Intro:

Totaler Krieg!
This game stretches from the fjords of Narvik to the sands at El Alamein, from the gates of Moscow to the sandy beaches of Normandy, from the Spanish Civil War to the last days in Berlin and everything in between. No game tells the story of World War II in Europe like Totaler Krieg!

This new edition of our popular Krieg! game is still the same highly playable, unpredictable and enjoyable experience it always has been. What’s new is a design and graphic update and expansion to give you more options — especially if you want to explore the critical pre-war period from 1937 to 1939. What if the Republicans had won the Spanish Civil War? What if Germany and Russia hadn’t signed their Non-Aggression Pact? What if France had modernized its army instead of building the Maginot Line? All of these options are literally in the cards that form the strategies of the three factions — Axis, Soviet Allies, and Western Allies.

Best of all, Totaler Krieg! can be linked with its new Pacific companion game, Axis Empires: Dai Senso!, to play the joint Axis Empires scenario, an eye-opening global look at all of World War II. The fate of the world is in your hands!

Totaler Krieg means Total War in German. In the game, play moves from Pre-War (where players mobilize their forces and engage in diplomacy) to Limited War (when open conflict begins) to Total War — at that point, it’s all-out warfare to achieve victory!

Includes:

• Two 22 x 34 inch maps
• 840 counters on three countersheets
• 200 cards
• A 64-page rulebook
• A 24-page scenario book
• Play aids and force pool displays

For a extended look at play @Ardwulf has s ome game play and @Calendale certainly did a blow by blow play though, but had some rules challenges.

Here we take a simpler approach to see what we think of the ground combat system, with a view to playing the full campaign at some point in the future.

Ardwulf ably explains the Poland Campaign setup and goals – check it out at the bottom of this post if you do not know the context of the 1939 Invasion of Poland by Germany.

Opening moves:

The opening attack we select to do is Posen.

It is a base odds +/- shifts: 8vs2 -1L, this is executed during the Blitz combat segment.

 

Further south in Krakow

6vs2 3:1 -1L city +HQ+Arm

8vs2 4:1 no HQ factor -5:1 DR2 0/0. But I suspect I buggered that up as I have a note saying ‘not accurate’, but that was 4 months ago…Yeah I am way behind on writing up my game plays!! 
So given I played this months ago… I cant remember what I did wrong..sigh, sorry folks. Suffice to say the net was a retreat.

This then leads us to the final attack on Warsaw:

7 vs 2 with air [ now here I don’t believe I can use my air again so this would have been a mistake.]

The raw odds : 3:1 -1L city +/- shifts +1 Air +1 armour 4:1

DR1 0/1 blitz marker forces a loss in the standard combat phase.

Posen we attack there also 3:1 Roll a 1 DR2 0/0 capturing that city also.

So…?

It appears we achieved the VC’s with a modicum of errors. The game play is pretty smooth, as usual with this scale there can be a lot of retreating and not a lot of dying! Which is ok, since we are in the main dealing with very large scale units. I liked the break downs. I thought the sequence of play was smooth, and the rules in general read ok. Though the player created aids sure help a lot!