A quick walk thru the turns and how this game evolved as a contrast to Red Army.  The first thing to note is we are dealing with a game that is from a prolific designer who tends to use similar systems and mechanics. Versus a designer who somehow manages to take the situation, the history if any and constructs that bind a given situation and then creates the game around that.

One game is a magazine game the other a full boxed edition from GDW. Yet both have about the same length of rules [ ten pages+/-] but significantly different coverage areas and scale. While both attempt to cover the main action the WaW effort sis scaled out too far to provide any granularity of topography, or unit specialty.

A Turn 1 surprise rule hinders the Germans as was par for the course historically the same occurs for Red Army from GDW.

DAGC does a nice job with the abstract air war:

By the end of Turn 1 holes have been ripped in the German line:

Masses of troops placed out of supply. It would seem that perhaps this game did not need a 17 turn long scenario?

The race for penetration is bloody and effective with 9 Corps streaming West mid turn 4.

There is literally nothing left to hold the tide. The German s have 2 units out of place in the South and 2 units in the center to attempt to stem a red tide. What Is supposed to happen for the other 10 + turns boggles my mind? Here the difference is stark. The result is the same but takes 10 + turns to get to and both sides have hard choices to make about where to defend, how long for and where to focus the offense. This WaW effort felt very generic barring the turn 1 Bagration special rule and the surprise element. I came away with few if any lesson learned and was dreading the start of Red Army.

Red Army on the other hand surprised me. We flew thru turns, fought, died and knew as the Soviet that victory was inevitable the question would be how great a victory? The game forced you to think thru your choices and strategy and punished the attacker for doing so ineptly. In DAGC by contrast there is less to savour past eh first turn or 2 and in fact the game could have been a smaller area, a shorter duration and made to be played and swapped sides quickly. Or perhaps some optional scenarios to spice up the gaming opportunities. With such a large play area denude of terrain features you lack the ability to do much of anything,

For a more detailed look at Red Army click here