Legion Wargames, 2025 ·

Michael Taylor · Russian Front series ·

Complexity: rules L2 / decision depth 2 / upkeep 0–1 · Turn = 2 days (turn 1 = 1 day)

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Verdict

A light wargame for novices, or grognards wanting a simplicity break. It might be for those seeking ‘Fall of Berlin’ history as an overview. Its attempt is fair. This is not a detailed simulation.

Solo-orientated. Not a good 2-player game unless you swap sides and play twice, then compare VPs. I was chatting with a bloke online who had 8 runs at it. Enjoyed the puzzle nature of the game. He mentioned he had not successfully won as Soviets. That belies my experience.

Combat opening see Germans pushed back on both fronts.

My departure this time: End of Turn 7, end of Basic game, Berlin intact. Possibility to fall by turn 9 in the advanced game.

There is a dreadful pointlessness to this — turns 1–5, every attack is 4:1 or better, usually a D1R2 / D2R2.

Figure 3 Retreats in the first turn 

Figure 4

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Perspective

Comparative base: the Legion Russian Front series — Velikiye Luki, which is also fairly light but a bigger game, more pieces, more choices, more tactical decisions.

Race for Berlin is set up on the table and will be the contrast. No turns played yet.

Basic vanilla small-format hex-and-counter.

Role & Scale

German: shattered XXs. Soviets: full-strength corps XXXs. This is a mass-forces-and-pummel exercise by the Soviets.

Core Tension

The Germans cannot trade space for time. There is no space, four hexes from Berlin at setup. Only the double defence inside Berlin saves them, and that needs 4-factor defenders in the ring to make it a ‘fair’ fight.

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Second tension: how do the Soviets best maintain contact to use the assault battery mechanic. They start on the wire and get all their assault barrages on turn one; if they move, they can’t use the barrage — so it’s move adjacent, fire next turn, which burns time. The one trick the Germans have is always be moving back into the next defensive line for the same bonuses. But there is no where to run….

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Third: when to elect not to retreat. Half the units in the hex lose a step instead. Not only Berlin — there are other locations on the map where that decision comes up.

Objectives

Berlin hexes and starred locations. Arguably models the historical task. Not sure the Soviets can do it — I secured all the exit locations by end of turn 7 but did not capture a single hex of Berlin. The extend game requires all of Berlin to be captured. I cannot see that occurring with half decent play by the defender.

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Sequence & Movement

Figure 7 Turn 5 – dropping back fast

Basic: move adjacent, stop in eZOC. Combat odds basic, plus/minus column shifts and plus/minus DRMs, i.e. air. Stacking three high. Situation end turn 4

One turn’s rhythm: bombard markers down on units that won’t move and are assaulting· operational movement (+2 MP) · move · reinforcements, of which there are almost none · remove the op-movement markers [lol..ok] · tank support · combat — bombard result [function of # of units & type against a 1d6 table], declare attacks, assign air, calculate odds, roll.

Findings, all of them absences: – No supply rules. – No stated rounding on the no-retreat option. Half the units lose a step — the rules don’t say round up or down. I rounded down in play to give the Germans a break.

The example of play makes it clear it’s round up. My error, but I expect rules to be written not suggested. This probably saved the Germans 2-3 steps. – No rule that every unit must lose a step before you eliminate one. So you preserve your best units of course the 4-defence pieces and strip the 1s, 2s and 3s. That matters a lot once you’re doubling inside the Berlin ring. Also no discussion of Terrain effect negation. What if one hexes attacks from ‘inside a fortification ring?

Conflict Resolution

1d6. Odds run 1:3 to 5:1. Attacks so far up the odds chain that the adjustments run off the right of the chart and net back to 5:1.

Assault markers: Konev two, Zhukov three, plus shared air. +1 shift, or +2 depending on the die. German armoured units give a DRM, not a shift.

Logistics / Supply

None.

Friction vs. Reward

Smooth, but low reward. Friction is very low for what there is to get out of it.

Historicity (sourced)

At this level I wasn’t picking up much narrative other than that it’s a beat-down for the Germans. It is not easy for the Soviets either however; you are not moving as fast as you want to move.

That impression is worth testing, because in several places the design is doing better history than it looks like it’s doing and where it falls short, it falls short more narrowly than the table impression suggests. I pulled information from my books:

What the record backs

The core tension I mentioned is the historians’ finding, not a table artefact.

“the Germans cannot trade space for time. There is no space.” Glantz and House describe the same geometry from the other side: the Red Army “lacked the operational depth in which to maneuver,” with Berlin 60km ahead and the Western Allies’ lines only 100km beyond it, so the Soviets faced “repeated penetration attacks against successive, fully manned, defensive lines anchored on increasingly urbanized terrain” (When Titans Clashed, p. 288). One compressed map, two problems: no room for the Germans to sell, no room for the Soviets to exploit into. The game is modelling the campaign’s actual situational geography.

Falling back into the next line for the same bonuses is also historical as it turns out. In my videos I mention this as a inconstancy. Glantz: the shortened front and the mass of half-trained infantry around a core of veterans “permitted German commanders to man two and even three successive defensive lines simultaneously,” and this “proved to be a significant advantage” where in 1944 the Red Army had broken thin lines and exploited faster than the Germans could occupy the next one (p. 288). The trick you apply or find in play is the trick that actually works.

The Berlin ring giving less than the outer defences is defensible. In video I flagged this as inexplicable. Glantz says the German defences on the Berlin axis “were deep but only partially occupied by troops,” and that “in an engineering sense, German defenses were strongest opposite the Kustrin bridgehead and from the bridgehead through the Seelow Heights to the outskirts of Berlin” (p. 290). The Berlin defensive region did have its three rings: external, internal and city, with the government sector thoroughly prepared but the engineering weight was forward, not in the ring.

The victory conditions map onto the real objective set. Stavka’s aims were three: destroy the German forces on the Berlin axis, seize Berlin, and link up with the Allies on the Elbe (Glantz, p. 290). This board carries all three securing Berlin hexes, the starred locations, and the exit/link-up markers down on the Elbe. The game is scoring the same three things Stalin was.

The front boundary.

The Zhukov–Konev race is the operation’s signature, and the mechanism was the removal of the boundary. Stalin “rather pointedly failed to define the boundary line between 1st Belorussian Front and 1st Ukrainian Front beyond the initial stage of the operation” (Glantz, p. 292), then late on 17 April amended the Stavka map “by erasing the front boundary line between them in the vicinity of Berlin, leaving the capture of the capital to whomever got there first” (Glantz, p. 297).

Stavka later authorised Konev into the city without telling Zhukov “a clear sign of his diminished status,” which Zhukov discovered only when his tankers ran into Konev’s advance guard (Command 22, pp. 54–56).

Rules section 13 puts exactly that on the map. Units may not move or attack across the sector boundary; forced across by a retreat, a unit may defend but may not attack until it returns. Tthe printed line ends, facilitating the competition, but of course there is none as you control both. It doesn’t run to the Elbe, and past its endpoint the restriction lapses entirely, the rulebook has the original line ran to the Elbe and Stalin erased it so both Front commanders had a shot at Berlin. So good history here.

That is Stalin’s manipulation rendered as cartography, the designer drew a line that ends, and let the geometry do the work.

Where it departs

Turns 1–5 as an unbroken beat-down inverts the campaign’s defining event. The Soviet ratio at Seelow was crushing and the attack still got slowed /stopped. The barrage at 05.00 on 16 April was, in Glantz’s words, “so excessive that in many areas it created more obstacles than it destroyed,” and Zhukov’s 143 searchlights “only added to the confusion without penetrating the smoke clouds”; Chuikov’s 8th Guards made only limited progress by late morning and Kolpakchi’s 69th Army was “completely stalled” (p. 294). Osprey has the attack coming “to a complete stop” at the Haupt Canal, with 1st Byelorussian “gradually inching their way forward but failing to achieve a breakthrough” (Campaign 159, Berlin 1945, pp. 36–37). It took two days to get through the Seelow position and four days to break Ninth Army’s front, at a reported 33,000 dead and a quarter of the front’s armour  and Osprey notes the true cost was higher (Osprey, p. 39; Osprey Command 22, Georgy Zhukov, p. 54).

So the odds you’re reading off the chart are right. The result the chart gives you is not. A CRT that converts 4:1 into a steady advance loses the one thing everybody knows about this operation.

“There is literally nothing for the Germans to do other than retreat” — the record disagrees. Counterattacks run through all three sources: Ninth Army’s four-division attack toward Küstrin on 27 March (Glantz, p. 289); a three-division attack on 17 April to cut the Berlin–Küstrin highway behind Katukov’s spearheads (Glantz, p. 296); the ‘Kurmark’ Panzergrenadiers stopping 11th Guards Tank Corps at Friedersdorf and Dolgelin (Osprey, p. 37); Schörner’s attacks out of the Görlitz area, which Osprey says were “causing a great deal of trouble to Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front” (p. 45); Hitler ordering Steiner to attack to relieve the city (Osprey, p. 45); and Wenck’s Twelfth Army ordered east from the Western Front to link up with Ninth Army and save Berlin (Glantz, p. 299). While this is the historical fact, I double dog dare ya to try counter attacking. With combat values at 0,1,2,3…versus defensive factors of 4 mostly. Not happening.

“Wenck Trigger Line” printed across the southwest of the map, an 11SS (Steiner) counter on the table, and off-map boxes for 3 SS, 101, 56 Pz and 9 A Res. These ‘reinforcements’ are bullshit. You cannot muster even a 1:2 counter attack. So… theres that.

German has a positive objective, not just a retreat. Berlin Isolated is the German player’s job. Berlin is isolated when no German line of communication can be traced from a Berlin hex west to the map edge at 0100–0110, free of Soviet units and their ZOC and never running east of hex row 06xx. From turn 2 the German scores a VP at the start of every turn Berlin is not isolated and that income stops permanently the moment Berlin is isolated at the end of any turn, ‘even if the corridor is later reopened. ‘

So the German isn’t playing for survival, he’s playing a clock: keep the western corridor open, bank a VP a turn, and every turn you hold it is money the Soviet can never claw back.

All well and good, but this is like a free set of VP’s for turns 2-5. No Soviet is breaking thru, to isolate. So, at worst the Germans receive 4 VPS for doing nothing but carefully retreating with interlocking ZOCs. At best they hold the line 1 or 2 turns longer. Trading steps for VPS. Each step costing a VP. A trade off.

Stalin’s aim was to stop the Western Allies taking Berlin or sharing the honour is precisely what Glantz describes: Soviet concern that despite the agreements the Allied armies would advance on the city, which accelerated the attack preparations (p. 290).

Thus playing the Germans as a retreat exercise is a thing the basic seven-turn scenario lets you get away with. The objective is there; the short game doesn’t force you to feel it really.

No supply rules removes the constraint that shaped both sides. The Soviet build-up is the part nobody tells: 29 armies had to reposition inside 15 days, 15 of them up to 385km and three between 300 and 530km, “at a time when the rail network was struggling to build up fuel and ammunition stores sufficient to sustain the operation” (Glantz, p. 292).Osprey puts it plainly two weeks to mount an offensive that would normally need two to three months (p. 44). On the other side, “severe ammunition shortages undermined the German defence which otherwise, might have held at least some sectors” (Command 22, p. 54). A game with no supply isn’t simplifying here; it’s removing the thing that set how fast the Soviets could go and how long the Germans could stand. I think the way supply is abstractly modelled is that Barrages cannot be done unless a unit does not move, so its in place and preparing, and the more units allocated the higher the chance of a 2 column shift for the Soviets.

And then it puts supply’s main effect back in as Demoralization

Demoralization triggers at the start of any turn Berlin is isolated, or the first time any Berlin hex is Soviet-occupied. On that first turn the German rolls a d6 for the number of steps to be eliminated outside of Berlin and the German player chooses which units take them, one per unit. After that it’s a bleed rather than a cull: a combat result that costs a German unit a step or a retreat triggers a second d6, and a 1 or 2 adds one more step loss on top. Units in the Berlin and Potsdam hexes are exempt entirely.

Three things are right about that. It’s triggered by a strategic event the capital’s isolation not by local encirclement, which is the correct altitude for a national morale collapse. The German keeps agency over where the losses fall. And exempting Berlin and Potsdam matches the record: the field armies came apart, the city’s defenders did not. The sources support the underlying decay artillery rationed to a few rounds per gun per day before the offensive even opened, and a Luftwaffe with 2,200 aircraft in the east able to launch about 300 on a given day for want of fuel (Battles #4, p. 140); Glantz has even the most determined defenders running short of manpower and munitions (p. 296); Command 22 goes further, saying those ammunition shortages undermined a defence that might otherwise have held some sectors longer (p. 54).

What’s left of the criticism is narrow and specific: Demoralization can only take things away. It has no setting in which an isolated formation does what the isolated formation in this campaign actually did. Ninth Army was encircled around Beeskow southeast of Berlin on 24 April (Glantz, p. 299), began its breakout on 28 April (Osprey, p. 38), and fought its way west toward the Americans on the Elbe in what Command 22 calls an incredible and very costly withdrawal (p. 54). Encircled, unsupplied, and still the most dangerous thing on the map. The rule models the melting and not the breakout. Which at this level of complexity is just fine.

The clock — and what it says about the scenario

Turn 1 is one day, every turn after it is two. That gives:

The designer confirms that mapping himself: the extended game’s Limit of Advance lines are dated 25 April and keyed to the start of turn 6, which is exactly where 16 April plus one one-day turn and four two-day turns puts you.

The advanced game’s nine turns land exactly on 2 May. Zhukov’s troops raised the banner on the Reichstag on 1 May and the resistance collapsed immediately after (Command 22, p. 56).

Which tells us what the basic seven-turn game actually is. It ends on 28 April, four days before the city fell. That isn’t a scenario about the fall of Berlin it’s a scenario about the encirclement of Berlin. Historically the ring closed on 25 April and 5th Guards Army met the Americans at Torgau the same day (Glantz, p. 299): your turn 6. The basic game stops one turn after its climax and before the street fighting starts.

There are victory points for the encirclement all the starred locations and the exit locations, not just Berlin hexes. The design and the VP schedule tells you plainly that closing the ring is the job, and the clock is cut to match. Turn 9 and the Berlin hexes are the other game, and you have to opt into it. The more I look at that however I do not see a total sweep of Berlin possible in nince turns.

Long-range guns of 3rd Shock Army’s 79th Rifle Corps opened on Berlin on 20 April and Soviet units were into the suburbs on 21 April (Glantz, p. 297), with Zhukov’s forces in the northern and eastern suburbs on 22 April (Command 22, p. 54) the games turns 3 and 4.

Soviets did not get close to Berlin until turn 5

I took no Berlin hex by turn 7, so on the city I ran roughly three turns behind history. But I did have every exit location secured by turn 7 against a historical link-up on 25 April, which is turn 6. The encirclement half of my game tracked the record almost exactly; the city half never started.

Sources read for this section

All three read in full this session from the library index. Battles #4 is extracted (pp. 140–152); pp. 140–141 were read for the German supply and cohesion detail cited above.

Audience Fit & Comparators

Player count 2–3 (optional three-player advanced game: Zhukov, Konev, Germans). Solo is where this probably belongs.

SCS — simpler than SCS — and the other Russian Front series games.

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Table Experience & Components

Solid. Nice big counters, big hexes, well-organised charts, thick stock, more than enough counters on the sprue. Two maps. One is card stock, one paper.

Against that: a lot of informational markers I never needed. Fire markers, out-of-sector markers, bombard/assault mnemonics. You’re making three or four attacks a turn. I wouldn’t waste my time punching them.

Play Time / Replay / Rules Consumption

Teach/learn burden: easy. Fast to play.

Highly replayable to a point — then you either crack whatever the puzzle is for the Soviets to actually win, or you move on. Probably not a game I’ll still have in the collection in five to seven years.

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Complexity rating:

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i.e. a worked example: SPI folios → Eylau [Sound of Drums] → Eagles of France [Hexasim] → Zucker NLB → Vive L’Empereur [Pratzen] → Winter’s Victory [@NES] → La Bataille [COA, full regs]