Battle for Moscow [Play# 1&2]

Just a quick link to my first play thru of Battle for Moscow.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6atFrGwsDM]
As you will see the turn sequence was new to me.
Which caused a Turn 3 victory for the Germans in Game 1.

The mechanics here a cool.

Typically a game will provide for an exploitation phase after the movement and combat. But here its first.

This allows the Germans to move Panzers into position to incircle, or block units. You then have combat with all units. Then move ALL units. The Panzers move twice in one turn.

end of Turn1 action

So if in the previous turn you did not have infantry in position, your panzers are doing a lot of the fighting alone.

This means that the you have to take into consideration the Soviet forces actions, in order to have enough unit in the right locations to obtain odds.

Panzers attack T2

Which leads me to the odds table. A simple, painful and once again making you choose carefully. At some point you are going to have to take those 2-1 3-1 attacks as time is not on your side. Turn one and two show us how historically the Germans where in trouble from the start. They hace to push deep and hard, take losses as they come and break up the soviets enough that there is a chance at attacking Moscow in Turn 5/6/7.

Russians move to block the break thru

On the Soviet side the Soviets receive replaces similar to the Germans, but then have a rail movement segment, then combat then general movement. For them I found this to be a bit artificial but I understand the intent it is trying to portray. The soviets choices boil down to choosing less stronger units or having more weaker units to hold the line.

Mud hits, and the German Advance slows.

The Zones of Control here in the little sim are porous. In that although you must stop once you enter a EZOC, you then leave it and enter another in the next phase. so it is possible to scoot thru or around units.

Turn 4 Mud ends after this. The Germans needed to be attacking even at poor odds.

Soviets dont have the opportunity to counter attack and dont need to unless they are in a strong position. So you will spend most of your time adjusting to the play of the German.

A great little game, that is fast playing and still manages to capture some of the bigger issues that faced both sides in this conflict.  Lets look at the rest of Game 2 and follow along:

Is there a word for conservative in German..these guys need to ignore it. T6

If the Tula can be captured Germany can play for the draw.

A desperate attack on Moscow is called for.

The solo German unit gets next to Moscow and goes for it.

End Game. Soviet Win in Game 2.