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Continuing this series on Battlegroup ideas, today is Wehr. Here are my DAK Ideas. To reiterate, I wanted to make these ideas thematic, different from existing battlegroups, unique and mostly historically accurate. Here I use the units that are already in the game files and propose how they could be implemented in an interesting way. Relic seem to have developed several bunker types which they intend to use, so when designing my battlegroups, I did it in a way where these bunker types were used but didn’t make the battlegroup Italian Coastal 2.0, rather fed into a larger idea. I introduce and expand a number of mechanics I have discussed in my other threads:
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Central Idea: All in prevention, counter attack. Your opponent would have a hard time overwhelming you in one all in push. The left side of the tree consists of mostly callins and quick dispatch units for handling flanks quickly, the right side is more logistics themed with multiple reactionary abilities.
BMW R75: Not a lot to say here, similar to the DAK bike except with an MG 42. It could be made to have no reverse, like the Coh1 bike, that was a fun mechanic.
4-Man Pios: Again, self-explanatory.
Sd. Kfz. 251 Variants: This gives you access to other 251 variants, either by upgrading the 251 directly or by calling them in. I’ve chosen these 2 versions that I feel open up a lot more strategies, Mortar HT and Luft tier would be quite good, that tier lacks indirect. Pakwagen Panzer Gren tier would also be strong, as that tier lacks mobile AT. The ATHT would have the same AT performance as the Marder, but would have less HP and no lockdown ability.
Panzer III H: As a unit to add to Wehr’s roster, this makes a lot of sense on many levels. In terms of performance, this would be closer to the Crusader medium tank. In terms of the timing, it would arrive at the same time as the Stug and the Wirbel, but unlike both of those specialists, this would be a generalist for that timing.
Temporary Armour Assignment: This is exactly like the mechanic I described in my DAK designs. How it works is that this munitions only ability is used and a Stug, P4 pair arrive from off map. Neither unit requires fuel, manpower, upkeep or population. They benefit from all the upgrades that affect the normal version, ie vet and armoured skirts. You have direct control over them but after a set period of time, they will turn to AI control and leave. This makes them really good as a reactionary ability (your opponent is doing an all in) or as your own all-in, especially if you’re already maxed out on population. You’re especially incentivised to make risky plays with them as armour preservation is not so important. The number of use cases for this ability are so numerous that I won’t explain it anymore, it should be obvious how strong this is. I think to balance this out, it needs a heavy munitions cost and a long recharge timer.
AI Temporary Elephant Assignment: One of the questions I’ve been asking myself since Coh3 came out is how do you add heavy tanks to the game in such a way that it’s not frustrating to play against and doesn’t break it. Given that the game is set so much earlier in the war and a number of the factions don’t have ready access to tank destroyers like the SU-85 and the Jackson, you can’t simply throw in the Elephant and hope for the best. To be completely explicit, I don’t see how the US with their current roster are expected to deal with a Coh2 style heavy tank destroyer. However, in Halo Wars 2 Blitz game mode, how it works is that you can call in a Scarab and its an incredibly strong unit but after a certain period of time, it spontaneously explodes and the game returns to normal. Why wouldn’t something similar work for Coh3? The risk reward calculus of using it would be; can you get enough damage done in the period available to justify the expenditure? There are a few ways that this could be implemented, you could, for instance, give the player direct control over the Elephant but I’m in favour of doing this slightly differently. Like the Infantry Assault ability for the US Advanced Infantry Doc, I think this should be AI controlled, should be on attack move and should be targeted on a position. After the timer, the unit would drive off map. This way you get the power fantasy of using a heavy tank without the game breaking potential of a heavy tank camping for the entire game between 2 VPs and zoning out all tanks. The reason I prefer this method of implementation is 2 fold; the first is that counterplay is much simpler, you just avoid the area and wait for it to time out. The second is that it has that appeal of being somewhat like a mini campaign mission within the game, you have to defend the tank with your forces as it advances. Your opponent would be easily able to flank it if its on it’s own, but when you support it yourself its more potent. The one exception to this AI control that perhaps should be considered is allowing the player to control the tageting directly, You wouldn’t want the Elephant to shoot at some random infantry while your opponent moves double Archers into position. In terms of relative strength of the abilty, I think if it was implemented in this fashion, the Elephant ability wouldn’t be that strong. I feel direct control over a P4 and a Stug is much stronger than an AI controlled Elephant. To me this is the best way of getting heavy tanks into the game.
Logistics Field Officer: The right side of the tree very much has a logistics theme to it, starting with the officer. The Resource Priority ability works well with a variety of units, one could see this being handy in a situation where you want to increase the ROF of an MG, Mortar or Pak being extremely useful. Situations where you want to increase the ROF on a tank to help it win the engagement would also be strong. Speeding up the recharge on a Nebelwerfer would also be a common use. Source Replacements I could also see being a heavily used ability, either on the field or in base. Finally, given this battlegroup is munitions intensive, the Supervise Resource Extraction ability will allow you to increase your income like a cache does. You could even have some rush strat builds involving the officer, but unlike caches and trucks, the unit can be repurposed to do other things afterwards.
Panzerschreck Trailer: This is another type of trailer unit. I’ve talked about trailer units a few times in my other posts, but here is the rundown: My thinking with this is that its a brand new unit type, which loosely can be defined as a support weapon. How it works is that infantry squads can crew it, push it around, vehicles can tow it, etc. When in a position, it provides an aura which in this case recharges nearby snares faster. However, the unit shouldn't require pop cap and moreover, you can actually manually decrew it and it will still provide you the benefits. So for example, let's say it spawns in your base and you want to setup a strong point, you can crew it with a squad, wheel it over to a house near the frontline and then decrew it. Units within its vicinity would still be benefiting from the aura. When you want to move it, recrew it again, or tow it, to a new location. The beauty of this dynamic is that your opponents can steal these units from you like an ATG, so while they don't take up popcap and would be relatively cheap (say 100 to 150 manpower), you're still incentivised to protect them. You can also attack move them with AT guns etc, would be interesting to play around it. I think it would make for a fun dynamic, but would need to be coded from scratch. It also indirectly makes tow yet more useful. With this trailer specifically, it’s aura will recharge nearby snares faster, however squads can also collect a Panzerschrek from the trailer for a munitions cost. This Panzerschrek is timed, so after a duration the squad will drop it. This is going to really strong in situations where your opponent is doing an all in dive with light vehicles and/or tanks and you need to bolster your AT immediately to hold on. Picking up these Panzerschreks is not cheap, but it makes it much harder for your opponent to dive you and also allows you to go for low AT builds with this trailer as the backup. The way I see this until being used is wheeling it behind a hedge or building near your cutoff and running over to grab a Panzerschrek if its needed. Let’s say your opponent does a double M8 dive, your 2 Grens and a Panzergren pick up 3 schreks between them and your opponent is basically able to do nothing but wait for them to time out. This could buy you enough time to reach T4 or whatever else you were doing. It’s a tool that adds a lot of flexibility to your composition, but remember if you get forced off, your opponent can just steal it and then its your problem!
Weapon Stores: This gives your pios the ability to build Riegel mines but also Weapon Supply Bunkers. Now, the bunker has a straight forward aura that increases ROF of infantry and their grenade recharge times, but it also has another more expansive mechanic of temporary weapon upgrades. I’ve talked about this mechanic at great length in my Luftwaffe Field Division faction design, where the faction essentially revolves around that mechanic, but here I use a simplified version for a Wehr battlegroup. The TLDR is that infantry squads can pick up weapon packages from the bunker to either augment their current DPS or completely change the role of the squad for a short period. For instance, Jagers can pick up Beretta 38s to transform the squad from a mostly mid range unit, to a short range one. Grens can pick up G43s to improve their mid to long range performance and Pios can pick up an MG34. All the options are avialable to you. However, the upgrades are not timed, but depletable. This means that if the squad is not in combat, the upgrade duration doesn’t tick. You have to be in combat to expend the upgrade. The situations where something like this would come in useful are numerous, but to name a few; giving all your grens weapons at any point in the game, augmenting your jagers with MG34s, giving Stosstruppen Berettas so they become a close range powerhouse, or even double MGs. Relative to normal weapon upgrades, these upgrades are inefficient, but for rush strats they can be strong, as well as augmenting your units in the lategame with the extra munitions you have in the bank.
HE Shell Delivery: Improves the splash and anti infantry power of all your vehicles at the cost of penetration. This could be somewhat tricky to use, as your opponent will become aware of its activation immediately and will come in with their vehicles. But situations where your opponent has dug in with ATGs and AT infantry, this ability will be devastating.
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Central Idea: Team weapon play, heavy fire power and artillery. Good for just battering your opponents head on.
SD-2 Line Drop: This is similar to the equivalent ability in Coh1, however the big difference is that you can customise the area where the mines will fall. For instance, you could do a relatively small field on a VP for 50 munitions, or you could do a large line of mines to completely block off a flank with mines. This flexibility allows you to employ the ability in a number of situations and adds some nuance to its employment. It terms of how this would work in game, I feel click and drag would be sufficient, the munitions cost being visible on the cursor. In the context of this battlegroup, it can block off the flanks of your team weapons.
Pre-Sighted Terrain: This feeds into that team weapon focused gameplay, having extra range on your Paks and MGs in an area is going to be really strong. You could even use it with Mortars and Nebels for an extra long range barrage.
7.5cm Flak 264/3(i) AA/AT: The Flak 264/3 is an Italian medium AA piece that fits into what I will refer to as the ‘premium anti tank gun’ category. Similar to how the MG42 and DSKH were premium MGs, this ATG will be better than your standard ATG, at a higher price point. On the scale of ATGs, this will lie between the Pak 40 and the Flak 36 in terms of raw firepower. The damage should be exactly as the Pak 40, however it should also benefit from 10 more range and also the ability to shoot down air. The drawback however is that it should be relatively slow to move, like a Pak 40 in camoflage mode. For small adjustments, this should be fine, but to move it across the map, it would be easier with a tow vehicle. This means there are tradeoffs with this option relative to the Pak 40, the situations where the Flak 264/3 would be better is when you don’t want to invest in a wirbel but still want AA on demand when you need it (2 of these should take down planes pretty quickly), or situations where you’re camping 2 VPs and don’t expect to have to move around much, allowing you to utilise the greater range. Paks are going to be better when you need to move around a lot and expect your opponent to invest in indirect fire.
Flakvierling 38: This gun is exactly as on the Wirbelwind, except it’s a team weapon. Relative to the Flak 30, this would have the advantage of suppression and probably better anti infantry performance. Perhaps starting with the same stats as the DAK Flak halftrack and going from there would be a good place to start.
28cm K5(E) Barrage: Heavy railway barrage, not much to say here.
7.5 cm IG 37: This is essentially work like the LeIG for DAK, it’s a later version of the same concept. Wehr don’t have anything like the Heavy Mortar equivalent and this would be it. This would be handy if you wanted to go Luft tier or tier 4 without having to tech to get Nebels.
Springer Remote Controlled Bombs: Conceptually, this is identical to the Goliath remote controlled bombs, except these bombs are twice the size and are significantly more dangerous as a result. For me, one distinction that could be made would be dialling up their effectiveness against your opponent’s base structures. One thing I feel Coh lacks are tools for crippling your opponent’s tech. Kane’s wrath has a plethora of units and abilities for exactly this purpose and their employment is great to use and even more exciting to watch. So the Spinger should be able to knock out 75% of the health of a base tier structure. So conceivably, you could get a 251, drive it over to or into the base, deploy a Springer and blow it up next to T4, finish it off with Paks or Stugs. This will reinforce that whole dimension of the game, camping on 2 VPs will be much easier to punish.
Sd.Ah. 57 Munitions Trailer: Another style of trailer, as discussed above. Here it would be used directly with team weapons to increase their ROF. It can also be used with indirect, so Rocket artillery would recharge faster. I feel the situations where this would be useful are fairly obvious but one extra way of making it interesting would be if it had an AOE explosion on death. So your opponent would be incentivised to move in with vehicles and target it down. They could also just steal it for themselves.
Wurfrahmen 40 UE (f): Standard rocket artillery. One question I would expect a Wehraboo to ask is ‘why this and not the Panzerwerfer?’. The way I see it, this only has 4 rockets, so its damage per barrage is less. This leaves scope to make the barrage recharge time shorter, meaning you need to micro it more, but also, its less of a wipe machine or do nothing unit. You can also give it a lower price and require less population. Looking at the Walking Stuka in Coh2, that unit either killed everything or missed and was largely a waste of resources and popcap. If you can have the same unit, but with less alpha damage, at a cheaper price and popcap, it should be more consistent over the course of a match. It would also be easier to fit into your composition and would see greater use as a result. This essentially is why I picked this unit. That and because its new and different.
AI Double Wespe Temp. Assignment: Like the Elephant assignment above, this is where double Wespe artillery pieces come onto the field and are controlled by the AI. They attack move to the target, shelling your opponent’s units within range. This ability should be much easier to employ, as they barrage from long range, but also they should be easier to counter (you can just dive them). Since we’re not using new vehicle models, it should be cheaper to develop and its different from the existing off-maps.
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Central Idea: Long range engagements.
MGZ34 MG42 Scopes Upgrade: Simple upgrade, improves range and sight of MGs once they upgrade themselves for munitions.
AI Double Sniper Temp. Assignment: This is most similar to the Wespe ability I just described, except with 2 snipers. What this ability would be strong aganst would be team weapon camp and entrenched infantry, as well as guarding VPs in the lategame. What this ability would be pretty bad against would be an opponent with several light vehicles and tanks which can drive up and elminate the snipers in 5 seconds. Its not like the AI will dodge. This ability is augmented by the numerous sight abilities and units in this battlegroup.
Panzerbeobachtungswagen III: This is most similar to the 254 artillery observer for DAK, except where the abilities are largely air based. The unit has an MG, so it can be used to attack troops early on, but its mostly used for the focus sight ability in conjunction with tank destroyers and team weapons. The SD-2 Ground Burst drop I see being more like the M83 Cluster Mine drop from Coh2. The Ju-88 P-4 Heavy AT Strafe, is actually a 50mm cannon, so different from the JU-87 we have now by having more alpha damage.
Fritz X Guided Bomb Strike: This is probably most similar to the Stuka Dive Bomb in Coh2, however, the big difference is that you can manually guide it to the target. The inspiration for this are the Predator missiles from MW2, however in Coh3, the easiest way of implementing this to my mind is that the player has to keep the cursor where they want the bomb to land. However, if they don’t want to do this, as it prevents other micro, you double click and it will go to where it was last targeted. So the situations where you’d want to perform this micro are quite niche, basically when nothing else is happening for 5 seconds. I think a sensible decision should be to cut off direct control from the player 2 seconds before it hits the target, so its still possible to dodge but harder.
Nashorn Tank Destroyer: Not much to say here, its basically the Archer.
Grenadier K98k Scopes Upgrade: Not a lot to say here, range and sight augmentation for grens.
Ranged Bunker Options: Here we use some of the bunkers Relic has already invented. The mortar bunker is simple enough, but the Observation bunker is a bit more interesting. This emplacement should have a long line of sight, but it should be restricted to a narrow arc which can be refaced. This encourages active micro of the emplacement. It would be strong in matches where this is placed behind team weapons and artillery for spotting targets but would not detect flanks. Somewhat reminds me of the child’s game ‘Spotlight’.
Fusiliers: These are another unit that Grens can be swapped out for. Unlike Jagers and Panzergrens, this unit is purely focused on long range DPS. You could use Gebirgsjager here instead, I use Fusiliers as one of my other designs uses Gebirgsjager.
Range Adjustment: This unit ability increases the squad’s accuracy after each model drop to a maximum of 30%, 5% per model. I could imagine in most situations, this would be a simple DPS boost, but there would be situations where fighting low health squads where this would be especially strong. The same kind of logic applies to the ATG and Tank Destroyer ability, where everytime they land a shot while the ability is active, it increases their accuracy and ROF.
Focused Gunnery: A global sight and range buff for vehicles, at the cost of speed. This blends well with the other abilities in the battlegroup.
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Central Idea: Area denial.
Grenadier & Pio Field Defences: Gives access to a number of build options. Panzer-Stabmine 43 AT Mines are a variation on normal mines, where the emphasis is placed on the heavy engine critical rather than the damage of the mine. So these mines would be relatively spammable, specialised against vehicles and would cause a heavy engine damage critical. The focus here is leaving your opponet’s vehicle stricken and being able to move in with your own vehicles to take it out. However, unlike say Riegel mines, it doesn’t do that much damage, so your opponent will have a much easier time of quickly repairing off the damage. It’s a variation on mines with its own drawbacks and strengths. However, the main structure you get access to is the Luftwaffe Relay Point. This emplacement can call in strafing runs within its vicinity, the AT strafe would be particularly strong if combined with the Stab mine as it would be far harder to dodge. The relay point though can also call in a variety of crate drops with different infantry buffs. Ammunition crates increase ROF, which is simple enough, but the Explosives Crate doubles the squads grenade ability the next time its used. For instance, Grens would throw 2 stick grenades for the price of 1 with a 0.5 second delay between each throw. Naturally, this is pretty strong and also munitions efficient, at the cost of extra micro. The mechanic could also be made to give squads that don’t normally have a grenade, a grenade. For example, it would be cool if Jagers/Pios got stick grenades after picking up one of these crates. I’m not sure what you would do with Stosstruppen, a bundle grenade assault? Sounds overpowered and incredibly fun. Double frangible sounds fine. Camouflage Crates give your squad moving camo for 60 seconds, so you could conceivably pick up this crate on the way to your opponent’s side of the map and use it to ambush or do all manner of things. One question that would need answering is whether or not is should be possible to stack these crate bonues, I could foresee camoed Panzergrenadiers with double bundle grenades being very very good. Perhaps the best way of soft nerfing this combination is to have a shared cooldown timer of 90 seconds on the crates, this should severely limit the number of times a player can get explosives and camo at the same time.
251/17 Halftrack: Exactly like Coh2.
Cannone Da 105/28 Howitzer Emplacement: A general howitzer emplacement, you could use the LeFH but this emplacement already exists.
Panzerturm IV: A mixed AT and anti infantry emplacement. This emplacement absolutely should take up pop cap but also have prioritise vehicles.
Bf109 WerferGranate 21 Rocket Strike: This would fire 4 rockets in unison, have fairly high alpha damage and flame dot damage. You would most use it against team weapons and infantry, especially in denying point caps, but potentially you could use it against vehicles, particularly if they hit a panzer stab mine, to cause them health damage and prevent them from being repaired.
Sd.kfz. 251/16 Flame Halftrack: Similar to the unit in Coh2, except you can also upgrade it with MGs. As a general comment, I feel this unit and flame weapons more generally should have bonus damage against base tech structures. Sneaking flame tanks into the base and burning down your opponent’s tech is so much fun in Kane’s wrath and I feel Coh3 would do well to capture some of that magic. So being able to burn down a tech structure in 30-45 seconds in would give this unit extra utility, currently it fees like the flame units lack flexibility relative to their autocannon equivalents.
Infantry Gestreckte Ladung: This ability is on infantry and it essentially is a grenade that sits between the Bundle Grenade and a Satchel charge on the spectrum. It would have the same damage as a bundle, but a longer fuse and shorter range. However, the charge would have bonus damage against emplacements, buildings and field defenses. The ideal use case would be against units behind sandbags and wire, as it would destroy them completely. Its much more likely to land than satchels, with its shorter fuse time, but is not as a good as bundle grenades which do the same damage with an even shorter fuse. So the bonus against field defences is the main advantage of the grenade. It goes without saying that this ability benefits from the Explosives crate from the other side of the tree.
Decima Squad Infiltration: This squad is most comparable to Stormtroopers in Coh2. You would largely use the squad to charge cutoffs and plant explosives on points, its going to be strong in VP wars. This squad has no camo out of the box but you can get that from the other side of the tree.
Communication Breakdown: This is activated in a circle zone and no off-maps can be used in it for the duration, nor do any global abilities like Designate Assault Position work there. There are many situations where something like this would be useful, for example, preventing someone from calling an off-map in during your assault, preventing an off-map being called in on a crucial VP in a close match. The main use I could see people using this is with their emplacements on the other side of the tree, preventing say bombing runs, etc.
In Deckung!: This abilly mixes well with a variety of the other abilities in the battlegroup. Getting cheaper grenades will allow you to spam them during the duration of the ability, if you combine that with the Explosives crates, it will be yet more efficient. 15 munitions Panzer Stab mines will be strong. The crucial thing with this ability is timing, as you need to use grenades and mines en masse to justify the initial munitions cost.
Other Unit DLC
As I discussed before, I think it would be a mistake for Relic not to include the substitute units feature. In terms of what units should be substitutable, this is what I feel makes sense:
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Finally, as a general change, I feel we need to talk about the Pak 43. The Pak 43 is already in the game files and is presumably lined up for a battlegroup. I feel this unit should just be added to T4 so that stock Wehr has an answer to heavy tank spam (thinking about Matildas and Grants here). Wehr doesn’t have a great answer for dealing with heavy tanks, short of building 3 paks or several marders, neither of which are great from a faction design perspective. They come quite early, relatively, so improving their performance messes with the flow of the game and makes T4 less attractive, why bother going T4 if all the AT you need is in T2/T3? A Pak 43 in T4 has a pleasing symmetry between DAK, Brits and Wehr. If US got he M5 ATG (which they should), all factions would have this common tool. A number of players have been calling out for the Panther to be added to T4, I don’t think that’s the play here, as it would dominate so many other options. The situations where you would build a Pak 43 over a Panther are quite niche (look at Coh2), so having the more attractive unit in stock over the less attractive solution in a battlegroup, to me makes little sense. The Panther would also crowd out Flak 36 Emplacment play. However, the Pak 43 is easier to counter for your opponent, using indirect etc, while also giving you a reason to go for a battlegroup with Panther as the main attraction. Essentially what I’m getting at is that the Panther is too dominant of a unit to be in T4 and the Pak 43 should be there in its place.
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This 2011 RAV4 reached my goal of 200000 km. I bought it in 2015 in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. I drove it to Cold Lake, Alberta (half of Canada) the same year and it's been here ever since. Well, except for many short trips to Edmonton, longer ones to Saskatchewan and through the Rocky Mountains countless times to Calgary and Canmore. Took it for a ride to BC and Seattle to watch a baseball game (that was a fun trip where a mechanic had replaced an axle seal a couple weeks previous, forgot (?) to tighten stuff and the wheel bearing wore out, along with a hanging speed sensor 2000 km into the trip). I've only replaced O2 sensors, axle seal twice, front struts, back lateral links and a gear causing a rattle on startup (well known issue for Toyota's 2008-2013?). I've used it for two kayaks up top, tons of camping where I slept in the back and I installed a remote starter on my own. StartX is the brand and it works fantastic...the Alberta winters started getting to me. Now I'm installing wiring and a hitch for a trailer for a small boat in a couple weeks. The transmission is starting to make some sounds but I don't know what to buy next. Probably a RAV4 but certainly a Toyota!

My sleeping pad has another hole in it. Despite having to wake every few hours to inflate it, I slept okay, though my hip hurts where it was on the ground. Soon we will have to graduate to the hardcore foam pads that thru-hikers favour as they cannot be destroyed. My predictions of early dawn baseball games came true, when we got out of the tent at 630 there were a dozen games already in full swing nearby. A man motioned to us that we should probably get going soon, as they were setting up for a game. I waved back and gave a hands-together gesture, which he mirrored, which told me it was a friendly interaction. We leave our bikes propped up so I think people see the tent and the bikes and put two and two together.
We got away pretty quick and had breakfast at a conbini, I had some protein bread and jam, this time I got a squeeze bottle of jam that won't leak. Have to restock on snacks! We had smoothies and cans of coffee and were quite pleased to be on the road again. A group of baseball players were also hanging out at the conbini, seems like everyone likes to play baseball here.
We got up on the retaining dyke that runs parallel to the Edo river, where we had a great view of the river and all the sports fields below. We saw dozens of teams of baseball players, soccer, a bit of rugby, lots of golfers, the odd drone pilots, some rowers, runners, cyclists and walkers. Lots of folks out and about! We even could see Fuji way out in the distance, peeking from between two ranges. Such a big mountain.
We saw a cafe that had the trappings of a bikers oasis, and stopped there and had lemon and honey iced tea. While we were sitting, a cyclist stopped and chatted us up, then another stopped and also wanted to know about our journey, then a half dozen stopped and suddenly we were in the middle of a bunch of middle aged dudes all wanting to buy us honey toast and other stuff for our journey that they thought was both crazy and worth doing. We were asked many times where we were going today, I replied with "Nikko", which caused waves of incredulity. I guess these guys wouldn't be doing a lot of one way trips like us, or don't bike over 100km. We escaped from the horde eventually by plying everyone with stickers, and took off before anyone else could waylay us.
Around this point we really noticed the tailwind. A tailwind! We thought it was a myth. It turns out that yes, it is possible for the wind to be in your favour. Who would have thought! We welcomed the assistance and sped on as fast as we could manage in the mounting heat. Towards noon we came across a heart shaped lake that was some kind of flood retention system for Tokyo, and biked over the cute bridges that crossed the lake before stopping for lunch at a family restaurant.
I really struggled when we sat down, I felt like I ran out of blood in my brain. I think the toast was not enough calories to sustain me for the morning, I need to eat in the mid-morning like I used to. After a bit of food I perked up though, I had a nice miso ramen with gyoza and Bryce had a katsu bowl with egg and a side of soba. Very nice. We managed 65km before stopping for lunch, very respectable, but we decided to make good on our intention to hit up Nikko, I was going to need a bathtub somewhere to do my mat repair and we were interested in a theme park in Nikko as well. We braced ourselves for a challenging afternoon and set off.
It was very hot in the sun and our clothes began to get that frosted look from salt crystals forming on the outside. Bryce is convinced it makes our clothes more abrasive too. After an hour we had to stop for some icey treats as Bryce thought his head was going to melt in the heat. Nothing a few ice cream pops can't help. I had a mango ice bar as well, very tasty. We looked up hotels in Nikko and found ourselves between a rather basic looking wood-panel box kinda affair that would make for a 130km day, and the onsen hotels we were interested in. These would be a 150km day, which we thought might be possible with the tailwind, but we weren't sure. We decided to kick the can down the road and see how we felt in an hour.
After an hour or so we took a break to stretch and have a drink, I took off my helmet and rested it on my bike. This is when I discovered that a Japanese giant hornet was hanging out on my helmet and had no intention of leaving. My helmet has a honeycomb structure to the internal crash system, I think this might have attracted it as it seemed to be sitting on it. We spent a few minutes tossing rocks at my expensive bike trying to hit the helmet and get the hornet to leave, eventually Bryce found a length of cable on the ground and whacked the helmet a few times til the monster flew off. Good grief. The last thing I want in the middle of nowhere is a hornet sting, let alone a giant murder hornet sting. I've been bitten and stung by everything else out here I would like to pass on this please.
Taking the opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge, we rode to the next conbini to get some snacks to keep up our energy while we decided what to do. At this point it was feeling pretty clear that while 130km would be a challenge, it wasn't going to be that bad. 150km felt possible, but that it would wreck us for awhile afterwards. We decided against that plan and booked the pine box hotel. Now we had a destination, which felt better.
The next two hours were a gentle climb under towering trees over the highway into Nikko. We talked about what plans we would have to make to attempt to break Bryce's personal best at 160km. I figure we should get a pile of energy gels and eat one every 45 minutes and skip lunch altogether, eating on the road. We average 20km/h when we're moving, so get going early and we'll be done after 8 hours of riding. Add in 2 hours of stops and it's a typical 10 hour day that we usually do. We'll ride as much of a caffeine high as we can tolerate for the stimulants and have a couple litres of sports drink on us in my food trunk. We both felt that our limiting factor was not our legs, but how long our butts can tolerate the saddle. Maybe getting up when we have the gels and doing a butt massage? We definitely need to change riding pads halfway through the day, that will help with the chafing. I think we have the endurance, but we haven't really tried to plan out our nutrition and timing all that precisely.
While I think there's a possiblity for two chances for this, our best bet is undoubtedly northern Hokkaido. It's a gentle downhill for 200 km and we can find a segment to bookend with hotel rooms. If we start already packed and end somewhere already set up for us, we don't have to worry about anything but riding. That should do it. We need goals for this part of the trip, without them it'll get kinda boring.
We arrived at the "hotel" without problem, easily beating my personal best at 135km. Amazing! And I feel like I can still do more. We will for sure get Bryce's PB at this rate. The place we rented was a single unit of a rather clever hotel design, every room is essentially a small trailer home complete with a washer, a fridge and a hot plate. The interior is left as chipboard and you check in on a tablet by taking pictures of yourself. It gives you a code to unlock your door and voila you're inside. It's cheap as chips, we can fit our bikes inside no problem and the water pressure is fantastic. We love it. Nobody bothering us about tattoos and onsens, no fussing. Granted if there was a problem of any kind we'd be screwed as we can't call a number for assistance, but it worked fine this time.
We walked across the street for dinner, a place offering giant rice bowls piled high with meat. You had us at "giant". We both got monster bowls with a dozen pieces of char broiled pork belly, a shared order of karrage with chili sauce and two lemon sours to celebrate our highest point yet. Fantastic! We even figured out what the mysterious stone buildings we had seen around the town were. They looked oddly like mausoleums, but it seemed like half the properties had one of these rectangular stone buildings with a crest emblazoned on the side. Turns out they're just traditional japanese storehouses. They're sheds. So much for that mystery.
We ordered the perfect amount of food, which was probably about four servings each. Which honestly is still not enough, today's calorie count is 4500, which is a lot to make up. We'll probably need to eat big tomorrow to fully catch up because we didn't eat very big on the road. After dinner I went back to the hotel to work on my camping mat and Bryce went to go find some laundry detergent and dessert for us. The mat revealed it's secret hole quickly, in a similar spot as last time. I guess I over-inflated it and sat on it a bit too harshly in that spot and caused some tears where the internal structure is connected. Oops. Good thing we have lots of patches! I also noted that tomorrow it's supposed to rain cats and dogs all day. That sucks. Now we have to decide what we're gonna do. Maybe it'll change overnight, weather here is temperamental.
Hot baths in the surprisingly generous tub made up for our lack of onsen access and soothed our sore legs and backs as well as any sores we have going on. With luck we'll feel right as rain in the morning. Trying to get an early night tonight so we feel really good tomorrow!

I’m still very new to vintage trailer camping and I’ve been tackling one issue at a time with my restoration of a 1968 Road Runner that already had some work done on it. Currently trying to figure out why my water pressure is essentially zero. This appears to be a Shurflo SLV 12V pump hooked up to a steel tank that runs directly to the sink. There’s no water heater or drinking filter, this is pretty barebones.
When I got this trailer last year the water kind of worked but was very rusty coming out of the faucet, and the pump would reach a point where it thought there was enough pressure and switch itself off. I drained the tank and ran compressed air through it before winter. Now I’be refilled the tank for the first time this season and I’m barely getting a drip. Someone in another post said that cleaning the filter between the tank and the pump fixed the issue. I don’t see anything like that. Is there a filter built into this model? Did the previous owner neglect to include a filter and now the pump is choked up with rust? Can I fix it or is it time to get a new pump along with a filter?
Eventually I want to replace the tank with a PE one, but if I can resurrect the current set-up so that I can at least wash dishes (I’m fine with bringing jugs of potable water and there’s no toilet or shower on board) without spending a ton of time or money that would be great. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I’m truly a novice here.