Fury at the fury

In the past few sessions Eric and I have been playing Fury in the East (BGG entry), a one-map WWII East Front game from MMP that covers the first 9 months of the Barbarossa Campaign. This game was part of Operations Magazine Special Edition #3, their yearly special that features a complete game, sometimes more than just one, as well as lots of updates, corrections, and variants for existing games.

FitE is a reprinting of the Japanese game G-Barbarossa (BGG entry), with updated graphics. It's a fairly strait-forward, corps level, move-fight-panzer move, locking ZoCs, odds combat, column shifts for terrain/supply type of game. However, there are a few wrinkles:

• Only German panzer units move in the second movement phase
  
• German panzers may move out of a ZoC
  
• Units performing Rail or Strategic movement may move out of a ZoC, as long as at least one unit is left behind
  
• For Axis combat is optional; for Soviets it is mandatory; all enemy units exerting a ZoC must be attacked; all units in an enemy ZoC must perform an attack
  
• Soviet Leaders have hidden strengths, and must be revealed to provide leadership to Soviet units; some leaders have no capability, and are removed immediately to the pool; Leaders destroyed in combat are out of the game
  
• Soviet combat units have to be in range of a Leader, otherwise movement rates halved, negative column shift applies; panzers may ignore infantry ZoCs with no Leader
  
• Terrain effects only apply to the Soviets, in terms of plus/minus column shifts
  
• Axis units not only have to trace supply to a supply source, but also have to trace to one of three supply heads
  
• There are different CRTs for each side; the Soviets taking losses; the Axis having retreats, with option to take a step loss instead
  
• Weather is a single condition affecting the whole map; also controls how many Luftwaffe units are available
  
• Axis player gains VPs for controlling Soviet cities; capturing Moscow is an automatic Axis victory
  
• Axis player has Hitler mandated objectives in turns 2-7; not achieving these are -5VPs per objective
  

The major problem is the rules just totally SUCK. Without doubt, this is the worst set of rules I think I've seen for any game I've played. (I believe that the S&T game Frigate had worse rules, but I never played that one.) Terminology issues, major omissions all over the place. Now this is a magazine game, and perhaps there should be some allowance made, but the game is effectively unplayable with the rules that came with it. Did no-one even attempt to blind playtest this from the proposed rules? Even worse is that as a reprint from a previous game there are so many glaring omissions. Did no-one make a comparison to the original game rules?

On the plus side, the developer, Adam Starkweather, has been very active in supporting the game over on ConSimWorld, responding to questions very quickly. However, he does have a habit of shooting from the hip and making pronouncements without going back and looking carefully at the rules. Several times he's made rulings, and then had to reverse them in later posts. That gives no confidence in any of his responses. He's also said 'If not mentioned in the rules, that’s fine.' Trouble is, the rules miss out so many critical items that you can't take that attitude.

And all this is a damn shame, because FitE is a very decent game, and does a very good job of modeling, at a high level, the differences in the forces, and the nature of the Barbarossa offensive. The game flows easily, with options for both sides and plenty to think about. The initial Axis successes slowly grind to a halt in the face of mounting Soviet forces, and the switch in the player turn order nicely reflects the change in balance caused by the winter. I've been playing it quite a bit recently (solo, as well as with Eric) and I've had a blast doing so.

So, track down this gem, get all the errata and rulings from the ConSim World forum, which has been nicely collated into a single document here, get the beer and pretzels out and have a blast.

Next up is Galicia from GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry). Due to a gaming weekend and scheduling issues, we've had to have a couple weeks off, but are due to get back to it next week.

Familiar Ground

The last two weeks, Mike and I have been playing Fury in the East game included in the most recent Operations Special Issue published by Multi-Man in the summer of 2010.

This is a remake of a game originally published in Japan as “G-Barbarossa” and is originally designed by Ginichiro Suzuki. It covers the initial phases of the invasion. The game is ten turns, and all but the first two cover four weeks. The first two turns cover two weeks each.

In many ways, this is a standard Barbarossa game. It probably most resembles Red Star Rising of all the eastern front games I've played. While it doesn't use a variant of the Victory in the West system as in RSR, it does incorporate randomness into the Russian combat units and leaders. It's at a bit higher scale, though; more like Defiant Russia in scope.

Two weeks ago, Mike and I got two turns into the game in an evening, and compiled a large list of rules questions. While two-thirds of them had been answered on CSW, we still had a number of other issues to resolve.

After posting questions and getting very quick answers (one of which conflicted with a prior response on CSW), we proceeded to restart the game, with myself taking the Russians again versus Mike's Axis forces. We got three turns in this time, and didn't really run into any new questions.

While I'll post more information about the game next week, I do want to get a few things posted first.

Keep in mind, this is a magazine game. As such, I do have a bit of a lower bar for quality, proofreading, etc. While the production quality is good (all components are good quality, and I know of zero counter or map errata) the rules need restructuring and at least one more edit pass.

There are some frightening omissions. First, overruns cost an extra 3 MP beyond the movement cost of the defending hex. This isn't in the rulebook – it's in the minimal posted errata. Given most German units have 8MP, this is a massive mistake. The Soviets are required to make mandatory attacks against adjacent German units during their combat phase. However, the rules state that all German units in Russian zones of control must be attacked. A clarification on CSW has modified that saying all Russian units in German zones of control must attack as well. This is very significant if you're trying to preserve units or leaders. (And as Russian units cannot move if in an enemy zone of control, preservation is important.)

I'll leave final thoughts on the game until my next post, but I'll leave you today with this: If you attempt to play this game, do your CSW forum research first, and play through the first two turns. Ask questions, then start over. You cannot get this game right the first time from the rules as written.

On a different note, it might be worth the effort. More to come.

Conflict returns to the table

After our Red Star Rising (BGG entry, Eric's review, take, my take) wrap up, we had a single session before Eric was off entertaining his mom, so a perfect night for something short, and I proposed a return to Conflict of Heroes (BGG entry, Eric's take, my take) as we'd both enjoyed it when we first tried it, and I was curious to see how the game progressed. This time the aim was to get through scenarios 3 and 4, which sees the whole rule book introduced, as well as vehicles.

In scenario 3 Eric ended up with the Germans, on the attack, to my Russians. I set up an MMG and the mortar on the leading ridge, and the other MMG on the east-most hill. My squads went into protecting the approaches, one to the west (in the heavy woods), one on the choke-point at the road, and the other in the light woods at the end of the wall, just below the hill. All my units were hidden.

Eric came up the road, and around the east side of the hill on the edge of the two boards with most of his squads, with a squad and a mortar to the west, on Hill 342. He made short work of my mortar, and I didn't get much from my artillery, just hitting a single unit all game. However, my lead MMG did some fair damage before succumbing. Eric managed to get two units onto board 4, and getting close to the headquarters. However, I managed to use my squads to fire on and then melee his squads to remove the threat. Eric was left with a couple of pot-shots at my HQ with a mortar with only an outside chance of success, but to no avail, leaving the Soviets with the win.

Onto scenario 4, which sees the introduction of fixed defenses and tanks, and, once more, Eric drew the attacking Germans. I set up my AT gun in the Hasty Defense in the heavy woods to the north of Hill 53, protecting the road, and with a decent field of fire. The MMG went in the bunker, a squad on each of the control hexes, and the spare in the light woods near his entry, hoping to grab back the control/VP hexes when they got captured. One T26 set up on Hill 53, the other on the other hill.

Eric came in strong, and rolled well to quickly remove both squads and one of the T-26s with a Vehicle Destroyed chit draw. One of his tanks ran around to my right and captured the control point, removing the squad there, and then took out the other T-26. At this point I was 5-1 down in units and it was looking bleak. However, the AT gun managed to remove a couple of tanks and disable another. It was this last one that was critical as it was the main unit for taking on the bunker. And so it was that Eric was unable to dent the bunker, and I was able to hold on for a win.

Over both games I was very careful of my CAP expenditure, trying to hold onto CAP for when I really needed it, and also passing a lot, trying to force Eric to use up his units and CAP. As defender, this is often easier than as attacker, especially where if he tries the same passing tactic it leads to the end of the turn, and the game has a limited turn length. This did back-fire on me once, as I ended the turn with 5 CAPs still on the track. What a maroon!

Both games fit into our 3-hour slot and played very quickly once we got back into the swing, which didn't take too long at all. The vehicle extensions work well, and it has a decent feel. There's a decent amount of tension, and there should be good variation and replayability. I'm looking forward to going deeper into the scenario list, especially the bigger ones. And the new versions that are coming out.

Postcards from Smolensk

By now, you've probably seen my brief review of Red Star Rising, and Mike's summary of our 4-session game. Here's my view of the game as it progressed and some after-action thoughts.

Early Turns

Push back everywhere as far as I can. Run ahead with the armor and lock future targets in place. Use the fact that most Russian units can't exit a ZOC on their move.

By the end of turn 3, Army Group North is heading off to Leningrad, Army Group Center had reached the railroad that runs south out of Leningrad, and Army Group South had reached Kiev.

I feel like I'm doing okay at this point.



By turn 5, I've crossed the Luga in the north, crossed the Dnepr in the center, and have invested Kiev in the South. Odessa has fallen without a fight.

Things are still looking pretty good.

By turn 7, the advance on Leningrad has stalled, Soviet reinforcements have begun arriving in the center, and Kiev has been taken. The door to the Crimea is about to be blown open.

Concern is rising, but progress is still being made.

Winter is coming.



Turns 8-11 are winter. It is about here that I really understood what was going on. I was probably too aggressive in the winter turns. All combats in the winter add +3 to your die roll. The CRT looks like this:




Everything from a 7 on includes required step losses. I suffered a lot of attrition in the winter turns.

If you look at the far left edge of the pictures Mike took of turns 8 through 10, you'll see small changes in the area just north of Leningrad. This is where the Finns were trying to break through from the north. If you look on the CRT above, you'll see a couple places where, at 3:2 or 2:1 odds in the woods and roll an 8, the attacker loses a step loss with no harm coming to the defender.

The Finns managed to do this three turns in a row (turns 8-10). After that, there really wasn't anything left up there to use, so I abandoned Finland.

I took Sebastopol on turn 11, and began moving units across the Crimea. The goal was to attack Rostov from the south.

What happened after the thaw in '41 was a stabilization of the center, the repulse of the north, and the destruction of the south.



By the time we reached the fall mud, it was clear that the Soviets were in the ascendency and I'd reached my high-water mark. Rather than spend weeks confirming that fact, we decided to call it after turn 20. Massive Soviet victory.



As a reference, here's some key cities, the equivalent turn number when they fell in real life, and when they fell in our game.

City	Life	Game
Minsk	1	2
Vilnius	1	1
Riga	2	2
Kishinev	3	3
Odessa	5	4
Tallinn	6	9
Smolensk	7	7
Kiev	7	6
Bryansk	7	12
Vyazma	7	11
Kharkov	7	16
Sebastopol	7	11
Rostov	8	-

Around turn 7, I started falling behind, never to catch up.

So what happened?

I obviously wasn't aggressive enough in the first three or four turns. Remember my OCS tip about how if you're comfortable with your supply situation, you're not being aggressive enough? Bingo. Fell into that trap.

Notice how I don't have a single armor unit out of supply in the early turns? This is definitely a result of not fully understanding how the supply rules work. In the summer months, attrition from being out of supply is a rare thing – only a 1 out of 6 chance of losing a step. I should have been running my units behind Mike's to force more kills instead of just pushing him back two and three hexes at a time.

Because, if you don't kill off those units, they eventually come back. And when they did start returning, I simply didn't have enough left to hold them off. If I had been able to kill more units off early, I would have been in far better shape in the summer of '41. I need to push the armor further and let supply catch up to them instead of stopping at the edge of my supply range and waiting for the depots.

The buzz on this game in the hands of experienced players, the Soviets have almost no chance of winning. Given how much fun we had playing, I'd be more than happy to get to that point – it would be an enjoyable journey.

Red Star Risen

Eric and I were all set to put OCS Korea (BGG entry)on the long-term gaming table, when I started reading the rules for MMP's Red Star Rising (RSR) (BGG entry) on a whim. I'd traded for this one some time back, but never really looked at it much, apart from a quick 'oh, that looks nice' check on the components. The more I read, however, the more I liked the look of this one, and I proposed that we should consider a diversion from the plan. Eric read through the rules and agreed that it looked intriguing, so it became our next target.

RSR covers the whole of the eastern front campaign, from the start of Barbarossa through April 1944, when the Soviets had pushed the Axis back to their start lines and more. A very strait-forward game from a rules point of view, but it takes a few standard mechanisms and adds some very interesting twists.

The first is the turn order sequence, where it goes the same route as the GMT EFS games with an asymmetrical sequence, as follows:

Supply determination (both sides)
Axis reinforcements
Axis move (including overruns)
Axis combat
Soviet combat
Soviet reinforcements
Soviet move (including overruns)
Axis tank movement
Clean up

The first thing to note is that the Soviets fight then move, so the challenge is that the Axis may not be where you want him to be by the time combat comes around. This also has the interesting side effect that when you can pin him down to combat, if the Axis player loses steps, then you can follow up with overruns. Finally, note that Axis tank movement after the the Soviet turn. This gives the Axis player two chances to move his armor units (and overrun) and then a combat before the Soviet player has a chance to react. Potentially very devastating.

The next thing is that RSR starts with the basic Victory in the West chit pull mechanism for the strength of Soviet units, which come in three types, but then introduces a couple of twists. The first is that any Soviet unit that has a strength chit and is not adjacent to an Axis unit in the clean up phase has that chit removed. Interesting, as this models a couple of different things. Firstly, if the unit has already taken a step loss, then it is a simple way to model the continuous feed of replacements to units. Second, it represents additional training provided to units removed from the front-line. Secondly, the initial pool of chits get removed from the game as they are removed from units (for whatever reason), and new chits are added to the cup for each of the three pools during the game, so the average strength builds during the game. Both are neat, elegant, and totally simple, way to reflect the growing strength of the Soviet army over time.

However, before that all sounds too easy for the Soviet player to manage, there's a slight wrinkle. It costs +3 MPs to move out of a ZoC, and guess what the MA of Soviets armies are? Yep, 3MPs. Again, a simple mechanism that models the lack of tactical (although it feels odd to use that word in a game of this scale) flexibility that the Soviets showed in the early part of the conflict. Once those Soviet armies are committed to the front line, they ain't going nowhere until they're dead, pushed back, or the Axis player chooses to release them from ZoC. (German corps have a 4 MA.)

Weather is fixed by game turn, and impacts the whole map equally. The turns are of varying length to better reflect the tempo of combat in the prevailing weather. There is a +3 combat modifier in the first winter, and +1 in subsequent years, for both sides. Which brings us nicely to combat. A pretty standard combat table, odds-ratio, A or D results in terms of step losses or retreats, with three levels of terrain effects, and strength modifiers for rivers. Where it differs is above the normal '6' result, only reached by modifiers. Here, there are automatic step losses, mostly of the 1/1 variety, but with the odd attacker only loss, and heavier defender losses further up the odds. As well as the previously mentioned weather modifiers, an overrun has a +1, and Soviet leaders have a +3/+4. The Axis player does have air units, which gives him a 1-column on attack or defense.

Added to the above, both sides have the ability to breakdown into smaller units to cover more ground, or combine for a more potent force. Stacking is also asymmetric, allowing the Soviet only a single army per hex, regardless of its type or strength, but the Axis can stack several units together, and when there are two panzer corps together then they can create an almost unstoppable force.

Another asymmetric area is in supply. Soviet units are supplied if they can trace a 6MP (rail being half, marsh 2) line to to an HQ, which is itself in supply if it's on a rail line connected to a major supply source. Axis units, on the other hand, have to trace 4MPs (same) to a supply depot, which has to be connected by a chain of depots back to a supply source on the west edge of the board. Units that are beyond double these ranges also have to roll for isolation, with the risk of losing steps, which increases with the severity of the weather, more so for the Axis.

The only weak part, I thought, was in the section on industry and the strategic part of the game. The Soviet player has various types of industrial infrastructure dotted about the map, and which the Axis player can capture. Failing to do so allows more Soviet leaders to come into play, but the whole thing just seemed a trifle unfinished and a little tacked onto the rest of the game.

Overall, from just a read of the rules I was very keen to get this played, and when I suggested Eric look at it, he liked what he saw too, and it became our next undertaking.

(As with Sicily, here's a page of pics taken at the end of each turn, so you can follow along.)

With Eric once more on the attack as the Axis, he made short work of my Soviet starting position, pushing forward with his panzers. He made good progress in the north, where all the Soviets start out of supply, but less so in the south. By around turn 7 he was keeping up with where the Axis had got to in 1941.

From there on, however, things started to go a little awry. In the winter I held him and even pushed back in a few places. I had decided that the Leningrad front was an area where I wanted to focus, as if I could gain control of that front I would be able to sweep around into his supply lines. Eric had pushed forward all the way to the gates of Leningrad before winter set in, but with the +3 modifier I was able to push him back, and with the reinforcements I'd been feeding in there I was starting to work my way around his flank.

My weak area was in the south, where I was a little thin on the ground, and when the good weather came Eric tried to break out. Note the situation at the end of turn 11! Fortunately for me he'd outrun his support and I was able to dump a whole load of new armies into the area, which stabilized. I also saw this as an area with a lot of potential, as it was mostly held by weak Romanian units, so I reinforced there heavily, including my first tank army.

In the middle it was a major holding action, aiming to slowly give ground. By this time the chits in the cup meant that the Axis didn't have the big overruns and combats any more, and was limited to 2-1 and 3-1 attacks. It was also around this time that Eric started rolling like total crap, with 1s coming out every other roll, forcing him back. He also had his panzer corps attacking in a wide frontage in the woods to the south-west of Moscow with no other support, so they'd focus and gain a hex here, but would allow me to advance at the other end there, where he'd pushed me back last turn. This went on for several turns as we went back and fore over the same ground. In the meantime, I'm reinforcing the flanks, and swapping my crummy armies for stronger shock armies and, around turn 20, guards armies.

Going into the second evening session (turns 15-18 - we started with a full day, that covered the first 10 turns) I was starting to feel that I was gaining control. Some large gaps were starting to develop in various places, especially the south. Although a fortuitous overrun result in his panzer movement phase had opened up the way to Kharkov, with only 2 panzer corps and no support it was more a noose than anything. Sure enough, although he held the city for a turn, he ended up losing a couple of panzer steps for no real gain.

I'd added a second tank army to the south, and started driving through the gap that had developed, all the way to the major river, and had cut off his entire southern flank. In a couple of turns I'd removed all Axis units in that area, and had started to cut off supply to the south of his main line. In the north I was clear of his line, had them essentially pocketed and was starting to drive south, ready to cut off supply from the northern part of his main line.

And it was at this point that Eric conceded a major Soviet victory, as there was no way he was going to be able to stop me from pretty much rolling up his line from both directions at my leisure. I'd been studying the position whilst waiting for Eric to arrive that evening, and I'd said that I felt that the game would be over that evening, and so it was.

Eric seemed to be doing well to start with, so what happened? Although he was pushing forward, given that I wasn't putting up much of a fight, but keeping my armies more in reserves, perhaps he wasn't pushing hard enough. In the winter period I was able to push back a little, but this could have gone so much worse for the Axis as pretty much all the die rolls were low, meaning that the combats weren't forcing step losses. It's here that the depth of the Soviet army begins to tell as each step loss drains the life blood from the Axis army, but the Soviets have an almost unending supply of troops to feed into the mix.

Where I think Eric's game collapsed was in the use of his precious panzer corps in the fruitless fight around the woods to the south-west of Moscow in the summer of '42. Although he was winning lots of combats, being unable to cover the whole front with his 6 panzer units meant that I'd just walk straight back into the ground he'd kicked me out of, so he was making no progress. I was delighted to see the panzers fighting over the woods, where what I feared was that he'd bring up the infantry from the south to hold the woods, and move the panzers south to let them loose in the open country. As it was I faced lots of infantry attacks in the clear, being pushed back a hex or two, and even gaining ground as his die rolls sucked mightily. With the panzers coming in from the north and south, I could have been pocketed, with no retreat routes, rather than facing being pushed back across an even front, with clear and safe retreat paths. Whilst the Soviets get a steady flow of reinforcements, it's hard to redeploy armies, and I could have been in trouble.

The other thing that surprised me was that there was little in the way of reserves in the Axis side, pretty much every unit was on the front line. One of the big lessons in OCS is that of maintaining reserves, and I tried to make sure I had a second line where possible. Certainly that became a lot easier for me as the game went on and the reinforcements started to flow. So, when the breakthrough did come in the south, there was nothing there to stop it from being a game winning situation.

One thing we both commented on, was how freakin' far it is to Stalingrad from the Axis starting position. It's still a wonder that the Axis forces managed to penetrate so far into Russia. And that the Soviets managed to push them all the way back again.

The verdict? Absolutely superb game, one of my favorites of all the games we've played together. A monster in scope, the entire east front on one (large) map, the rules are elegant and simple to handle, yet give a great feel. The game simply flows, with little apparent downtime, the various asymmetric mechanisms fitting together just beautifully. The components also must be mentioned. Clear map and counters, comprehensive, and readable, rules. My only gripe is that the northern map uses a marginally different hex size to the main map, and it's impossible to get the alignment straight at both sides. As it turned out, the northern section might as well not have been there, as after a brief attempt on turn 1, Eric gave up on anything happening there.

Go out and get this game, find some table space, and go play it. You'll have a blast.

Eric's going to be out for a session, so with only the one evening before the mini-break to play something, I suggested that we do something short, like going back to Academy Games' Conflict of Heroes (BGG entry), as I'd like to get through all the scenarios in the game this year. After that, we're going to do some Musket & Pike, as we tackle GMT's Gustav Adolf: With God and Victorious Arms (BGG entry) - the whole box, all scenarios. From there it will be OCS Korea, assuming the table is clear. Unless we get diverted again.

Rising Star

Over the last few weeks, Mike and I have been playing Red Star Rising, the entry in Multi-man's IGS line that covers the entirety of WWII in Russia from the initial Barbarossa invasion through the spring of 1944, the point at which the Russians have pushed back into Romania, and are threatening Germany itself.

The game is based on the old SPI Victory in the West system that has random unit strengths, but with a number of changes. The game was previously published in 2004 by designer Masahiro Yamazaki in Six Angles Magazine #9 as “War for the Motherland.” This, in turn, was a complete rework of a version originally published by Rampart Games.

Multi-man gave it a magnificent graphics workover with a map by Mark Mahaffey, one of my favorite artists. (The final version can be seen on Mark's site.) My understanding is there's some rules updates as well. The rules are written by the same team as Devil's Cauldron and Warriors of God (Jon Gautier; writer, Adam Starkweather; developer). I've been extremely critical of their particular style of rules writing in the past, but I must credit them here – from their body of work of which I'm familiar, this is by far their best effort. We had very few rules questions during play.

As I mentioned, the game covers pretty much the entire eastern front. The map (when playing the full campaign game as Mike and I did) reaches from the Arctic circle down to the Caucasus Mountains, and from just inside the Prussian/Polish/Hungarian borders all the way to the Caspian Sea. This at about 35 km/hex. There are six scenarios covering varying amounts of time from the three-turn Introductory Scenario up through the full-meal-deal at 40 turns.

Two structural design choices make themselves known right up front. First, time is relative. One of the bigger problems in modeling large-scale games on the eastern front is how to handle the varying level of activity. OCS handles it through supply availability. Barbarossa (as published in World at War magazine) handles it through changing movement rates every turn. Red Star Rising handles it through changing the time frame covered by a turn. Turn lengths range from 10 days in the height of summer to two months during the mud in spring and fall.

The other interesting choice is an asymmetrical turn sequence. Turns flow as follows:

1. Supply


2. Axis Reinforcements


3. Axis Movement


4. Axis Combat


5. Soviet Combat


6. Soviet Reinforcements


7. Soviet Movement


8. Axis Tank Movement


9. Admin

So, the Germans get to move then fight, the Soviets must fight, then move. This tweak alone allows the Germans much more control over where and when fights happen. And that's before you even get to the Axis Tank Movement phase where the German tanks get to move (and potentially overrun) again.

The game is filled with little design gems like this. One of my favorite – it costs three extra movement points to move out of a ZOC. Russian units typically only have three movement points. No problem, you can always move one hex, right? Yup. Unless you start in a ZOC. This effectively pins any Russian units in place when they're adjacent to the enemy. Until you get to winter when it's only 2MP to move out of a ZOC. (Oh, and only Axis tank and Russian Guard Cavalry can ever move from ZOC directly to another ZOC.) These all work together to emphasize the inability of Russian units to detach from an engagement once stuck in.

Another interesting design is the CRT. Most results are given as A# or D# where the number must be satisfied by retreats or step losses in any combination of the owner's choice. Unless you get into the bottom portion of the chart (rows on the chart are numbered 1 to 10+ and you roll a D6 for combat, and the bottom portion is from 7 higher). If you manage to get down there, you see results like #/# where the numbers are required step losses for each side. How do you get down there? Overruns give a +1 DRM, Winter '41 gives a +3 (the other two winters giving +1) and Soviet Leaders give positive modifiers (usually +2 through +4) to Soviet attacks in their (typically) 3-4 hex range. So, you want to roll high, but not TOO high as the Axis, and once the Soviet replacement system gears up in '42, you want big numbers all the time. Oh, and the CRT isn't strictly linear in the bottom portion. You'll see things like 7 giving a 1/1, 8 giving a 1/-, and 9 giving a 1/1. (Yes, that means an 8 gives the attacker, but not the defender, a step loss.)

Finally, that random unit strength I mentioned earlier. The Russian Army-sized units (and Guard and Russian Armor) draw a chit when they don't have one and are either engaged in combat or adjacent to an Axis unit during the Admin phase. Over the course of the game, the Soviets get these chits as reinforcements, and they get stronger over time. Also, during the admin phase, if a Russian Army unit has a strength chit but is not adjacent to an Axis unit, it puts its chit back into the draw cup. As step losses are taken by flipping this chit, this means a Russian Army unit that takes a step loss but manages to disengage can regain that step loss merely by staying disengaged throughout the turn. This does a good job of simulating the Russian ability to replace losses during the course of the campaign with better and better quality troops. The Axis units, however, are excluded from this chit-draw mechanism.

The deeper you go into the rules, the more you realize the two sides have almost entirely different rules. Supply is handled differently, reinforcements arrive differently, etc. And it just works. The two sides DO play completely differently, but very much along the lines I'd expect. The German army is mobile, strong, but neither large nor resilient. The Soviet army is large, ponderous, and relentless. And gives quantity a quality all its own.

Mike and I mostly got the idea to play this from a thread on ConsimWorld asking “What's your best bang-for-the-buck game you own from Multi-Man publishing?” So many people responded with Red Star Rising as at least part of their answer we just had to give it a go. The effort was worth it. This game is simply (in the vernacular of Dave Eggleston) Top Shelf. There was probably only one rule that made us go “huh?” and that involved removal of Soviet Factories (there didn't seem to be a downside to doing it for the Soviets). Hardly anything major.

I'll give a full session report in my next post, but consider this my mini review after around 20 hours of play.

Top Notch.

Give it a go. If you're at all interested in WWII in Russia, this is probably the most playable full-campaign entry out there.

Sorry, Germany, No Oil for You.

Okay, so when I said the character of the blog was going to change over these last few weeks, I really didn't mean for it to go dark... life intervenes sometimes, and I've had a devil of a time finding the mental bandwidth to get this post finished.

That doesn't mean Mike and I weren't playing during the downtime, though. In fact, we got most of the way through an OCS scenario, and we've started The Mighty Endeavor's campaign game. Mike and I will be talking about TME in our next posts, but this one is about the Edge of the World scenario Mike and I played over three evenings.

This is the first scenario listed in the Case Blue scenario book. 25 turns, one map. The engagement starts small and builds over time as the Germans (and Russians to some extent) keep feeding units into the battle for Grozny and the oil fields nearby.



The black circles indicate the Axis victory areas.

We chose this scenario as a warmup as it's essentially the Drive for Oil scenario we'll be playing at WBC-W in miniature. The Germans are coming in from the northwest, and to win are trying to take Grozny, the oil fields next to Grozny, and Ordzhonikidzi in the south. The Russians win by denying the Germans and at least contesting Grozny. Anything else is a draw.

Originally, we'd chosen sides on the assumption that I'd be defending in Drive for Oil, and attacking in TME. As it turns out, I'm not going to be able to make it out to WBC-W as early as expected, so our TME game at WBC-W is off. But it's certainly educational to be defending against a strong, but resource-starved, enemy.

Mike and my experience with OCS to this point has been Sicily, DAK2, and Tunisia. All somewhat older games in the system and supply in those games is a bit more plentiful than it is in Case Blue. The first thing we realized is that it's a severe adjustment getting used to the restricted supply in this game.

As an example, it takes 1SP to fuel a panzer division until the end of your turn. It costs 1/4 SP (1T) for each step that attacks. The Germans start with 1SP on the map, and can expect to get about 2SP/turn. (each turn you roll two dice, < 4 you get 1SP, > 10 you get 3SP, otherwise 2SP. Which you have to truck into position.) Over the course of the scenario, the Germans get 5SP on full trucks as well. That's 56 SP or so for the entire game. Better be careful how you spend it.

In contrast, the Russians start with 5SP, have the same odds on arriving supplies, and don't get any with reinforcements. So, they should end up with 55SP during the game. About equal. They'll probably spend 6-8 SP building hedgehogs to protect Grozny and Ordzho, but don't have much armor at all that requires fueling. Defending is also cheaper (max 1/2 SP, or 2T in defense). So, the onus is definitely on the Germans to time their fights well and make sure they've got supply when and where they need it.

In our game, Mike sent the 23rd Panzer Division south to take Ordzho. I early on decided that attempting to do anything with Pyatigorsk in the west was a waste of time and let Mike spend the supply taking the town. If I recall, he basically surrounded the town and let them starve which they eventually did. Sort of a non-event, but still it tied up his units for a while. And time lets me build up defenses.

The general flow of the game went something like this:

After the panzers reached Ordzho, there was a fair amount of bickering over the Russian supply line extending south. At one point, I'd mistakenly let him block the supply line and I rolled extremely poorly for out-of-supply attrition. The roll would have eliminated the entire garrison. Mike let me reroll as this was a learning game and that would have caused major problems for me early on. Thinking back, though, I don't believe I'd checked for eating off the map, and I believe I had enough supply in the town to do so.

The remainder of Mike's forces headed further east to try to take Grozny. He mostly funneled the reinforcements that came from the north this direction as well. My goal here was to create a defensive line north of Grozny using the rivers where possible, but avoiding encirclement. The rail line east is a major supply route for the Russians and must be protected. Fortunately, the Terek river is impassable near Grozny except at the two road bridges and the one rail bridge at Gudermes. ZOCs do cross rivers, though, so the stretch where the rail line comes close to the south bank of the Terek must be protected.

During the middle section of the game, Mike repeatedly failed at taking Ordzho (in significant part because my bombers kept getting DG results on possible key attacking stacks, and in part due to bad die rolling) and pushed all the way down to just above the north bank of the Terek at one point. I had been rather frugal with my supply, though, and managed some (rather expensive) counter-attacks to push him back to Chervlennaya and further. This relieved the pressure on the rail line to Grozny and put him in a severe bind.

As we moved into the second half of the game, things were turning my way. While I still felt I was hanging on by a thread, Mike was getting some pretty bad die rolls trying to take Ordzho, and spent a large amount of supply to no real effect. He was starting to see that it was taking him nearly 3 turns to recover from a failed assault on the city enough to attempt again. Time was running short for him.

Meanwhile, there wasn't a whole lot happening over at Grozny as Mike was using most of his supply trying to take Ordzho. I was fortifying my defensive line when possible trying to create the best defensive position I could. I'd also placed hedgehogs in Grozny and Ordzho to help out with the defense.

We called the game at the end of September. (That was after 16 turns, with the full month of October – 9 more turns – to play.) It was pretty clear at this point that there was no way Mike was going to be able to reach the Axis objectives given my defensive position and his supply situation. He probably had, at best, three more attempts at Ordzho before even getting to Grozny, and I was able to fly in enough supply to keep the garrison there eating off the map, thus alleviating any severe supply issues.

So, what did we learn?

First, I'm not sure Mike should have sent the Panzer Division as the primary assault force on Ordzho. They're 1/2 strength attacking the city, and cost supply to maneuver back into position should an assault fail. (Which they inevitably will given the likely hedgehog being built there.) Granted, the Axis doesn't have much non-armored attack strength in this scenario, but I think it needs to be sent down there when available. Even if it takes 10 turns. In fact, I'd probably take Ordzho last – screen it with whatever is available and concentrate on Grozny.

The Axis armor is better used, in my opinion, in forcing the Russians to stretch out their defensive line north of Grozny. They can reposition VERY quickly and the Russians must protect the rail line heading southeast to Makhachkala. One Panzer Division can head east, while the other either heads down the road north of Ordzho threatening both cities or heads to the north edge of Grozny looking for weakened spots caused by the defensive line being stretched east to protect supply.

The Russians, meanwhile, need to fortify with hedgehogs and use their air superiority as much as possible. Protect the supply lines and fly supply into Ordzho every turn. You'll be trucking supply up from the South Box as much as possible, and shipping the rest via rail. Counter-attacks are going to be expensive due to the number of multi-step infantry divisions you've got, but you'll need to pull a few off to relieve pressure on critical points. The bridge crossings over the Terek cannot be lost or you're in for a world of supply hurt. Finally, do whatever you can to delay and bleed supply from the Axis. He's got a tighter budget than you and time's on your side

We did play one rule wrong that I can recall. Units can either enter or leave the South Box in a single turn, but not both. That slows down the amount of supply the Russians can truck north from what I was doing early on, and pretty much guarantees using rail cap every turn to get supplies into Grozny.

Over those three nights of play, I estimate we put in 9 or 10 hours of real play time. The first night was broken up by a bit of teaching session for Chris and Doug who'd stopped by to watch, and it always takes a little bit to get back into the flow of play after being away for a week. This scenario does give you a real feel for the issues the two sides are facing in the overall campaign, however – long distances to be covered by the Axis with little fuel, and loads of Russians to slog through once you get there. The Russians are making do with poor-quality, limited mobility troops (some have only 1 movement point in combat mode) but there's certainly a lot of them.

As the scenario starts with a small number of troops on the map and builds up, it's a great way to get your feet wet with Case Blue. I'd estimate 10-12 hours of play time if done in a single sitting, and possibly less once you get to the point of knowing how it'll end up a few turns early as we did.

More OCS

Eric and I continued our WBC-W warm-up with more OCS. This time it was the Edge of the World scenario from Case Blue, which sees the Axis charging forward with 3 panzer divisions and, pretty much, no supply. This makes it really hard to use those panzer divisions as they can't even move without supply.

In order to win the Axis have to capture Ordzhonikidze, and some oil fields near Grozny. If the Russians control any of those and still control Grozny, then they win. Any other result is a draw. The big limitation for the Axis player is supply, with only 2SP per turn (normally), so he has to run an offensive on little more than fumes. Of course, the Russian is defending a couple of cities, and the one thing you need to take these is supply. Hmm, a conundrum, indeed.

I started by dashing forward in an almost reckless manner, pushing past the first unit or two, heading one panzer division towards Ordzhonikidze, the others along the northern route towards Grozny. I got to Ordzhonikidze in the third turn or so, and immediately found that I had nowhere near enough strength to do much about it. Eric had added several units to the defenses, and I just bounced off.

However, I did manage to cut his supply line and forgetting about the attrition part of trace supply, Eric didn't move units forward to give them a supply line. Come the supply phase, when they couldn't trace, and not eat SPs on the map, he had to roll on the attrition table. He rolled, and it came up '12', killing all the steps. At this point I suggested that he change his move , and move his reinforcements to give a trace supply route to Ordzhonikidze, rather than move them into the town, which he did. I managed to cut his supply line once more, but he was able to force me back once again to re-open it.

From this point on the game kind of stagnated as I waited for strength, in the form of an infantry division, to arrive. I tried another attack, but lost out again, so decided on building up a bit first. I rebuilt my infantry division, more artillery and built up supply, and commenced the attacks. Which all went horrible wrong. I missed the artillery roll (needed a 6+), rolled defender surprise in the attack (with +1 modifier, I needed 6-8 to avoid surprise, 9+ to gain) and a 4 in the attack. My follow on attack to cut him off again also failed. Eric's counterattack rolled well, gaining surprise and his artillery managed to kill another step. I'd spent 4SP, and lost 3 steps, for no gain, something the Axis player just can't afford.

Elsewhere I tried to cut off Grozny, but Eric was easily able to gain trace supply again, as I'd very little in the way of supply to move my panzer units again. (At this point I had 2T of supply left on the map.)

The next few turns were building up for me, recovering steps and SPs, as Eric started to push forward. He left an infantry division out by itself near Grozny, so I tried an overrun, but even with a +3 modifier I couldn't roll the 9 required (i.e. needed to roll 6+) to get surprise, and I was forced back again. Another 1SP for nothing. He's starting to roll forward, threatening to wrap around my flank, so it was time to start considering falling back.

At Ordzhonikidze I've at least managed to cut him off, but we've identified that he's flying in 2T of supply per turn, less than he needs to eat off the map, so I have no way to force him out via attrition. 4 turns after the disastrous attack turn I'm still rebuilding (each infantry division step requires 2 Pax, and at an average of 1/turn, plus movement), but he's now threatening my flank, looking to cut off the units over the river to the east of Ordzhonikidze. I attack, but once more roll like crap and lose the combat.

As this point I call the game, as it's clear I'm not going to get anywhere near the victory conditions, and I am, in fact, going backwards, as the Russians get stronger and stronger. We've completed 16 of the 25 game turns, taking 3 evening sessions, around 9 hours or so.

This one seems to be a real hard row to hoe for the Germans. Other than the availability of 3 panzer divisions, all the advantages are with the Russians. The Germans have no supply, no air and all the work to do. The Russians just sit there and accumulate steps, SPs, reinforcements, sniping at the Axis forces with their air units as opportunities present themselves to prevent the Axis attacks. All the while they're building up their hedgehogs, just to make things harder. So, how does the Axis crack this one?

Eric suggested that building an airfield near the front might be an idea, as that would allow the sole Axis fighter to project a patrol zone over the leading attacking units, rather than skulking at the rear. This would have the double benefit of preventing the Russian bombers from having free rein to DG the Axis troops, and also threaten the air resupply of Ordzhonikidze. However, I'm not sure how much difference that would make, as with several Russian fighters it just requires one good roll and the Axis fighter would go inactive and he could then pound away, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

Perhaps only making really big attacks is the way to go, but with only the two full infantry divisions it's still going to be hard work, and that takes more time to organize, although time doesn't seem to be too much of an issue for the axis. These units are also very easy to hit by air, so will spend most of their time in DG status.

We really need to have another go at it, but that's the downside of these big games, it's a lot harder to get them to the table to play them often enough to figure out how to approach it. I might have to try it solo. If nothing else I need to figure out how to attack these Russian cities for WBC-W, which isn't too far away now.

Crossing the Chir in Slow Motion

Once a year, the wargame fans in our gaming group head over to Doug's place in Sunriver for a week long gaming gathering hat is referred to as WBC-West. It's our own little version of WBC. Minus the hundreds of attendees. And the competitions. And trophies.

But it's got lots of wargaming. So that's good.

This year, we're trying an experiment and having WBC-W in May. August was proving problematic for a variety of reasons.

One thing most of the attendees do before heading over is lock down a schedule. Which games, against whom, and when. Practice games are held to get the rules cemented in our head and verify that, yes, we do actually want to play this for real. After all, if you only get to do this once a year, you don't want to waste a full day playing a substandard game or botching critical rules. And you certainly don't want to be stuck as odd-man-out when everyone else is playing eight-hour games.

So, at this point the character of Two Sides will be changing a tad until late May. Mike and I have entered practice mode. We're planning a “monster” game this year to finish off the week – four of us will be playing the Drive for Oil scenario of Case Blue, the OCS game covering the 1941-1943 adventures of Army Group South. Mike and I will also be playing The Mighty Endeavor earlier in the week.

So, our schedule for a while is pretty locked in. This week, we played the Case Blue version of the Chir River Battles scenario that originally appeared in Enemy at the Gates. It was a nice refresher – 3 turns, and you're playing on less than a letter-sized portion of the map. In fact, it's small enough that we played it twice (once from each side) in around 3 hours.

The next couple weeks, we'll be tackling the Edge of the World scenario, also from Case Blue. It's the “intro” version of the scenario we're playing at WBC-W, so it's a perfect lead-up. We're also going to be using the sessions as an OCS trainer/refresher for anyone else in the group interested in OCS. I'm also going to try to write up an OCS instructional manual as a post on here in a couple weeks.

After that, Mike and I will spend a session going over the first few turns of The Mighty Endeavor to get an idea of how we want to approach that. So, for those of you following along at home, here's what we'll be covering on the blog for a while:

This week - Case Blue, Chir River
Next week - Case Blue, Edge of the World
Apr 1 - Case Blue, Edge of the World part 2.
Apr 8 - Either Edge of the World, the Finale, or The Mighty Endeavor.
Apr 15 - Either The Mighty Endeavor (if we didn't play the week before), or something else we haven't decided on yet.
Apr 22 - No gaming – I'm at Disneyland all week for our daughter's 5th birthday party. (though Vassal's always a possibility.)
Apr 29 – Unknown game to hit the table.
May 6 - No gaming this week as WBC-W is the entire next week, so I don't get a night away the week before :)
May 13 – WBC-W.

Besides Case Blue and The Mighty Endeavor, games it's looking like I have a shot at playing that week include Friedrich; some large 3-player game which could be Clash of Monarchs, Here I Stand, Savannah, or something else; Through the Ages; Combat Commander; Command & Colors: Ancients; and a host more possibilities. I intend to post session reports on most, if not all the games I play either here or on my personal blog.

Okay, enough context. We played the Chir River Battles mini-scenario last week. How did it play out?

First time through, Mike took the Russians, who are on the attack. The initial setup is illustrated here:



The brown circle indicates the Russian supply source, and the blue circle the German. The red circle is the hex the Russians must occupy by the end of the third turn.

You can't see the contents, but you can definitely tell the Russians have two large stacks – right next to the supply source, and another stack in a salient just NW of Nizhne-Chirskaya. That's also where the bulk of the Russian artillery is stationed. You can also see that the Germans are rather weak in the NW sector, and that right next to the German supply source is the 11th Panzer Division, waiting to counter attack.

Mike worked from the position of Russian strength, and pushed hard straight south with the idea of breaking through, then shooting west. I used the 11th Pz Div to counter attack exposed points and pulled back the survivors of the initial onslaught. I ended up creating a defensive line on the west side of the Tsinla river and points north. Mike nearly had enough to get to the goal, but wouldn't have been able to fight off the garrison once he got there. So, a minor German victory here.

We turned it around and I took the Russians. My idea was to attack west through the German weakness, then push south. I was slightly hampered by warm weather in the first turn keeping the Chir from freezing. I wasn't as committed as I should have been, and ended up not being able to reach the goal. Another German victory.

Mike differed in his approach with the Germans and took a forward defense, forcing me to fight through his troops early – something I wasn't consistently able to do. His approach gave me the opportunity for overruns where mine specifically avoided them. It will be interesting to see which defense works better once we figure out the Russian offensive plan.

When we talked about it afterwards, we realized that with the supply structure in place, there were two things neither of us did that look to be necessary to win this scenario as the Russians. First, you have to blow through the German lines at the rail bridge just south of Oblivsk. That's the only way you're going to be able to create a supply line long enough to pull off an attack on the VP hex. Second, neither of us used what might be the best Russian unit on the board – the 8th Gd Tank Brigade stationed in the middle of the line. (It's the 8-4-8 red unit you can see in the middle of the setup.) That's the key unit, I believe, as it's got a 16 MP move mode that can project strength pretty much anywhere on the map.

So, Mike attacked too far south, and I attacked too far north. This scenario is a nice little puzzle, however, and a great refresher or learning scenario for OCS. There's no air units or other strangeness – just straightforward give and take.

So, if you've got that Case Blue sitting around and you're wondering how you're going to tackle it, head over to The Gamers Archive and snag the Chir River Battles scenario and give it a go. It'll be a well-spent evening.

No cheer at the Chir

One of the sessions in our upcoming WBC-W game-athon will be a 2-day, 4-player 'monster' game. After some discussion, we settled on one of the games from the MMP/Gamers OCS line, and choose the 'Drive for Oil' scenario from Case Blue (BGG entry). (OK, that's not such a huge monster in the grand scheme of things, but it's a start for us.)

So, as part of our preparations for WBC-W, and Case Blue specifically, Eric and I will be spending the next few weeks getting back into OCS. Last night saw our first foray into Case Blue, with the Chir River training scenario. This was a scenario that was a part of the original Enemy at the Gates OCS game, and which (along with a lot of others) was not included with the enlarged version of the campaign, Case Blue. (I've never understood why they weren't converted and included with CB.) Anyway, several devotees of OCS have started converting these old scenarios to Case Blue, so, it seemed a good place for Eric and I to start, as it's only 3 turns long, with a small group of units and portion of the map.

The scenarios sees the Russians attacking to the SW of Stalingrad in the middle of December in 1942, trying to gain a foothold over the Chir River. The Axis have a lot of crummy units holding the line, but with a full panzer division to provide mobile backup. The Russians win if they break through the Axis lines and capture Morozovsk (to the left from the Axis perspective), and the Axis win if they prevent that. Here's the opening situation from the two perspectives:





I randomly got the Russians, and my plan was to force a gap in the center/right flank area with the two infantry divisions (212th and 93rd Gds), where they only faced a couple of Alert battalions, using 5Mech Corps to drive through the gap. From there, drive to Morozovsk, whilst trying to protect my flank from 11Pz. The second part was to use the existing bulge into the Axis lines, and 1Tk (stacked under the 12-2-2), on the left to also force a gap, threatening to pocket his entire frontline, leaving them out of supply, and forcing him to also protect his right flank of 11Pz as they try to stop my main thrust.

A grand plan, but it went awry from the first roll. I started with an overrun of a minuscule Alert battalion by my 1Tk units in the bulge. However, despite a +1 action rating modifier, I managed to roll a 6 column defender surprise shift (needed 6+ to avoid defender surprise), which meant I lost one of the attacking units, although I did remove the Alert battalion. Further, after moving in, we spotted that this would leave 1Tk unsupplied, as the HQ couldn't throw that far, so it had to pull back. (Frozen march is 6MPs, and a frozen minor river is +3MPs, so it can't throw across the river.) In all my following combats I rolled another couple of defender surprise results, and a single attacker surprise. Fortunately, my combat rolls were generally very good, so things mostly balanced out, as without that things would have looked pretty bleak. However, by the end of the turn I'd surrounded several units, cutting them off from supply.

Then Eric went into action with 11Pz. They came storming forward, and overran the mech unit holding the pocket, gaining surprise for another 6 column shift, and promptly vaporized. So went the rest of the turn, with Eric gaining attacker surprise in 4 out of 5 combats, for 6, 6, 5 and 2 column shifts (4 at +2, i.e. needing 8+, 1 at +1, i.e. needing 9+). By the end of the turn 5M and 1Tk Corps had pretty much ceased to exist, and for no loss to the Axis.

It was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be any Russian win in this game. With there still being a gap in the Axis lines, I pushed my remaining strength forward, attempting to take out part of 11Pz. Once again I didn't have much success, although I did successfully overrun the 11Pz artillery unit that had been left exposed, and managed to clear Surovikino, to create a better line of supply to the units on the left, and once again surround some of the Axis front-line units.

Once more, however, the dice didn't go in my favor as Eric's attrition rolls were 4 and 5, meaning both stacks survived, one with no loss, the other with a single step loss. (The first needed a 8+ to die (AR3, 2-5 no loss, 6-7 1 step, 8+ 2 steps), the second 6+ (AR2, 2-3 no loss, 4-5 1 step, 6+ steps.) Elsewhere, he just rejigged his line, with little (or no?) combat.

In the final turn Eric won initiative, and chose to go first. He started a withdrawal, and pulled everyone back, knowing that with a single turn to go, I had a lot of ground to make up. In the pocket, one of the isolated units still survived, as the AR3 stack only lost a single step, but the AR2 stack lost its final step.

However, there was still a chance! Eric had left one hex in his line protected by a single Alert battalion, and I threw what I had left against it. But it was not to be, as I couldn't muster the '6' required on two dice to get the exploitation result to allow the units to drive through the gap and have a chance of overrunning Morozovsk, although, thinking more about it, I wouldn't have had the MPS to do that, anyway.

This had taken around 1.5 hours, so we set it up again, and switched sides.

This time it was Eric's turn to suffer from the dice, as his very first roll saw the best weather possible, not what the Russian player wants, leaving the rivers unfrozen. (In my version I did well on the weather rolls, having frozen rivers each turn.) He pushed a little in the bulge area of his left, but didn't risk any attacks across the river, settling for setting up for the next turn. I pushed 11Pz forward to blunt his attack in the bulge area, successfully pushing him back, but at the cost of a panzer battalion.

In the next turn the weather became frozen, and Eric pushed forward. He attacked along his right flank, all the way to the end, hoping to turn it and set himself up for the final turn. I moved 11Pz across to protect, and removed his leading units in combat.

In the final turn, I won initiative, and chose to go first. I pushed all my units forward, in what I considered to be a very 'gamey' tactic, taking advantage of a gap in his lines to put all his lead units out of supply. If this had been part of a larger game, rather than a focused scenario, I wouldn't have done this, as I fully expected most of my forward units to get blasted, and wouldn't have been prepared to give up so many units for such a short-term gain. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened, as Eric over-ran all those Alert battalions I'd pushed forward, but they'd done their jobs, as he didn't have anywhere near the range or capability to get close to Morozovsk, so the Axis won, once more.

In the post-game kibitzing we discussed how the Russian player should tackle this puzzle. We agreed that there are a few items that appeared critical, and which we learned through play:

• Rail bridge at 30.31 - without it the Russian HQ can't throw supply far enough to allow an attack on Morozovsk, so removing the LW division protecting it is vital
  
• 8-4-8 armor unit - neither of us used this unit effectively, but with its big movement and combat strength it should be used in the drive/attack on Morozovsk
  
• Get the Katyusha across to the point of attack in the first turn, or at least use it to DG 11Pz
  

OK, it's a very limited scenario, but it served its purpose. We got back into the OCS groove, and very quickly too, with a minimum of rules referencing, as either one or the other of us remembered the specific rule in question. We're planning to do the Edge of the World scenario over the next few weeks, which should have us ready for WBC-W. Not having played OCS for several months now, I'd forgotten how good it was, and how much I liked it.

I am _so_ looking forward to the WBC-W OCS session, the highlight of the week for me.

The bitterest of ends

My choice again, and this time it was a bigger game, Compass Games' Bitter End (BGG entry). This has been on my peripheral radar for a little while as it's been getting some good press, and I eventually decided to pull the trigger and get a copy from Boards and Bits.

Eric's already given a good description of the main differences from 'regular' wargames, so I'll just give my take. I really like the presentation: nice big counters; big hexes; good charts and play aids; clear (if unexciting) counters; attractive map, very wintry; clear rules. Overall, a game that makes you want to play it.

The game mechanisms are all mostly familiar: supply-move-fight-exploit; hard ZoCs (i.e. stop on entry, cannot move ZoC-ZoC); hard stacking limits (i.e. cannot exceed at any time). The main difference, and one that takes some getting used to, is the combat result mechanism. Each combat produces a number, the attack level, from which the defender's terrain defense level is subtracted, to give a combat result. If the result is negative, then the attacker suffers a loss/retreat; positive, and the defender suffers a loss/retreat; equal, and there's same-hex combat. Each step loss reduces the result by 1, and any retreats are measured in MPs. Now, there are other games that use a similar system (although I can't, off-hand, remember where I've seen it before), but where BE differs (at least, in my recollection of those games that I can't remember!) is that retreating units cannot use roads, and if the retreating unit does not have enough retreat MPs to enter a hex then it loses a step and enters that hex.

And it's that last point that is the one that's difficult to handle. The easiest point to note is that it now becomes critical to ensure that your units have good retreat paths. Defending in the middle of a clump of Rough/Wooded hexes (defense level 4, 4MPs to enter) now becomes a dangerous proposition, as any combat result less than 4 means that you're going to lose a step in retreat. In some cases the retreat hex terrain is of more consideration than the defense hex terrain. In a couple of cases I found myself deliberately choosing weaker defense terrain rather than better, expecting to create a higher combat result which would allow a safe retreat. The other angle is that, as attacker, you don't want your attack to be too successful, as that might give the defender enough MPs to retreat into that nasty terrain behind it.

Now this just all seems rather counter-intuitive, and it was hard to get a handle on it. However, by the end of the game we were both getting more of a grip on how to use the mechanism. Don't defend in the middle of that clump of Rough/Wooded hexes (as you would in other games), but right at the back edge of it so you can retreat into the clear hex behind. Now, I don't have any real-world military experience, but that just doesn't strike me as right.

Anyway, back to our play of the game. We played the 6-turn scenario, the first turns of the full 26-turn campaign game, with me as the Russians. For initial deployments I pretty much just dumped units in a line, not knowing what to expect from the game. This allowed Eric's initial attacks to put a lot of my units out of supply. As OoS units can't use one-hex minimum movement, and remembering that units can't move ZoC-ZoC, a large part of my force was eliminated or stuck. Next time my deployment would be way different.

Eric pushed on five main axes: Székesfehérvár in the south; Mór-Czákberény in the center; from Tata south-east towards Tatabanya; from Tata east along the south side of the Danube; east along the north side of the Danube. For the first, he pushed a little too far and I was able to cut off his panzer spearhead, and push the supporting units back. In the second he gained some initial success, but I strongly reinforced (too strongly, really) and pushed him back, again cutting off his lead units. The Tatabanya axis almost gained as far as Biscke, one of the victory condition hexes, but, again, I was able to blunt his offensive by aggressively advancing with units from a cavalry division in his flank, cutting his supply.

This last move was aided strongly by the resolute defense of Tata by a couple of units, which sucked in a lot of potentially dangerous German SS units. (In other words, Eric rolled like crap in his attacks to remove the defenders from his back field.) These were originally heading east of Tata, but he was never able to develop this axis of attack. In fact the Tata defenders were able to retreat across the river, where they were able to contribute to the move to place the whole Tatabanya axis out of supply.

North of the Danube is where Eric had the most success. He forced me back, and then used his Sturmboot to cross the river, taking Esztergom, the other of the mandatory victory condition cities. This was the most scary of the five axes, but Eric missed the eastern approach and I was able to run an armored unit around and into Esztergom, also putting everyone out of supply. It was also here that we made our biggest (only?) rules gaffe, as motorized units are not allowed to use the Sturmboot to cross the river. Anyway, I pressed into his ZoCs, so the only units he could free up to attack Esztergom gave him a fairly weak attack, which failed. Elsewhere, his attacks to free up his supplied units also went badly, and with only one turn for him left to capture the other mandatory victory condition city of Biscke, plus two of the three others, he called it a day. With it being my turn, lots of reinforcements coming in, and a few units freed up to push him back around Biscke, it was clear that the Germans weren't going to get near to winning.

After the first evening's play I was a bit 'hmmmm' about BE. Now it's just 'hm'. The whole combat system still doesn't sit quite right, but I can work with it, However, once you figure out how to deal with it, it's not too hard in play terms. The game was certainly tense, and I was very concerned that I'd made a mistake by reinforcing the southern area too much, and neglecting the main victory condition axes. As it turned, Eric was the one who had an evening of rolling less than average dice, while I was ahead of the curve.

One thing that I would like to try at some point is the whole campaign game. It has a totally different set of victory conditions to the scenario, being based around how well the Germans do in getting close to liberating Budapest, holding towns at the end of the game, etc. With all those Russian replacements and reinforcements it's going to be a real hard game for the Germans. However, it's estimated at ~25 hours, so unlikely to be done any time soon, but I can see us having another go at the scenario.

Overall, a thumbs up to Compass Games for Bitter End.

Bitter at first, but with a nice aftertaste

Mike and I finished off our Bitter End game this week. We had both left the table the prior week with an “eh” feeling, but were curious how things would continue flowing.

The one rule I didn't go into last week was same-hex combat. When your final combat result number is a zero, the attacker has the opportunity to advance into the same hex with the defender. If he chooses to, the defender can then either retreat one hex or fight back, this time as the attacker. You keep going back and forth until only one side has forces left in the hex. The kicker on this mode of combat is that while normal retreat rules apply (i.e. each unit loses a step if they retreat into an enemy ZOC) the ZOCs of the units that moved into the combat hex do not count. Both of us managed to squeeze units through the lines with this rule, though Mike's effort had a larger effect on the game.

In the past, when a game has initially given me a “meh” first impression, continued play has not improved things much. I've come to rely on my first impressions a lot and they've steered me well.

I'm happy to admit that this time, I was wrong.

The more we played, the issues I detailed last week just seemed to hit the back burner. We were getting into the flow of the game, and weren't being surprised by things as much. There's still some oddities in this game, but in the end they mostly work. It is nice to see different approaches to things, instead of just another generic hex-n-counter game. Yet, it's mostly familiar enough that it doesn't take a completely different approach when playing.

I certainly made some first-time errors during play. I underestimated how far many of his troops could move, and on three separate occasions left holes for him to get through that cut supply. Experience with the game would certainly curtail those mistakes. We called the game after 4.5 turns when it was very obvious I wasn't going to fulfill the German victory conditions by the end of the 6th turn. Particularly since the Russians were getting a stack of reinforcements in turn 5 that would be coming in north of the Danube – the hammer onto the anvil.

Here's the final situation looking at things from the Russian Left around to the Russian Right.







The red cities are mandatory for German victory, and two of the three blue ones must be taken as well. (One of the cities is circled in two of the photos.) I'm obviously not getting there in two more turns.

Now, I'd use the short scenario included in the game to learn it. First playing, assume six hours or so. (depending on how long it takes you to think through your turns) I'm very curious how this would play in a full campaign situation. Particularly since the victory conditions are completely different. Instead of a “capture two cities and two more out of these three” style victory, it's VP based with various cites worth differing points for each side. Also, Budapest is no longer the sideshow it is in the short scenario. Just a matter of when. It's probably a full-weekend game to play the entire scenario.

The relief of Budapest is about as under-gamed as any situation on the eastern front you can find. Probably for no small matter that it happened at the same time as the Battle of the Bulge. While we were playing, I noticed the game had a definite “bulge-ish” feel to it. Germans conduct a surprise attack, it fizzles out, and they try to hold on to whatever they can. The difference, of course, is the garrison of Budapest being the target of the offensive instead of it being an attempt to split the Allied forces. The terrain is also nasty to fight through – there's loads of defensible spots, and the ZOC rules make it difficult to exploit small holes – they've got to be pretty big.

I'd recommend trying this one out – there are some odd bits in the rules that may chafe the wrong way, but I discovered they really do work out over time. Just give it more than one shot, as you'll likely be thinking “oh, I should have done that a lot differently” and the German side, in particular has not one extra unit to lose.

The Beginning of the Bitter End

Mike had something different for us to try this time out. Instead of a new game, we've started Compass Games' 2005 release Bitter End. This game covers the (failed) German attempt to relieve the siege of Budapest starting on New Years Day 1945. It re-implements the 1983 release of a similar name from Hobby Japan. We knew going in this was going to be a two-session game (they estimate the scenario we're playing at 5 hours which means 7 or 8 on a first-time playing) so this post is a look into my first impressions after getting through two turns.

Bitter End is a moderately attractive game. It's on two 34x22 maps, and the terrain looks relatively good. There's a bit of difficulty in parsing some of the different types of wooded terrain, but nothing too bad. The counters are nothing spectacular (standard NATO symbols or vehicle silhouettes) but the colors work well.

In my mind, there's two things making Bitter End stand out. The way the CRT is used, and the turn sequence. Other than that, it's a relatively standard hex-n-counter game. Let's look at the second item first.

A turn (and there's 25 in the full campaign, I believe) flows like this:

1. Weather Phase
2. Supply Phase
3. Movement Phase
4. Combat Phase
1. Roll for air support
2. Conduct combats
5. Exploitation Phase
1. Optional combats if adjacent
2. Non-fighters can move
6. Russian player does steps 2-5
7. End of turn.

There's a handful of things to note, here. First off, everyone is eligible for exploitation. This effectively means units can either fight twice and move once or fight once and move twice each turn. Second, if you think about the flow from turn-to-turn, one side gets two move/fight cycles after the other is done moving and before it checks supply. As we discovered, this means the Russian player must be very careful with his initial deployment or he can find a good chunk of units out of supply before he ever gets to move.

Supply, btw, is relatively simple. Trace on the road net back to your side of the board, with one section of up to 5MP of non-road movement. However, as the front lines are 5MP or more away from the road in some locations, supply can be rather tricky early on. (Which, in my experience, is the reverse of many games. Usually supply is something you don't have to worry much about early, but more later. Here, it's in your face from the start.) Now, that said supply isn't THAT crippling. Attack and movement rates are halved, and OOS units cannot use one-hex-movement to always move a single hex. No further effects. (Yes, this means OOS units in the middle of bad going are pretty much stuck there. And as defensive strength isn't compromised they won't go away quickly.)

Okay, let's get on to the meat of the matter. How combat is handled. The game uses a ratio-based CRT. Odds range from 1:3 to 9:1. Attacks below 1:3 odds are treated as two step losses for the attacker and a one-hex retreat. Not where you want to be. One (weak) criticism the game's received is it doesn't have a perceptible advantage in reaching 3:1 odds. This is old wargame lore that 3:1 is a magical place to be. What this game does have is the removal of any possible negative effects to the attacker in clear terrain at 3:1. That's good enough for me. How the CRT is used is the kicker.

First, compute your ratio, rounding in favor of the defender. Then, roll a die and include a few modifiers to the roll. (There are no column shifts in the game that I've found.) You end up with a modified die result between 1 and 6. This gives you a number between 0 and 7 as a result. You then subtract the terrain value of the defenders' hex from that number. This gives you a final result that can range from -4 to 6. Negative results indicate the attacker losing the battle. The loser must apply that number in step losses and/or MPs spent in retreat. Note, this isn't hexes in retreat, but movement points, and you can't use road movement.

And that last sentence is what makes this game strange.

There's a few other things to note that solidify the situation: If a unit gets a final result that's higher than its movement rate, it loses a step before attempting to apply the result. Also, if you must spend more MPs in retreat than you have left, you lose a step.

The net effect of this is the true result of an attack is as much determined by the terrain surrounding the losing unit as the terrain it occupies. And, it creates strange anomalies. For instance, if a unit is in and surrounded by rough ground (2 MPs, defensive value 3) , it's actually better to score a slight victory against it than a big one. As if you manage a “5” result on the CRT, that will be reduced to a “2” and allow it to retreat one hex. However, if you score a “4” on the CRT, that's reduced to a “1” and results in a step loss as the unit must spend more MPs in retreat than it has available from the combat result.

Now, there's some design for effect going on here, obviously, as defending units will mostly need to receive combat results in increments of the MP value of the terrain behind them to survive, thus dying off faster. And I can definitely see that a unit forced to retreat into nasty terrain might be completely broken up and lose any combat effectiveness. But, it seems very odd that scoring better won't help as much. And it seems VERY odd that the final result of a combat is seemingly more dependent on what's behind you than what you're in.

This is particularly noticeable as the best result on the 3:1 column of the CRT happens to be a “5”. The actual results on the 3:1 line of the CRT are (from die rolls 1-6) 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1. Loading up on “-1” modifiers such as armor vs. infantry, divisional integrity, etc. actually accentuate the problem as suddenly you're looking at a 1/2 or 2/3 shot at receiving that “5” as your result vs. the one result that will force a step-loss on a unit in rough ground: the 4. (A final result of zero leads to a “same hex” combat situation that allows some give and take, but I'll talk about that next week.) It seems very odd to me that adding on to your advantages, while decreasing any possible negative effect, does not make it any easier to actually eliminate the opposing unit.

Okay, enough for now. This post just covers my first impressions of the game after two turns. We'll be trying to finish out the scenario this week, so hopefully we'll get some better ideas of game flow over time. For now, though, it's a definite “huh.”

Stalingrad, redux style

One of the things that Eric wants to do over the next few sessions is to go back and retry some of the games we've played over our time here. This is something I'm all for, as with a new game every week, and other gaming commitments, it's been a bit of a struggle to keep up, what with reading (sometimes almost indecipherable) rules, punching and clipping counters, etc. Fun, but a bit of work. So, when Eric suggested Storm Over Stalingrad (BGG link) I was more than happy to give it another go after our previous effort (Eric's take, my take), where we spaced a few rules.

Once again my bid was low, bidding 2 to Eric's 3, and I had the Germans, which was fine, as I was interested in trying them out again, to see if I could do any better than last time. I started with a decent hand, having 3 of the '10' value artillery cards, and with the SS troops only being around for the first three turns I wanted to use them as much as possible, so decided to start there. Once more, however, the dice refused to cooperate, as I rolled 2,3,3,4 and 6 for my first 5 attacks, averaging under 4.5 for the whole turn, while Eric responded with 7,9,9,11, and averaged around 8+ for the turn, leaving me with grabbing just the one area with the SS.

And it didn't get much better in future turns. Twice I made attacks with large groups, with strengths equal to the total defense of the area, but rolled 2 and 4. I did have a couple of good rolls, removing 2-3 units, but too often my killer stacks rolled weak, and the high rolls were on low strength attacks that consequently had little impact. All rolls are not equal.

However, I was able to drive my armor units to the river, to take one VP area, but I was totally unable to do anything else to expand that breakthrough, despite pouring all the reinforcements into that area. Time after time I saw Eric's 11 and 12 rolls force me back, and it was only in the fifth turn that I achieved parity on losses, having lost more units than he for most of the game, a situation that any German player in an East Front game cannot have happen and hope to have any chance of a win.

So it was that I came into turn 5, having gained control of only 2 of the 5 required VP areas, and after another 2 wasted artillery cards to low rolls, that 2 on the 12 strength attack, and an Overrun card that was met by Eric playing Mines to counter it, I quit banging my head on the wall, and resigned, something I was almost tempted to suggest after the first turn.

SoS is a great game, and I'm sure that it will prove to be a totally tense, nail biting affair, if we can ever get past the vagaries of the dice. And there are only 2 in the box, so it's not like I picked the 2 bad ones. We played through turn 5 in around 2 hours, so 3 hours, tops, for the whole game, a very decent length. I think this one will see a lot of table time in the future.

Returning to Stalingrad

Last week, Mike and I got Storm over Stalingrad back to the table as my choice. If you'll recall, we had played this area-impulse game a few months ago, and got three specific rules wrong:

We allowed Russian units to fire from the ferry terminals
We applied the terrain modifier to defense against units in the same area
We eliminated units retreating into full areas instead of retreating them further

We both wanted to try this one again played correctly. I bid 3 to Mike's 2, and got the Russians. That meant I had to control three of the seven VP areas at the end of the game. (If you remember, the game is 6 turns long.)

This time, we got all the rules right. We just forgot to not use Mike's dice.

The opening turn of this game is very critical for the Germans – they must make significant progress quickly, specifically on the Russian left, as the SS units are removed from play after turn 3. With all the reinforcements the Russians can bring in, the Germans must have strong positions from which to cover the SS removal or it's simply not going to happen for them.

So, what happens in our game? 1st turn, Mike averages a 4 on his attack rolls. This is on two dice. I averaged around a 9 in my counter attacks, and actually eliminated more units than Mike. In fact, I was able to stay ahead of the dead-unit count until mid-way through turn 5. Anyone even remotely familiar with East Front games knows that if the Russian units aren't dying in at least a 3:2 ratio over German units, they're not going to win and might even lose in epic fashion.

Midway through the game (turn 3 or so) Mike maneuvered down and took the 3rd-from-right VP area along the river. This gave him a point at which he could bring in reinforcements, and I believe every reinforcement he received the rest of the game was placed here.

In the end, though, it didn't matter. I held the two rightmost VP areas, and the entire left excepting the far left area. 5 of the 7. At best, Mike was going to be able to take one in the final turn, so we called it late in turn 5. Russia defends the city.

If you recall how combat works, you add up the firepower of all attacking units, add the roll of two dice, then subtract the highest defender rating added to the terrain value (if applicable). The way the numbers fall out, it's common to need 7s or 8s on two dice to start doing any sort of damage. Now, there's likely some selective memory at work here, but it seemed every time Mike needed only 4s or 5s, he'd roll a 6 or less. If he needed 8s or 9s, he'd roll 9s or higher. Rarely did it seem that he'd roll high when he needed low. (And, I specifically recall twice pulling three units off at once – the fact I remember it means significant damage wasn't happening often.) Meanwhile, I usually seemed to have enough to either stall his attack, or kill his units outright. All you need to do as the defender.

This is two weeks in a row where atrocious luck has severely damaged Mike's game. I'm going to be watching for when it happens to me.

Dice aside, this is an excellent game. You've got loads of decisions to make, and it's very simple to play. We were done in around 2 hours, and it wouldn't have been more than 2.5 had we played to conclusion. The bidding-for-sides mechanism at the start of the game addresses any balance issues a particular play style may reveal. Not aggressive enough with the Germans? Bid higher for the Russians, and suddenly the Germans don't need to take as much ground. Successful on the attack? You'll be bidding lower to play the Russians and the Germans will have to do more.

I haven't played Turning Point: Stalingrad yet (It's on my list, Jackson. Really.) but it will be very interesting to compare a more detailed game on the same subject using the same basic framework.