I am not sure what has prevented me from breaking the ice with this game. But it has sat on my magnet wall for since early April.

Opening game play for the campaign of Unconditional Surrender.

I note that I need to retain 8 production points in order to mobilise the units in the pool. We have 26 Production points as the Germans at start.

Ops Phase.

The Germans want to wrap up Poland quickly. The way the game works here is via reduction of Political Will (PW) to force an immediate surrender. Poland has 10 will.

1st Pzr kicks off proceedings and reduces Danzig in the North, force a step loss and a retreat. 4th Army moves to Danzig to secure it as 1st heads South to block retreat of forces in Posen.

16th  army moves to attack the Polish Garrison force in the East. knocking it out and then advancing to Warsaw (hmm I don’t think a unit can mobile assault and then assault at end of move…pity. I also need to check usage of Air units more than once in a turn as I recall that they can be used up to their Sortie limit) but not attacking.

Thus Warsaw would require to be attacked using mobile assault to knock it out in T1 [Sept].

As you likely know by now from all the other player reviews and vid, UCS uses the combat as a function of movement mechanic, and does so very effectively. This forces decision cycles pre move, then more during the move as you adjust based upon combat results, and the usual errors. I imagine playing the wrong person could be a total buzz kill with long planning sessions prior to move and adjustments to plan on an on going basis. Thankfully its just little old me.

In any case. 2nd Pzr force the Lodz army out, 10th and 14th combine to Assault Krakow only getting a DD (step loss retreat) and 8th Army attack Posen which is eliminated due to step loss from combat and retreat restrictions.

Where did this leave us? The Poles end up with 2 Will…. frustratingly close.

The supply check leaves the unit south of Warsaw in limited supply I believe.

I need to bone up on the rules …again, don’t wait a month between rules and game play!

More as it happens.