Un caloroso saluto a tutti i giocatori/Hello to all fellow gamers in this forum.

I'm very very sorry that my first post here is a complaint.

Last week I bought a copy of "enduring freedom" from Empress Miniatures in UK together with some miniatures (awesome), which are not delivered at the moment but this is not the problem.
Two days ago I read a copy from a friend of mine who already got it... and I was shocked: there no italian troops info in it!

- Italian forces controls the western province of Herat
- The command of forces in Badghis, Fallah, Ghor: 1/5 of all the Country
- the 4/5th (near the same to France) in army size in this campaign: 3850 soldiers
- ISAF command in those years.

ISAF Source data: http://www.isaf.nato.int/troop-numbers-and-contributions/index.php
So not the last group... not a non-significat presence in that area/mission.

Not to talk about - in wargaming terms - to the fact we got a full different set of weapons and vehicles, this could add more spice to the games, I really don't understand your choice.

This is a great lack! I would never bought it if I was aware.
Excuse me again, and do it one more time... but in my humble opinion this is not fair.

Ciao
Filippo

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We certainly mean no slight against Italy. Promise. If you check out this thread: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=6894 you'll see the author of EF has already addressed that.

If you have accurate TO&E information for the Italian military that can be shared around we'd love to have it.

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I was sure about it... unfortunately I'm a complete newbie in FOF, TO&E are still a sort of sudoku to me
I got many expectations... finally own a nice set of rules and cannot use as I wish.

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There's no reason you can't use the Force on Force rules in the manner you wish. The game is not driven by army lists, so the lack of an "Italian Army List" won't stop you from playing games using Italian forces.

If you have books or news articles describing actions in which Italian forces took part, you can easily translate them into a scenario. You can also take any of the existing scenarios in the Enduring Freedom book (or any of our other books) and adapt them to involve whatever nationality troops you desire.

We could not include a suggested force organization for the modern Italian military because we couldn't locate one. MostroeJoe, who also hails fro Italy, was also unable to find hard information despite living in Italy and having Italian as his native language - advantages we lack.

We went to a great deal of effort to try to find as many national organizations as we could and constantly encourage members of the forum to contribute organizations as they find them. Hopefully we'll have something solid for modern Italian forces soon.

If it makes you feel any better, an organization for the Folgore will be included in our Day of the Rangers book, which covers action in Somalia in '92 & '93 (we were able to find credible documentation for that time period and theater).

Best wishes and welcome to the forum!

Shawn.

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Shawn Carpenter
Game Designer, Ambush Alley Games

"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

Ciao Filippo!

Keep in mind that FoF is a game system that focuses on men ability and not their equipment, ie: an M16 is not different from an AK-74 in game terms. The men that use them are indeed.

Anyway, I hope in future addendum to this book (that I am awaiting from Northstar Miniatures) there will still be the possibility to find the Italians. Considering the theatres that see and have seen Italian Forces, I'm sure AAG would had included them even in the basic rulebook.

With WIkipedia on my side I highlight something in this list:

United Nations
UNTSO, from 1958 (Israel, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon) – 8 out of 142 soldiers from 23 countries
UNMOGIP, from 1951 (India and Pakistan) – 7 out of 44 soldiers from 8 countries
UNIFIL, from 1978 (Lebanon) – 2,410 out of 12,800 soldiers from 30 countries
MINURSO, from 1991 (Western Sahara) – 5 out of 915 soldiers from 14 countries
UNFICYP, from 2005 (Cyprus) – 4 out of 915 soldiers from 14 countries
UNAMID, from 2008 (Sudan) – 1 officer out of 19,000 soldiers from 53 countries
KFOR, from 1999 (Kosovo) – 1,596 out of 12,990 soldiers from 32 countries
ISAF, from 2001 (Afghanistan) – 3,815 out of 132,203 soldiers from 40 countries[6]
EUFOR, from 2004 (Bosnia and Herzegovina) – 260 out of 2,150 soldiers from 25 countries

cutting away the great amount of officers, specialists and advisors under the European Union or Nato banners.

In the last ten years in particular (but I have friends that firs handed told me about many operations in the Balkans during the 90s) Italian Special Forces have endured a great and dangerous number of operations (not advertized in Italy for political matters that this forum is not interested in).

AAGs is anyway right in considering the difficulty of finding on line documents that can help them publish a good Italian Army List. I am trying by some time to contact some journalist that are in contact with militaries, hoping to find valid documents thatcan be interesting for AAG gaming scopes.

Meanwhile I suggest you to find here a huge amount of informations about units and correct equipments and vehicles used by Italian Army:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationa ... alian_Army

Also, keep in mind that in this incoming decade, many European Forces will be merged to create the base for the future European Army. The "Taurinense", alpine unit, will be merged with french troops to create a new entirely European mountain combat unit.

Oh no! Another line of figures, another camo scheme to master, another set of vehicles!

Actually, I would love to see more info on the Italian TO&E.

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I could agree with you...but then we'd BOTH be wrong.

I’m the author of OEF and wanted to comment again on this. FOF, and by extension it’s scenario books, is based on historical actions. To develop a scenario we look at first person sources if at all possible and support/complement these with secondary or tertiary sources. We then develop a scenario based on the historical record from as many of these accounts as possible.

The best source is actual AARs or accounts published by national militaries followed by commercially available accounts that use first person reporting. The vast majority of the scenarios in OEF, and RTB for that matter, used these sources.

We have been asked about other ISAF nations and have replied that we would love to have included them. However, the almost complete lack of English language AARs for non English primary language ISAF nations makes this difficult. There’s also a question of the size of the finished product- I only have so many pages. That’s the commercial reality. In developing OEF I had perhaps another dozen scenarios I wanted to include and had worked on but space issues precluded this.

So to sum up, we simply can’t include everything under the one roof for the reasons outlined above. Shawn makes the great point that the majority of the scenarios in OEF (and RTB) can be gamed using troops of most nationalities. IED contacts and ambushes happen to all ISAF militaries deployed outside the wire. If you have details on national TO&E (again which as Shawn points out, we don’t for the Italians) feel free to plug in whichever ISAF nation you prefer and have fun.

One day I’d love to do a second volume for OEF and include as many ISAF nations as possible but to do that I need access to historical record at the necessary level of tactical detail. Here’s hoping

When they wrote OEF I asked Leigh and Shawn to put in a scenario for the German contingent. I tried my best to get some information and apart from some messages from people who were there I couldn't get information detailed enough to justify a scenario. The German Bundeswehr is very, very silent when it comes to combat action. There is zero to none books in German or English yet, that would allow to recreate the action in a scenario. As a matter of fact, I have colleagues that fought in some missions during the Kosovo conflict and they are bound to a NDA - even today they won't tell me what they've seen and where they were.
I guess after unfortunate incidents like the bomb drop on that gasoline tanker the German contingent wants only to leak success - if any news at all. All I read about our soldiers in A-stan is books on how our government successfully NOT gives soldiers with PTSD the medical care they need

So while there are many ISAF troopers of countries other than UK/US/AUS in Afghanistan that had their fair bit of hard fighting, there simply is a huge gap in available accounts on those missions. As Leigh pointed out, its not that we didn't want to include any of this, but we rely on historical facts to write scenarios and if you lack intel, you cannot simply make up something.

If there will come more and more info available one day, I'll glady support AAG with scenarios including other ISAF nations. I am sure most you people out there will do the same, so read, take notes and save them for maybe another book one day.

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I can agree to some of the points showed, not to all of them, but this thread could become only a long useless querelle.
Draw a line and start a new positive approach: I'll try to made my researches and share there results, surely this will takes time.
I'll keep to follow this forum.

Ciao
Filippo

PS: To mostrojoe74 send me a PM, we can write in italian... it'll be surely easier ;-)

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Don't forget the Canadians who have seen a large part of the fighting .
There are also the books to match .

There are books on many of the other ISAF nations . Concord special ops has covered just about all of them , and many of the articles have listed orbats and in some cases TOE's .
Concord have covered the various Italian units several times .

Other sources are magazines such as combat and survival who have recently covered Estonians and others in detail .

There is a really nice German book on the Bundewehr units in theatre , with loads of colour photos - bought mine on ebay . Currently out on loan to one of our club mbrs .

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'' I love my models , they are made of swiss cheese ''

Post war german books ; this ebay seller has a very good selection ;

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Militarbuch-un ... 513&_pgn=1

the afghan one is sold out .

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'' I love my models , they are made of swiss cheese ''

I didn't kenw even the Germans were out of the book. This is another surprise and the Germans would be another "noisy absence". Anyway, I think the German Army is silent about its operations for the same motive the Italian one is. Is a sort of legacy for sad reasons we all know, and the public is a bit over-sensible about these matters. So it is not something unawaited for after all...

Well I think Filippo's concerns came not from the fact that not any ISAF nationality is covered, but by the fact Italian Army is a very important piece and is even in command of a regional HQ, so it seemed a gross lack.

But so is the German absence then. The Germans are doing an important job and I talked with a guy that showed me his photobook of the operation Restore Hope in Somalia, where Italians and Germans worked closely, and fraternized a lot, he had a warm remember of Germans and said they worked great. Still, they are again very silent about that unlucky theatre.

It is a matter of importance and prominence in operations, and not a matter of lack of completeness that we are talking about here, anyway the motivatons for that are fairly clear.

What I can say is that is a real pity Italians are non in the base FoF book, but again the motivations are clear when it comes to the lack of realiable informations.

As I wrote I didn't receive the book yet, I just had a look of a friend copy but... this would another big absence.

I'm currently painting some contractors, they surely are everywhere ahahahahahah

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thats is until the US government cancels all their contracts ... but u are right even the BBC has armed ''bodyguards '' ... and not just to protect them from rioters in London .

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