A highly sketchy guide to the weapons available in H&DD. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

STEN SUBMACHINE GUN: Handy little buzzgun used extensively by the British army in World War II. Wildly overmodeled in H&DD, especially the range; in real life, anyone killed with a Sten beyond about twenty or thirty feet had a right to feel ill-used by fate. Lightest of the submachine guns in the game, and therefore useful as a secondary weapon for a machine gunner.

ENFIELD SNIPER RIFLE: They got it wrong in all sorts of ways - no British sniper rifle came with a zoom scope, the capacity should be ten rather than five rounds, and it fires semi-automatically, should have some sort of delay with sounds of bolt operating between shots. For game purposes, an excellent sniper rifle.

JOHNSON RIFLE: I don't know what the hell they were thinking. The Johnson wasn't used by the British, or anyone else except certain Marine units in the Pacific; and anyway they got it wrong - the Johnson was a semi-automatic rifle, but this one operates like a bolt action. (Which the Enfield and Mauser should and don't.) Altogether useless for any possible purpose in the game. Ignore it.

BREN GUN: Wonderful machine gun, very powerful; sometimes the decisive weapon in a hard-fought action. Only flaw, and it's a serious one: in this game (as distinguished from real life) it can only be fired from a prone position. So it's mostly for defense and for ambushes; it's not a handy weapon to move around with. Bren gunners should be given some supplemental weapon so they can defend themselves on the move.

BROWNING AUTOMATIC RIFLE: Oh, for God's sake. The British didn't use the BAR (no reason to, since they had the far superior Bren) and this one is all wrong - it fires from a belt feed rather than a clip as it should. Furthermore, the AIs fire it semi-auto, bang bang bang, rather than as a machine gun. Useless and historically wrong. Forget it.

PISTOL: Generic handgun used by both sides; supposed to represent the .45 automatic, which the SAS did actually use on occasion. Not very effective and quite weird to use; really not worth bothering with.

KNIFE: Supposed to be the Fairbairn knife, but it isn't; doesn't look a bit like it. Never mind, it works. To use it you have to get up close and then hit the trigger button.

BAZOOKA: The British didn't use the American bazooka; they had a weird gadget of their own called the PIAT. Be that as it may, you'll need this thing for certain applications. Very heavy, and ammo is heavy too.

MILLS GRENADE: Delayed-fuse fragmentation grenade; it goes off when the time runs out and not before, so if it bounces somewhere else it's wasted. Great for cleaning out bunkers, rooms etc.

ANTIPERSONNEL MINE: Really not much you can do with these things; I've tried them and they do work, but generally they're only good for a defensive situation when you don't really have time to screw around with them. And they weigh too much.

ANTITANK MINE: Necessary in certain missions, but a drag to use. VERY heavy, severely limits what else can be carried. Goes off when a tank or vehicle tread or tire actually makes contact with it; it's not magnetic, if the wheels or treads straddle the mine it won't go off.

MP40 SUBMACHINE GUN: Excellent personal weapon; like the Sten, grotesquely overmodeled as to range, but otherwise fairly authentic. Heavier than the Sten, but on the other hand you can score ammo off the enemy, which you can't with the Sten.

MP44 ASSAULT RIFLE: Outstanding weapon for first-person use; not as good for the AIs, who fire it one shot at a time. Very powerful, high rate of fire, definitely worth acquiring when it finally shows up in the game.

MAUSER SNIPER RIFLE: Ridiculously common in the early H&DD campaigns; you'd think half the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS were snipers. As with the Enfield, the scope is historically altogether wrong, as is the rate of fire. For game purposes a better choice than the Enfield because of its greater range and the availability of ammo.

MG34 MACHINE GUN: Comparable to the Bren. Shouldn't be; should have a higher rate of fire, and fire from a belt rather than a clip. Useful to have if you get a chance to pick one up.

CZECH MACHINE GUN: Essentially the same as the Bren. Not worth bothering with; ammo too hard to come by.

POTATO MASHER GRENADE: Excellent for taking out enemy in the open; it goes off on contact, though, so it's not as good as the Mills for cleaning out bunkers, and dangerous to use indoors.

PANZERFAUST ANTITANK ROCKET LAUNCHER: Lighter and handier than the bazooka, but only fires one round; a throwaway item, use once and discard. Well worth picking up when opportunity presents itself.

Some new weapons show up in the Devil's Bridge/Fight For Freedom add-on, as well as some changes to familiar ones:

THOMPSON SUBMACHINE GUN: Disappointing. Displays only in a kind of hipshoot mode, impossible to aim except by using the white aiming dot which disappears against a snowy or foggy background, which is to say all the missions in the first two add-on campaigns. I didn't like it.

.30 CARBINE: The SAS did indeed use the American carbine - they thought highly of it - but it's botched in the add-on. Utterly inadequate power (they say it used "pistol ammunition" which indicates their confusion); all right, the M-1 carbine was a weak little pissant, but it sure as hell had more effective range than the Sten! Another goofy display, too, no way to aim it. Useless. Disappointing.

SOVIET PPSh SUBMACHINE GUN: A real delight to use, even if there's no way to really aim it. Very high magazine capacity, high rate of fire, excellent weapon. Unfortunately it's only available in that iniquitous final campaign in Greece.

ENFIELD RIFLE (non-sniper): The Enfield without a scope, and without any way to use the sights. Display is really crude, looks like a club. I don't know what you'd want it for.

MAUSER RIFLE (non-sniper): This on the other hand is a genuine improvement; the German AIs in the add-on missions use it instead of the sniper rifle, which is far more authentic. But you won't want to pick one up.

LUGER PISTOL: No more Germans firing at you with American .45s. OK. Not worth picking up, though.

ENFIELD SNIPER RIFLE: Same as before but with magazine capacity corrected to ten rounds, which is well worth having. Doesn't show up, though, until the final campaign, which is a piece of shit and not worth playing.

MP44 ASSAULT RIFLE: God damn it, they ruined this one in the add-on - for some reason the cyclic rate has been reduced so much that you can't really use it as an automatic weapon, in effect it's become a semi-automatic rifle. Makes no difference for the AIs, who always used it that way, but it's no longer worth having as a personal weapon.

GERMAN FRAGMENTATION GRENADE: The fat gray one. Very good delayed-action frag grenade, as good as the Mills and useful for the same purposes.

BRITISH CONTACT GRENADE: The little gray one. Wonderful little bomb, light and easy to throw for considerable distances. Strictly for outdoors, though.