Slitherine

http://www.mediafire.com/file/r1f6d402p ... 1.zip/file

link updated 13 March 2019

I have updated the scenario based on comments from players and moderators:
* scoped down air battle at beach
* fixed triggers and victory/defeat criteria
* reduced shock effect of German counterattacks
* converted UK 2 Regt to human control
* made objective goals turn count instead of dates
* fixed pop-ups and pictures
* edited map errors
* added air exit hexes for allies and Germans
It should play about the same but it's more polished. If you haven't played it and are an inexperienced player, you should play Level 3. Kondi, if you can beat this on Level 5 I'll kiss your butt in front of the courthouse of your choice and give you a half hour to draw a crowd.
Please let me know what you think of the scenario.
thanks,
conboy


I wanted to make a scenario of a battle that I hadn’t run across before and picked Anzio because my uncle was on US Lt Gen Mark Clark’s cartography team, having been a surveyor on the Southern swamp frontier. He was at Anzio and described the events to me and my daughter in one of her high school projects. He recently passed away but I still have the notes in which he described his participation in the Italian Campaign, with great emphasis on the carnage and suffering at Anzio. Allied units are named as described in the link: https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/anz ... anding.htm. British Battalion names are abbreviated because they are so long – Wiki has all the names and I apologize for the abbreviations. I only identified the German Divisions involved, not the battalions. I used the maps from the link above to set up the scenario layout and combat pace.
The scenario does not convey much of the miserable conditions and poor senior leadership endured by the US troops, but it generally holds to the combat event dates as portrayed in the link. My apologies to the previous scenario-maker if this scenario has already been done!
This is my first scenario so if someone wants to look at the guts of it, they will find it very unsystematic! My next effort will be more conventionally organized (maybe). I wanted to get an experienced scenario maker to look at it but my play time for this is about three hours, so that’s a big request especially after I pestered them so much with fundamental questions when I got stumped. I finally got it to play like I wanted it to though.
In researching this scenario, I was surprised at how much of the battle was carried by the British forces. Gen. Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander was the allied commander, over Mark Clark and others. So I learned a lot and hope that I conveyed some of this information in the scenario.
Also, if anyone wants to use the map for their own take on the scenario, be my guest – I’d be mighty interested in how someone else would portray the battle.
Some Play Tips and Notes:
The scenario is based on two hexes per linear mile and the units are Battalions, which why there are so many of them on the map.
Keep the railheads at Aprilia occupied with arriving troops – don’t let the 24th Regiment get into them. They’ll occupy the town, block the railhead, and sit through the fight there. It is important to get as many units north to Aprilia and unloaded as soon as possible.
There is no tricky stuff in this scenario, all you have to do is apply good tactical sense and follow the instructions in the briefing and the Pop-ups. No need for daring maneuvers, be deliberate, watch your flanks when going for the objectives.
I was surprised to find that there was such a thing as a Chemical Mortar Battalion – I had never heard of such a thing before, despite a bit of military experience. They were in great demand because of their ability to conduct both direct fire and indirect fire missions. I separated the 84th Chemical Mortar Battalion into two pairs of platoons and used the M8 75mm HMC as a stand-in – perfect because 84th was motorized and the M8 has both direct and indirect fire capabilities.
Two commando units from the 2 Special Service Brigade (9 and 43) were present, I surmise only at the beginning of the battle in reality but I kept them in throughout. There are plenty of RPs for commando raids and there are no engineers available to clear mines (hint-hint).
The 441st AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion was present, but I converted it into a smash-mouth Heavy Weapons Battalion to quickly resolve tough situations. (No such thing – in real life, they’re organized into platoons or companies.) Keep it replenished with veterans.
Historical Notes and Scenario Artificialities:
The failure to exploit the successful surprise landing of two full divisions, and the later failure to block the roads leading northwest from central Italy (Mark Clark advanced to Rome instead, against orders and military logic) prolonged the Italian campaign by almost a year. The German army on the Gustav Line escaped and fought resiliently for another year (see Wikipedia article for a concise description).
The 6615th Ranger Force was almost wiped out in the attack on Cisterna. Only a handful made it back, the rest were captured or killed. They infiltrated through a ravine and were detected in a very vulnerable position before any relief could be offered. I never heard of this event before working on this scenario. Please read the link Army History Link above for more information on these unfortunate soldiers!
At the time of the most serious action in the early phase of the fight, the 30th Regiment was in reserve, but it was heavily involved in the Cisterna battle and aftermath.
The armor near Campoleone was pulled out before the main counterattack and placed in Corps Reserve – the Campoleone salient was occupied only by the UK 3 Brigade with support from 509th Airborne. I can find no explanation for pulling out the armor while trying to advance a spearhead! Some British armor was present in the salient but not the US 1st Armored Division, which entered the battle to save the line at the Aprilia Factory. 45th Infantry Division was also in a follow-on echelon but are not participants in this scenario. However, there is lots of armor in the scenario to make it interesting.
Early on, the 7th Regiment battalions were scattered all over the east side of the battlefield, not deployed in a defensive line on the highway.
Cisterna and Campoleone were not captured in the phase of the battle depicted in the scenario – Allied forces were attacked as they neared these objectives. They were captured much later when the Allies finally broke out of the beachhead.
I don’t know if Regimental Commanders typically rode with Tank Battalions (most infantry regiments did not have an organic Tank Battalion) but they do so here for “aesthetic” purposes.
Air power and artillery really did save the day for the Allies. Most of the battle after the opening stage was a brutal artillery duel in the mud.
The fight in the air over the landing forces peaked on 29 Jan 1944. As I noted in the briefing, throughput in Anzio Harbor was amazingly fast but there weren’t enough transport ships and landing craft to get the forces to the beaches quickly – they had to run back and forth between Naples and Anzio to convoy the later echelons. So they were vulnerable to German bomber attacks. Several allied ships were lost with their sailors. There were specially outfitted British anti-aircraft cruisers present – a fact which surprised me so I put them in the fight in the scenario. The references say that AA fire alone downed 90 German bombers.
Thanks for checking this out – I’m anxious to find how what you think of it and if you enjoyed it.
conboy

Conboy, would you be interested in engaging the services of a highly trained and motivated CSI* for a very reasonable fee (that is, free)?

*CSI = Campaign and Scenario Investigator

Of course, Bru d'Arracourt!
How shall we proceed?
conboy

Remember, what I do has no bearing on gameplay and balance. I look at stuff forensically. Also, you are under NO obligation whatsoever to pay any attention to recommendations that I make. I don't check whether you do so or not because it's only advice that I offer.

That said, I do have a comment on the map: You may want to use decorations to place some trees and houses here and there to make it look more realistic.

And I do have a comment on the number of turns. Given a map of this size, 16 turns may not be enough to do the job but others will bring that up, if so.

So, on to forensics.

You chose to have off-map air supply for all factions and thus do not need to place any airfields:


However, depending on what you intend to do, you may need to provide Exit Hexes with or without (it's up to you) Allow Redeploy. You have exit hexes at the bottom of the map for the Allies but I notice that they do not allow redeploy. That means one sortie and done. If that's your intention, fine, but if you want to be able to refuel planes and bring them back to the battle, you need to change this.

The same idea applies to Axis planes but in this case, I don't see any exit hexes at all. This means their doom when they run out of fuel turns.

One more thing: If you do want either side or both to be able to redeploy air units, you must also place Deploy Hexes applicable to each alliance, for aircraft, and for the amount of turns in the scenario (1-16).

[Note: I subsequently noticed your "Airfields Ready" trigger, so maybe this is lack of exit hexes is by design for the Allies but I don't see anything similar for the Axis.]

Your objective says "Take Campoleone by 2 Feb and prepare to advance north" but it points not to Campoleone but to points south of that town and Cisterna:


Perhaps those are strongpoints to be seized on the way to Campoleone but the objective is Campoleone, not these points.

So that objective and the Cisterna objective are the active primary objectives at the start:


When designing scenarios, you need to ask yourself what you want to happen in all situations, not just the winning result that you have in mind. You see the player achieving both objectives which trigger counterattacks and enable the two "hold" primary objectives which are evaluated at scenario-end. You see victory.

What if, however, the player does not reach Campoleone and/or Cisterna by February 2? Is it your intention that the player lose the scenario or play on to the end? The way you have it, the player does not lose at all, as a matter of fact; the worst outcome is a Draw. That's because you only offer to complete the first two objectives if the player gets there by February 2. If not, then the objectives remain open, not failed. Moreover, there are no corresponding AI objectives to award as mirrors for failing the human objectives. By definition, then, if not victory then the worst is a draw:


You don't have to provide for defeat, of course; design the scenario your way. The prospect of being defeated makes for more of a challenge, though.

If you do choose to provide for defeat, take a look at one of Erik's latest scenarios, or mine, to see how it is done.

It may not matter - the triggers may work anyway - but I read someplace that the Trigger Event "Any Event" should be avoided if possible because it slows down game processing. So, for the "Hold Ponte Rotta till 7 Feb" and "Hold Aprilia Factory till 7 Feb" triggers, I would use Turn Start. For the "Take Cisterna" and "Take Campoleone" triggers, I would use Capture VP Event. For the "Assign Commander" triggers (where you say Turn = 1), I would use Scenario Start (you don't even need Check Turn in that case). For the "Secondary Objectives Succeed" triggers, I would use Capture VP Event. For the "Secondary Objectives Fail" triggers, I would use Turn Start.

Let's tackle those secondary objectives. First, you see here how you turn off the corresponding fail trigger if the succeed trigger is activated? That's good except that you use the same trigger name repeatedly. I don't have empirical evidence but I would guess that the first succeed trigger will disable ALL the "Secondary Objectives Fail" triggers at once. Best, perhaps, to use unique trigger names at all times:


The 15th and the 30th Regiments objectives both say "by Feb 2" but the 15th is Check Turn <11 and the 30th is Check Turn < 10.

I am wondering why you are awarding a German unit for accomplishing the 7th Regiment objective:


You can't tell by looking at it, only by clicking, but you don't have a Target Hex assigned to this trigger condition:

In the Campoleone Engagements triggers, for the Check Turn conditions, I would use Turn Start event. For the Check Hex Owner conditions, I would leave those as Any Event.

The "Aprilia Factory Reinforcements" trigger spawns units that do not have AI teams assigned to them, meaning they will be dormant.

It looks like you have a "-1" in the repetition box here - infinite repeat - but I don't think it's what you intended:


By the way, you may be noticing that less is more when it comes to labels and descriptions in OOB scenario designing.

You have a trigger, "509th to Padiglione" set to Deploy Unit but this unit is already on the map? Would you not need to undeploy it first? You could use Reposition Unit but that might be strange in that this unit is in action from the beginning of the scenario. Maybe a Move to Hex order?

Two of the units spawned by the "Cisterna Counterattack West" trigger do not have AI teams assigned to them, meaning they will be dormant. One of them, a German Infantry '43, is also missing a Target Hex which means it will not be placed at all.

The fourth and fifth units spawned by "2nd wave west" are neutral gunboats but since there is no Target Hex for either, they do not affect anything. Yet, by the AI team that you assigned them to, you meant to place units of the "Cisterna Fighter Bomber Support."

You are missing an Image Filename here:


As a matter of fact, I remember several popup messages in your scenario but you only have one message image in your folder:


Well, that's it. That's what I do, trying to get the bugs out so that your scenario can work to its fullest potential and game players can evaluate whether it's challenging and enjoyable.

I will insert one more aesthetic comment, however. From the amount of German reinforcements that you have in here, I would not be surprised by complaints that this scenario is overbalanced in favor of the Germans. Test play will determine if that is an accurate assessment or not.

A few bridge crossings you should fix.
Note that whenever you have both rail and road crossing a river they should enter/leave the same hex side.

more

There is an excellent custom Anzio scenario made for 'The Operational Theatre of War with lots of well-researched info.
Designed by S.Goehring (Telumar)
( cariundel@yahoo.de )

I have attached the scenario manual (a work of art) and a unit spreadsheet.
I hope Stephan don't mind me sharing his work.

Scenario manual:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivh9e02aqwcvl ... f.zip?dl=0

Thanks for taking the time to look at it, Moderators. Your comments are very helpful and I'll update the Scenario. I learned a lot from putting it together and your comments are of course highly informative and comprise a tutorial in themselves.

Again, thanks for taking the time out to evaluate it.

conboy

p.s., Erik, you are right - that is truly a piece of artwork by Stephan!

And, if possible, change the dates in the objectives in turns. It's way easier to plan that way (at least for me ).

It played okay with 16 turns, but:

- why do I have AI contolled aux units? It takes a TON of time to wait for the AI as it is now (not the AI thinking, that was very fast) with many planes, and later on a TON of German reinforcements for it to move
- many German planes attacking the same (landing) spot with rather negligible consequences for me and devestating losses for them

And the worst part, something that I really hate, is when enemy units are spawned RIGHT NEXT to my units without warning. They are fully rested and mine are combat weary. No time for me to prepare for that massive counter-attack or even with reasonable retreat options for many of my units. Some got their supply cut-off by the spawn (same with some enemy units). I had to surrender many units. Very frustrating. My suggestion: Don't do that. Have them already on the map (you'll have to enlarge it then, I suppose) or spawn them with reasonable distance to my troops.
The screenshots are taken on the SAME turn:

Also you could recheck some of the supply locations. One of the "middle" positions appeared undersupplied when encircled. I think it had only "5" supply and it appeared to be on the wrong hex, too.

GabeKnight -

Thank you for playing the scenario and providing me with comments. I was especially worried about the extended German raids on the landing forces and the "pop-up" nature of the surprise attacks. I was also worried about having to do the rail transport with all those units, and the AI movements of the flanking units.

So, you confirmed some of my fears, good sir...

I think I can reduce the number of German planes and the allies at the start without really deviating too much from the historical events - since I have some (many?) artificialities/conceits in here anyway. But it was a desperate, ill-considered attempt by the Germans to eliminate the landing forces that cost them hugely. (90 bombers were shot down by AA alone). I think the landing zone was too far away for German tactical air so they used the bomber force... Point well-made and taken, though.

As for the abrupt appearance of the Graeser counterattack force: Historically, the Campoleone Salient counterattacks came as a shock to the British 3 Brigade. All forces in the salient were badly mauled, but no battalions failed to escape. But if it is really infuriating to an experienced player, I can back them up a few paces and wait till the next turn start to have them appear. I certainly don't want to offend to the point that no-one would want to play another scenario that I might make, so I get it. But you still better run South when you see that pop-up!

Thanks for the comment on the friendly AI units - that's an artifact of my original failed design concept and I could treat them as I treated the other regiments - turn them over to the humans and give them assigned axes of advance. Fair enough.

As far as supply goes, there is plenty for both sides - I didn't want the humans to be worried about that in this scenario.

Thank you very much for playing the scenario all the way through. At least I succeeded in that objective! And your comments on scenario play are very informative and I will take them to heart.

Thanks again,
conboy

I treated it as "work in progress" so I wouldn't talk about balance or RP. I wait for the next "build" of the scen and give more feedback then.

The rail transports and the distances worked okay, I guess, maybe some more "direct" paved roads from the harbour to the front lines (not going through forests and swamps) wouldn't hurt.

The scen went quite easy until the point of the German counter-attack. The unit spawn in the middle of the turn was quite bad as I lost about half of my atrillery that way and some expensive units, like a tank and tank-destroyer (I think it was the Hellcat) encircled behind enemy lines. I still managed to hold the objectives after that, though. (Although I missed taking one prim. objective because I wasn't used to the "dates" instead turn limits )

You could easily halve the enemy's bomber airforce (and same with my planes and/or AA and/or cruisers) and still demonstrate the uselessness of the effort.

Concerning the enemy counter-attack: It may be enough if you spawned them on the map's edges (in the FOW), a bit further from the objectives and DEFINITELY not in the middle of the turn, but trigger it at "turn start". Using reinforcement waves is okay, but again, at turn start. Maybe you need to increase the turn limit a round or two then.

(During play I was so infuriated at the AI crippling my army that I've extended the turn limit by about ten rounds to kill 'em all. And I did and it felt good... )

The new airstrip's spawns were also a bit strange. You already gave me two construction units that I used to set up a forward landing strip. I build one next to "First Overpass" and then two more pop up right next to it some turns later...
My suggestion: Change the "intended" construction sites of the airstrips (next to the landing zones, I suppose) to real airfields and either just spawn the new airstrips like you did (but with a pop up saying so) or give the player two construction units, but not both. You can even make it a sec. objective to build an airstip here and there till turn X if you want.

GabeKnight:

I really appreciate your comments!

In the brief, the commander is advised to set up the airstrips at the old artillery schools just north of Nettuno. Maybe I should say adjacent to Nettuno... I'm surprised your US fighters didn't auger in before you got the new airstrips built. I wanted to make a scenario in which the operational instructions were clear and based on the real map. So, that's why no roads lead directly north from Anzio except but through the woods.

I will have a little free time over the weekend to update.

Hopefully I will get some more gameplay comments -- I've got my hands full for a few days... what a hobby!

I apologize for the dates being mixed up - I'll fix on the next go-round. I'll address the faults from forensics and cartography departments as well...

I must say, again, that I'm happy that you played it all the way through -- that makes it worth it to try to fix it. It took me about 3 hours per playthrough to troubleshoot -- and I did a bunch of them. So, thanks mate!

Also, I'm glad you got to extract some revenge on the AI...

conboy

Conboy, remember that well-meant criticism will make you a better scenario designer. It sounds like you know this already. That said, I do give you praise for a very ambitious project, for a first go-around. Some rather sophisticated stuff in here which just needs a bit of fine-tuning.

I just did a rough count of land units; the Allies start with around 70 units while the Germans initially only have 43 or so. In that case, the spawning of around another 18 or 20 German units during the scenario would seem to be equitable and therefore balanced. At the same time, though, you need to ensure that the sudden appearances so close to the front lines that Gabe mentioned don't appear forced and phony, like a "gotcha."

Designing multi-player scenarios is easy, in my opinion. Make a map, give each side roughly equivalent forces, have at it. Designing single-player scenarios against the AI is the real meat and potatoes.

Comrade Conboy;

As just a humble and unqualified player, I´d like to praise your fine work. Obviously, if you decide to place da improvements suggested by the big gurus, much better. Anyway, you proved being a fine scenario designer, imho of course.
Congrats

Thanks again for the encouragement, all.

Comrade Mascarenhas, I think I had guys like you (us) in mind -- to provide a combat scenario with clear instructions and lots of action, with some (generally accurate) historical info behind it. Your comments are most gratifying!

Thank you again, Bru.

So I hope to have another version out next week. Again, thanks to all for your comments, interest, and encouragement.

conboy

I must confess, as a historical clarification, that the US 45th was much more active in this phase than the US 1st Armored. I'll fix that too.

Reply to Bru and Erik:
I really appreciate the thorough review. Here are my comments and I hope some of my lessons learned come through. Since you were so generous with your review time, it would be ungracious not to address them.
Bru
You may want to use decorations to place some trees and houses here and there to make it look more realistic.
conboy response >: Roger dat – I can’t tell much from the maps but from the photos it was pretty barren. Most of the land was reclaimed from swamps and had been recently opened for settlement by Mussolini. I should make it prettier though.

And I do have a comment on the number of turns. Given a map of this size, 16 turns may not be enough to do the job but others will bring that up, if so.
conboy response>: Let’s see what the players say. I padded the turns a little bit to provide the humans some room for error.

So, on to forensics. You chose to have off-map air supply for all factions and thus do not need to place any airfields: However, depending on what you intend to do, you may need to provide Exit Hexes with or without (it's up to you) Allow Redeploy. You have exit hexes at the bottom of the map for the Allies but I notice that they do not allow redeploy. That means one sortie and done. If that's your intention, fine, but if you want to be able to refuel planes and bring them back to the battle, you need to change this. The same idea applies to Axis planes but in this case, I don't see any exit hexes at all. This means their doom when they run out of fuel turns. One more thing: If you do want either side or both to be able to redeploy air units, you must also place Deploy Hexes applicable to each alliance, for aircraft, and for the amount of turns in the scenario (1-16). [Note: I subsequently noticed your "Airfields Ready" trigger, so maybe this is lack of exit hexes is by design for the Allies but I don't see anything similar for the Axis.]
conboy response>: Still learning the ropes – it worked as intended even though it was unorthodox – German bombers were done when the landing party raids were done. Hopefully they were all shot down by Allied fighters except for a couple, and that all the Allied planes were able to land and replenish. I will fix as you advise.

Your objective says "Take Campoleone by 2 Feb and prepare to advance north" but it points not to Campoleone but to points south of that town and Cisterna: Perhaps those are strongpoints to be seized on the way to Campoleone but the objective is Campoleone, not these points.
conboy response>: Arrow should point to Campoleone, as you indicate. And they are strongpoints to be captured along the way and to illustrate the intended axis of advance.

So that objective and the Cisterna objective are the active primary objectives at the start. You don't have to provide for defeat, of course; design the scenario your way. The prospect of being defeated makes for more of a challenge, though. If you do choose to provide for defeat, take a look at one of Erik's latest scenarios, or mine, to see how it is done.
conboy response:>For the scenario, I’m pretty sure that if you don’t meet the combat timetable and take neither objective, you’ve been defeated. I’ll recheck.

It may not matter - the triggers may work anyway - but I read someplace that the Trigger Event "Any Event" should be avoided if possible because it slows down game processing. So, for the "Hold Ponte Rotta till 7 Feb" and "Hold Aprilia Factory till 7 Feb" triggers, I would use Turn Start. For the "Take Cisterna" and "Take Campoleone" triggers, I would use Capture VP Event. For the "Assign Commander" triggers (where you say Turn = 1), I would use Scenario Start (you don't even need Check Turn in that case). For the "Secondary Objectives Succeed" triggers, I would use Capture VP Event. For the "Secondary Objectives Fail" triggers, I would use Turn Start.
conboy response:> Much appreciated!

Let's tackle those secondary objectives. First, you see here how you turn off the corresponding fail trigger if the succeed trigger is activated? That's good except that you use the same trigger name repeatedly. I don't have empirical evidence but I would guess that the first succeed trigger will disable ALL the "Secondary Objectives Fail" triggers at once. Best, perhaps, to use unique trigger names at all times.
conboy response:>Thanks, will comply.

The 15th and the 30th Regiments objectives both say "by Feb 2" but the 15th is Check Turn <11 and the 30th is Check Turn < 10.
conboy response:> I must fix the dates. That is negligent of me -- GabeKnight noted it too so it shall be done.

I am wondering why you are awarding a German unit for accomplishing the 7th Regiment objective.
conboy response:>Generated to hold the 7th in place by harassing them so they aren’t tempted to go wandering away from their assigned holes along the highway.

You can't tell by looking at it, only by clicking, but you don't have a Target Hex assigned to this trigger condition:
Thanks – lots to check so thanks again for the evaluation. Will fix.

In the Campoleone Engagements triggers, for the Check Turn conditions, I would use Turn Start event. For the Check Hex Owner conditions, I would leave those as Any Event.
conboy response:>Check – got a couple ideas to make it less enraging but still a shock.

The "Aprilia Factory Reinforcements" trigger spawns units that do not have AI teams assigned to them, meaning they will be dormant.
conboy response:>I’m afraid there are some stray items in here that don’t show up in gameplay. Hard to track them all down. I’ll have to learn your error-checking methodology.

It looks like you have a "-1" in the repetition box here - infinite repeat - but I don't think it's what you intended:
conboy response:>It took me a while to figure out what those numbers meant, despite the clear documentation. I understand it now, but if it didn’t affect gameplay in the last playthrough, I left it alone.

By the way, you may be noticing that less is more when it comes to labels and descriptions in OOB scenario designing.
conboy response:>Quite so! My apologies to the British units.

You have a trigger, "509th to Padiglione" set to Deploy Unit but this unit is already on the map? Would you not need to undeploy it first? You could use Reposition Unit but that might be strange in that this unit is in action from the beginning of the scenario. Maybe a Move to Hex order?
conboy response:>(repeat) I’m afraid there are some stray items in here that don’t show up in gameplay. Hard to track them all down. The 509th was pretty much where I wanted them to be throughout the scenario.

Two of the units spawned by the "Cisterna Counterattack West" trigger do not have AI teams assigned to them, meaning they will be dormant. One of them, a German Infantry '43, is also missing a Target Hex which means it will not be placed at all.
conboy response:>I don’t think there’s any lack of counterattacking units. But if it didn’t show up as a fault in the last couple of playthroughs, I didn’t catch it. So, thanks again.

The fourth and fifth units spawned by "2nd wave west" are neutral gunboats but since there is no Target Hex for either, they do not affect anything. Yet, by the AI team that you assigned them to, you meant to place units of the "Cisterna Fighter Bomber Support."
conboy response:> Thanks – they are stray keystrokes that don’t affect gameplay that I did not detect. Thanks again!

You are missing an Image Filename here:
conboy response:> I utterly failed in getting any of the pictures to work. Even ones copied from scenarios that worked in their previous presentations. I worked on pictures for at least a day until I got a blank one in another scenario – so just hoped that players could forgive the shortcoming until I figured it out. For all I know, I could still be working on it, like the trigger timer that I never got to work, despite all the help. A couple of them don’t have images attached because none of them worked no matter how I tried to set them up.

As a matter of fact, I remember several popup messages in your scenario but you only have one message image in your folder:
conboy response:> See previous. Couldn't get images to work.

Bru, I truly appreciate the time you put into the review and I have learned a great deal in reviewing your comments.

Erik2
Few bridge crossings you should fix.
Note that whenever you have both rail and road crossing a river they should enter/leave the same hex side.
conboy response:> Some of them had no effect and some of them are stray. Will double-check all of them that you point out, after a glass or two of rye.

Erik, thanks again!

conboy