The Armoured Knights Series – Desna
Offers some straight forward gaming as an intro to the system. Its in essence a 1 mapper [22×34] though it uses 4 by 11×17 – ish sized maps. It has just the one counter sheet. Standard move fight system with some control elements. Where it gets either interesting or involved/ mathematical is combat. A variety of units and unit types; Military Intel, Engineers, and even Arty can impact [to a variable degree via a die roll that reveals a % increase in combat power] the net combat factor of a given regiment or battalion fighting.

This does require a handful of calculations 15% of this, added to that, make a note, now 30% of this added to that type of thing. It is an interesting way without a shed load of tables and verbose rules to show the impact of good recon, better arty fire, control and command etc. The 2nd aspect that is interesting for a game at this scale [2km a hex, 2 hours a turn] is the daily refit, ‘straggler/medical’ recovery of ‘eliminated units’. This gives a modest bump to forces daily, based on I’m assuming historical recover rates. The designer seems to lean pretty heavily on David Stahls writing for reference work for this battle [ I find Stahl to be a told you so blow hard but thats cool].

The maps and counters deserve some discussion. All components are made 1 at time print on demand on Mr Fasulos, printing equipment at his home [ hence the map size limitations.]. This does however seem to lend it self to rudimentary art, color palette and tones. They are not bad. It is just not awesome. The rules are just 18 pages long printed on nice quality paper and spiral bound very nicely which is a positive to say something like the small run TSWW titles that come with a staple in the corner and not much else.
See examples below of maps and counters:

Unlike the Pacific Campaign system this game has much less data on the counters, ID, Combat rating and a movement factor, plus of course unit type NATO symbol.
Cost is $60.00USD. There is the rub. You will have to look sideways as you take in a professional done but home brew effort for a 1 mapper and 200 counters. It feels very expensive, as are many of games from this micro publisher. Despite cost this series and especially Death Ride series [the largest monster game ever] has a cult following. Once we play this, perhaps we will find a less expensive module of Death Ride and see what the fuss is all about there as well!

I will be looking to play in the next few weeks with some play by play and a video summary post game AAR.
Looks solid and appears to have the scale right for a very tense battle between Guderians 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions attempting to secure bridges in order to make the Kiev encirclement a reality. Nice choice of battle.