It's not a useless book (worth getting for the tables and other factoids). But the analysis is quite weak IMHO and I feel like Zaloga/his publisher churned this out as a money grab- he wants this book to help fuel tank vs. tank debates and stimulate the sales of the Duel & other such series.
oh, it's just me griping after getting Zaloga's "Top tanks of WW2" book and finding the analysis in it the quite thin. I have read most of what he has written over the years and I own almost the entire Osprey library (ww2). It is not useless, it's just that often the subject is not dealt with comprehensively by historians so this booklet becomes the one of the influential sources..
There needs to be more stuff of the quality/comprehension (and beyond) of Igor's tank army books and stuff like Jentz' panzertruppen. Operational histories like Barrett or Glantz's stuff.
There's way too little focus on actual war experience in the tank book genre which has lead to speculative beliefs among the hobby community. I have heard that the publishers don't for instance, print unit histories because people won't buy them- the market is in the glossy picture books and other lightweight stuff.
I liked the story/atmosphere and design of FO3 over NV. Story/conceptwise, NV wasn't my thing. It wasn't post-nuclear enough for me. The Pitt DLC and the Point Lookout DLC were excellent.
The best designed part of NV to me was the beginning- wild west. The rest just felted big but kind of thin. I didn't like the Caeser's legion or the story for the DLCs. (My comments have nothing to do with gameplay, just story)
Yeah, you guys are both correct (Kursk is obviously bigger than Brody). I was thinking about Prokhorovka.
The Stalin's Favorite book is excellent, and a must read. It shows the nuts and bolts of how a tank army operates.
Something basic that is often confused is illustrated in the battle of Orel (1943). The 2TA had around 500 tanks throughout the battle. But they had 1,000 tanks disabled. (most surely reported by the Germans as tank kills). They recovered and put back into action half of their disabled tanks.
The cottage industry (gaming, modeling, books, tv) of Panther vs. Sherman, Tiger vs T-34, etc. is largely spun on a web of false comparisons and simple made up theories.
Pretty much all of Zaloga's books (and Osprey publishing) fall in this category. The quality and depth is still no good.
CoH2 brits are one of the best designed armies in the whole coh series if not the best designed one.
Converting their "special feature" for other armies would improve gameplay and open new strategic options tremendously.