54 cards.

And here I am disappointed Solomon didn't say "Oh yes this is her."  And slide over the picture of Lena with Hitler XD

Ah, that would have been  quite good!

Yeah, but to be fair they wouldn't do that.  If Solomon were captured and he had that picture on him, it would compromise the spy.

The story of Lena’s wound should be interesting!

Poor Yelena isn’t as pretty as she used to be.

Just makes her mor dashing!