Battles Magazine · designer Francois-Xavier Euzet ·
Complexity: rules 2 / decision depth 3 / upkeep 3
Verdict
A relatively clean game that explores a not-often-covered topic, with a somewhat unique approach. Not really developed for solo it requires two players to draw out the value built into the sequence of play. I am not interested in playing again solo. But will seek out an opposed play to give this one the opportunity it deserves. I feel like this could be a good game or a better game than I describe below. But the production lets the game down, along with a few clarity issues.
My departure this time:
I didn’t hate it. I just don’t know what to think of it as a solo experience, I think this game is a game that’s best played opposed. I am seeking to play via Vassal once Von Mansteins backhand Blow is complete.
Perspective
Lots of interesting ideas here; in the sequence of play, and in the rules and bits and pieces. Not enough to make me want to play through the next six turns.
This is a five-turn verdict. The game was set aside at the end of turn 5 of a possible 10, once the shape of it was clear and the pattern had started repeating. It is a first-impressions call, not a campaign report, and it is offered as one. YMMV.
Role & Scale
Divisions, mostly single days [turns 8-9-10 are two days]. Each German division/Regiment/remnant is a single counter; a Soviet army or Corps runs to two. Most turns represent one day.
You are a simultaneous Soviet and German general. Good scale application. The area-based map drives the momentum of play.
Core Tension
Zhukov runs the German units in front of Koniev. Koniev runs the German units in front of Zhukov. It gives you a push-me-pull-you cooperative situation but you both also need to be successful approaching Berlin, so you have to manage that level of competition at the same time.
That is the game. Everything else is in service of it.
Intelligence
Hidden chits for play as circumstance warrants each player draws a secret Event Chit, and the Koniev player starts holding Heinrici.
In five turns I never played one. No situation arose that made a chit look like the answer, which is the same story as the replacement points: the hidden information is there, but the game state never got tight enough to make it worth spending. Conserve your ammo!
Objectives
Victory points accrue as the game runs, from the value of the VP zones each Soviet player controls, and they are tallied when the game ends either on a successful end-of-game roll from turn 7 onwards, or automatically at the end of turn 10.
Two specific objectives sharpen the race, and both reward being first rather than being strongest. The first player to activate a Soviet unit adjacent to a Berlin city zone and then do nothing else with it, turning it straight back over takes a victory point for the shelling of Berlin. The first to raise a City Progress level above zero in a Berlin zone takes two. The design note attached is that encirclement was the priority, and entering Berlin counted for nothing until the city was ringed.
Sequence & Movement
Somewhat unique sequence of play.
The premise of the sequence of play is the thing that is worthwhile, because everything else hangs off it. The game is about the competition Stalin set up between his two marshals, and it hands each player a Soviet force and a German one. The Zhukov player takes the Soviet units marked with a black NATO symbols and the German units marked in black, which the rules call the South Germans. The Koniev player takes the white-marked Soviets and the white-marked North map placed German units. Since Zhukov’s front is in the north and Koniev’s in the south, that means each player is running the Germans standing in his rival’s way. Zhukov activates four of his own units, then activates four Germans facing Koniev. Koniev does the same in return. It is not a two-front game with a shared German player; it is two Soviet commanders each holding the other’s opposition, which is why it does not survive being played alone for me.
The turn structure sits underneath that. An Operations Phase is four impulses Soviet Zhukov, Soviet Koniev, German South then German North. A a player may activate up to four units in each of his impulses, so an Operations Phase tops out at sixteen unit activations. Every activated unit goes into one of three modes: movement, combat, or reserve. All of them have to be designated before anything moves, and they resolve strictly in that order. Movement first, then combat, then reserve. Movement-mode units cannot enter an enemy zone at all, Berlin excepted. Combat-mode units may only fight, and if the defender retreats at least one attacker is obliged to advance into the vacated zone. Reserve units move at half rate but may follow an advance after combat for free, which is the only way to get weight behind a breakthrough in the same impulse. Once a unit has acted it is rotated 180 degrees and is finished for the turn thus the turn is spent deciding not just what to do, but who is still available to do it and when to use them across the four activations of a phase. Knowing that in future phases they will not be available until the next day.
The number of Operations Phases in a turn is not fixed. After the fourth impulse a d6 is rolled against the Operations marker: if the roll is less than or equal to the number of Operations Phases already played this turn, the turn ends; if it is higher, another full Operations Phase runs and the marker advances. The first test therefore needs only a 1 to stop, the second a 1 or 2, and so on — a turn runs long at the start and gets progressively harder to extend. Turn 1 carries a +2 modifier, which makes the opening turn the longest of the game by design. A player may also decline to activate anything at all, and if both Soviet impulses are passed in succession the phase closes out early.
I got this wrong at the table, and it is worth saying so because the error shaped how the game felt. Playing it, I read the test as a roll against the game turn number — which would mean extra Operations Phases get rarer as the campaign runs on, and the whole thing gradually winds down. It doesn’t. The comparison is against the Operations marker, so the odds reset at the start of every turn. Turn 4 is no stingier than turn 2.
That correction cuts against me rather than for me. If the tempo had genuinely been tapering, the repetition that set in around turn 3 would have been a phase the game was going to grow out of. It wasn’t. Played correctly, a turn will more often than not produce a second Operations Phase and sometimes a third, every turn, all the way to turn 10 — which means more of the activate-attack-advance loop, not less of it. The complaint stands. The explanation I had for it was just the wrong way round.
Conflict Resolution
1d6, 1:3 to 4:1. Most attacks will earn DRMs and many end up cancelling out.
It is again a one-sided contest.
There are a full set of modifiers: −1 for at least one armoured unit attacking into rough, −1 if the defenders are in a wooded zone, −1 attacking across a defence line, +1 for a complete Soviet army, +1 for attacking from more than one zone, +2 for armour into clear terrain with no defending armour, plus the ×2 defender doubling in difficult terrain and the halving for attacking across a river. The modifiers are abundant although certainly not like a GOSS game 😊 the problem is they more often than not cancel out to zero. The hint is in the example of play. Four mods – net to zero. Why even bother?
Logistics / Supply
There is a supply system, and it is one of the more interesting things in the box.
Supply lines are traced in a standard manner, and a Soviet line may not run through the rival camp’s units of course nor the enemies. The boundary between the two marshals is a logistical fact as well as a movement restriction. Out of supply costs you badly: strength halved, movement capped at a single zone, and no reserve mode at all. Each player gets one replacement point a turn, which either repairs a reduced unit or brings a destroyed one back at reduced strength.
The good part is what you may do instead. A player can decline the replacement point and convert it into a support point and can generate further support points by voluntarily placing his own supplied units out of supply. Support points are what pay for City Progress rolls into Berlin, with a second point buying a die-roll modifier. Neither replacement nor support points carry over; unspent, they are lost. Which is a niggle I had for the game, that there was no track to capture the point totals. §3.2.3 says replacement and support points may not be accumulated from one turn to another — unspent, they are lost. My bad.
So the currency of the endgame is your own army’s condition. You wreck units on purpose to buy pushes into the city, and you cannot bank the proceeds.
That is the design on paper. In five turns it never once mattered. As we only just closed on Berlin. Given the areas around Berlin I can see that the Soviets would be easily able to drop units into OOS mode and accrue City assault rolls, as they cannot bring their entire force to bear in any case.
Replacement points came in every turn and were never spent nothing critical needed repairing. The support-point conversion never came up, because there was no push into Berlin to pay for. The Event Chits sat there and were never played; no situation arose that called for one. Three separate resource systems, and a Soviet player advancing steadily never had to engage with any of them.
The reason is the force ratio. Running two attacks per activation for each Soviet marshal, the Germans came apart faster than the economies could become relevant. There was a small handful of German units left and a swag of Soviets by turn 3. Nothing was under enough pressure to need replacing, so the currency that is supposed to buy the endgame never got minted. So while these ideas were a nice design for effect. I did not seem them in the portion of the title I played.
That is the clearer version of the issue I have with the game, and it is not that the systems are missing. They are all present and reasonably clever on the page. It is that the game hands the Soviet player enough weight to win without ever opening the toolbox. — and that the one economy with real teeth, burning your own units to force City Progress, only switches on in an endgame the attrition rate makes it hard to reach in a fit state to care.
Historical Narrative
Fair to solid.
The historical action vs my end state end of turn 5
Its interesting to note that the ‘end state’ historically was on 25th of April which would be turn 8 of ten. Where turns take on a 2 day cadence. My Koniev forces were ready to block the US advance on Route 1. And press deeper towards Berlin. Where Zuhkov, had reached the outskirts of Berlin with one Corp/Army, and were yet to bring the full weight to bear against Berlin.
Friction vs. Reward
Low overhead. There is a lot of rules referencing required as die roll results for American progress, and other items are inside the rules and note called out on a charts page. The lack of connection and explanation of difficult terrain, kept giving me pause. Were the Soviets getting off easy, and woods should be difficult? Is that an error or an omission. Maybe? But no Woods says -1 DRM… ok so ‘not difficult’. Sigh.
Audience Fit & Comparators
Odd, or somewhat odd, game. Not ideal for solitaire. I do not have a game that comes to mind that would compare system wise. I think if you liked Fall of Berlin and wanted to try another title on the same topic. This would be a decent fit.
Table Experience & Components
Counter offsets are poor and setup areas are lost off the side of counters, and this becomes problematic. Tiny rulebook format [PDF available online]. Some tables buried in the rules.
The rulebook never defines its own terrain vocabulary. The combat example doubles the defenders for “difficult terrain” without the rules ever saying which terrain is difficult. Woods, rough and clear are named on the map legend; the modifiers that use them live on the player aid. Nothing in the rulebook joins them up, and the answer is that rough counts as difficult terrain and doubles the defender, while woods is not difficult terrain and instead applies its own −1 which has to be reverse-engineered from two other pieces of card.
Play Time / Replay / Rules Consumption
Limited replay.
Set aside at the end of turn 5 of 10 half the game. The engine had shown what it does: activate a pair, attack a zone, take a step or a retreat, advance, and repeat four times an Operations Phase, then roll to see whether another one follows. The variable is how many Operations Phases a turn produces, and that variable does not change what happens inside them.