SPI’s Winter War: The Russo-Finnish Conflict, November 1939–March 1940 — James F. Goff, Strategy & Tactics #33, 1972.
The war nobody could believe
Goff, S&T #33 (Jul 1972), p.27: “Finland, with three million people, prepared to defend herself against 150 million Soviets. The ensuing three and one-half month campaign was a classic of hard fighting in a hostile environment.”
13 years ago- I played this game. Made blog posts about it and some video. I was fascinated by the David vs. Goliath stature of this early aspect of World War II. Fascinating history and a great read in regards to tactics, and force morale. Armed with two excellent books on the topic [see sources], and three other titles owned on it, this S&T mag insert was one I was keen to get to the table. However I was wary given S&T’s hit or miss track record. Everyone knows the war, the expected outcome and the resilient and heroic defense story.
But you may be like me and not know until today that almost nobody knows this game or has spoken of it. Which is strange. So, let’s dive in and see what my researcher tools found in the magical archives of wargaming magazines and periodicals.
“an unbroken string of Soviet defeats… baked-in certainty of a Finnish win.” – Well we will see about that.
A game that was never reviewed just patched
Nobody is on the record ever sat down and reviewed Goff’s Winter War. What they did, across forty years, was try to fix it. Same one-line diagnosis from every mouth: the Finns win too easily. Then each reached for a house rule. Which is going to be interesting to see more of. As I had a marginally different experience, which we should talk about a bit down the page.
Rev. Jack A. Werth, Moves #61 (~1982): “Winter War… is an interesting and exciting little game but recognized as rather biased in favor of the Finns.” and he publishes a Soviet combined-arms variant to correct it.
Joe / Map & Counters, “Tricks of the Trade” (2010): “After only a couple of gaming sessions, it quickly became clear that WINTER WAR was heavily biased against the Russians. And the more we played, the more biased it got.” — offers four play-balance variants.
Amazingly. And I mean ‘AMAZINGLY” there is silence about the game. no straight S&T / F&M / Moves/ Battleline or Pheonix review of the game exists in the record. Now given this obvious and significant flaw in the design, in what many would say was a broken game, I would of expected to see letters, reviews castigating the title and all the vehement discussion that comes with passion about a topic.
Why not here?
There are a few scenarios I will suggest, firstly the Designer was a one shot chap, and went blind as the game was published. I suspect there is an abundance of grace for that alone.
Moreso, everyone who played that I have interacted with, did acknowledge the one sided nature of the game, but kept coming back to try just one more time. OR try a tweak to ‘fix’ what is ostensibly broken from a historicity stand point.
Joe, “Top 20 S&T Games” (2010), ranks it #3 of all 1970s–80s inserts: “The Russians begin with an overwhelming advantage in rifle strength, but appearances are deceiving: supply and deployment restrictions, in concert with special Finnish retreat rules, severely limit the ability of the Soviet commander to bring his combat power to bear against the tough and elusive Finns.”
10 days/turn · 20 km/hex · 2 players · ~2–3 hrs. Only the Soviets get HQs, armor, artillery; the Finns get infantry, cavalry, ski, border troops — no tanks, no guns, no command echelon. An asymmetrical design from the outset, that is compounded by special retreat rules, and combat rules.
The Soviet side has the strength and can’t spend it; the Finn has nothing and is everywhere in penny packets, allowing the ‘rules to manage the defense’ . Then the catch every witness names — “as published, the game actually heavily favors the Finns” (Joe, Top-20).
My take
Thirteen years is a long time for wargame recall. So bear with me, as I looked at my [3] videos, and the transcripts and my images. Also, my early days blogging. -Some gawd awful writing!
Forty years of game play and perception said the Soviets do not win. Well ‘hold my beer’ .
There are a couple of older blog posts:
Intro turns and 1 through 3: https://bigboardgaming.com/winterwar_part1/
Turns four thru -7. https://bigboardgaming.com/winter-war-turns-4-7/
What is interesting is that I have images all way thru the end or at least end of turn nine of ten. It appears I declared a minor Soviet win with no chance for further success. The Soviet forces took Petsamo, were closing on Oulu, and barely making headway past Mannherheim line. My videos were enthusiastic. I do recall liking it enough to grab the ‘replacement’ counters someone made, that were more colorful.
The game took me a few turns to square away how to get the soviet combat machine humming, and no doubt a few errors were made. Its clear to me having now as I write this, read Joes take, and his friends observations, that I had a different experience.
What did I miss in playing the Finns that allowed for such a staunch defense for them that the Soviets could “never” win? My play solo had the Soviets at a Marginal Victory at the top of turn 9 of ten total turns. Perhaps this was just slow learner lack of skill? Or was it a lapse in rules application?
Every source says “great game, Finns win too easily, here’s my fix.” Did the imbalance feel like a broken game, or like 1939 doing exactly what 1939 did?
I feel like this game got the front half of the war right, but lacked the play testing to bring the Timenshenko impact to the 2nd halfd of the game. I let the system ride, but by the same token I did not invest in more than two plays. I got to a mostly historical result.
The history the counters carry
Its noteworthy that this campaign, drove leadership, tactical and logistical changes in the Soviet War machine. They still took a long time to bubble up and through. But the clash of WW1 style massed efforts vs a ‘hull down’ maneuver centric enemy, redefined early small unit tactics I think. The Finnish, nimbleness, focus on destroying enemy logistics, trading space for time, using ambushes and night actions all played havoc with the Soviet notion of who WWII was going to play out.
(Goff, S&T #33) sets the stage: summer 1939, USSR fears for Leningrad/ Murmansk if Hitler takes Finland; demands the Karelian border land + a Gulf base, offers worthless Eastern Karelian forest in trade. Finland refuses “strongly anti-Communist… and simply because of patriotism and national feeling.” Red Army invades 30 Nov 1939 expecting a walkover.
Van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–40: Meretskov’s plan was a timetable break through the Isthmus, take Vyborg, roll down the highway “for the final offensive against Helsinki.”
Trotter, A Frozen Hell (Suomussalmi / Raate Road): the 163rd Rifle Division stalls at Suomussalmi; the 44th comes down the single Raate Road to relieve it. The Finns had already ID’d it as “the 44th Division” and built “a remarkably accurate dossier on its commanding officer, General Vinogradov… no second-rate cannon-fodder outfit like the 163rd.” Mobile on skis, invisible in white, they cut the roads behind the columns and chop them into pockets — the motti tactic and destroy both divisions piecemeal.
Trotter: Finnish snipers roped into treetops with quick-release harnesses, picking off officers and tank commanders with iron-sighted Mosins.
Trotter: Stalin brings in “one of his finest soldiers,” Semyon Timoshenko a barrel-maker before the Revolution to reorganize the front “along strict lines of military efficiency.” Feb 1940: pure mass and set-piece artillery crack the Mannerheim Line; the drive on Vyborg. Finland signs the Moscow Peace, March 1940 — cedes the Isthmus, keeps its independence.
Flaw, or fidelity?
When I do these articles, referencing Joe, the pundits in the magazines and myself its often interesting to see how consistently the verdicts align. No so much here, everyone else rushed to fix the Finnish bias. But the real Winter War was a Finnish blowout for three months. If we look at Arctic Storm, or Red Winter or Frozen Hell from TCS series, they get most of this down way more accurately. Arctic Storm is the closest in scale, with a denser rulebook and a deeper set of rules. It delivers where Winter War does not. The soviets in particular the 163rd and 44th really were given a first class ass whipping in the snow. The imbalance the whole hobby patched may be the truest thing Goff designed. Every fix (Werth’s Soviet combined-arms, Joe’s four tweaks) makes the game fairer but does it make less historical?. I suspect what was lacking here, was a momentum shift rule or mechanism of some sort. How do you make the Finns represent that tenacious defense, while still allowing a Soviet ‘big win’ in the last ½ of the game?
Timoshenko, came in and solved the problem, with mass, by February/March its over. Goff’s game gives the Soviet player only half the history. The Soviet player has no second act, it appears to freeze the war in its humiliating first act. Maybe with the impending blindness, they pushed it our regardless, knowing this was an error in design, so Goff could ‘see the finished product? I think that would have been cool. AS for balance – only playing this thing answers the question. I might have to run a vassal session!
Joes Take in full:
WINTER WAR: The Russo-Finnish Conflict, November 1939-March 1940 is a two-player historical simulation of the Russian invasion of Finland in winter 1939, and of tiny Finland’s dogged resistance until spring 1940. This game was originally offered as the insert game in S&T #33 (Jul-Aug, 1972). Later it was reissued in the familiar SPI plastic flat-pack version featured here.
WINTER WAR was designed by James F. Goff (with graphics by Redmond Simonsen) and published in 1972 by Simulations Publications, Incorporated (SPI).
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
For Soviet strategic planners in the Kremlin, 1939 had proven to be a very good year. The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 had temporarily, at least, removed the immediate prospect of war with Hitler’s Germany and had also opened the way for Soviet expansion into the west. Thus, seventeen days after German troops crossed the Polish frontier, Russian army units — in keeping with the secret protocols of the August agreement — moved into Eastern Poland, Latvia, and Estonia. Unexpectedly for the German Fuhrer, however, Stalin — apparently not wanting to see a perfectly good crisis go to waste — also decided to grab Lithuania (which was originally supposed to go to Germany) and, just for good measure, the Romanian provinces of Bukovina and Bessarabia. These initial Soviet moves went off without a hitch and, with the south and central buffer areas with Germany now expanded, Russian attention inevitably turned to tiny Finland in the north.
Hitler, as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, had already callously consigned Finland to the role of a future Soviet vassal state; nonetheless, the Russians, hoping to avoid unnecessary difficulties with the west, decided to attempt a diplomatic, rather than a military approach with the Finns.
At issue, for the Russians, was the protection of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and also increased safety for both the city of Leningrad and the Leningrad-Murmansk rail line. To accomplish these ends, the Russians put forward a simple, if unpersuasive, proposal: to avoid war, the Finns had only to abandon their prepared defenses on the Karelian Peninsula and around Lake Ladoga, and, in a further gesture of friendship, allow the establishment of a Soviet base on Finnish territory. In return, the Russians generously offered to give up a tract of uninhabited and essentially worthless swamp and forestland as compensation. The Finns were unimpressed. At stake for the Finnish government were both its national independence and the sovereignty of its territory. Negotiations, not surprisingly, quickly broke down. The Russians, however, would not be dissuaded from their strategic goals because of a little Finnish stubbornness. Thus, once it became evident that their diplomatic efforts had clearly failed, the Soviets went forward with plans for the invasion of Finland.
Kremlin planners contemplated very little serious Finnish resistance; with the population of the Soviet Union outnumbering that of Finland by almost fifty-to-one, Russian military leaders expected a quick and easy victory.
On 30 November 1939, Soviet troops crossed the border into Finland. The Kremlin, apparently impressed with Hitler’s earlier use of a ‘manufactured’ frontier incident as a provocation for the war with Poland, did exactly the same thing with the Finns. Russian commanders and their troops were optimistic: the war would last a few days or, at most, a few weeks. Once the Red Army had both punched through the ramshackle defenses of the Mannerheim Line and had driven across the heart of Finland to the Gulf of Bothnia, the Finnish government would, Soviet planners were sure, rush back to the peace table.
Russian commanders, in fact, were so confident that they cautioned their men to take care not to violate Swedish territory in the course of the offensive. Things, however, would turn out much differently than the Soviet military leadership expected. Instead of glory and an easy victory, months of bloodshed, freezing misery, and death lay ahead for the men of the Red Army. And, as the war got under way, little could the still unsuspecting Russian soldiers know that, for all the progress that the Soviet columns would actually make in their offensive against central Finland, the Swedish frontier might as well have been on the surface of the moon.
DESCRIPTION WINTER WAR: The Russo-Finnish Conflict, November 1939-March 1940 is an operational-level (patrol/battalion/regiment/division/corps) simulation of the Russian invasion of Finland in winter 1940, and the bitter fighting that resulted from the Finns’ courageous and tenacious defense of their homeland. The game map displays all of Finland, parts of Sweden and Norway, and that portion of northern Russia that borders Finland and that also encompasses the Leningrad Murmansk rail line. Each map hex is 20 kilometers from side-to-side. The various game counters represent the historical combat units that actually took part — or that could have played a role — in the historical battle. The game is played in game turns, each of which is divided into a Russian and a Finnish player turn. A complete game turn is equal to ten days of real time. The game is ten turns long and spans the period from 30 November 1939 to 12 March 1940, during which the major events of the conflict transpired.
The game turn sequence for WINTER WAR is symmetrical, and proceeds as follows (the Soviet player moves first): reinforcement phase, movement phase, and combat phase; the Finnish player then repeats the same set of phases. At the conclusion of both player turns in the Historical Game, the turn record marker is advanced one space, and the next game turn begins. In the case of the Optional ‘Special Events/Scenario’ Game, a Scenario Interphase is inserted into the turn sequence at the end of the Finnish player turn, but prior to the advance of the turn record marker. The actual mechanics of play for WINTER WAR are comparatively simple, but quite interesting, none-the-less. Stacking, for both players, is limited to two combat units per hex on or south of the ‘A’ hex row, and one unit per hex north of the ‘A’ hex row. Interestingly, stacking limits apply only at the end of a movement phase, but are in effect throughout the combat phase; moreover, there is no penalty to stack or unstack with other friendly units during movement. Zones of control (ZOCs) are rigid but not sticky. This means that all units must halt immediately upon entering the ZOC of an enemy unit, but may exit an enemy ZOC in a subsequent movement phase so long as they do not move directly from one enemy ZOC to another. In addition, ZOCs block both supply paths and retreat routes; however, the presence of a friendly unit in the affected hex negates the ZOC in both cases.
Interestingly, Finnish 1-1-3 and 0-0-3 units do not exert a ZOC when operating outside of Finland (i.e., in Russia); also, NKVD units’ ZOCs do not extend into Finland, and Russian headquarters and all isolated units exert no ZOC, whatsoever. Finally, Russian ZOCs do not extend into a Finnish occupied or controlled fortified line hex, but Finnish ZOCs are not limited in any way by their own fortified hexes.
The terrain and movement rules for WINTER WAR are familiar and generally quite conventional. One feature of the movement rules, however, does stand out: because of the difficult weather conditions during the actual campaign, the movement allowances of all units are relatively small. This seasonal effect magnifies the impact of terrain on movement. The different terrain types represented in the game, interestingly enough, are actually relatively few; these are: clear, swamps, Finnish and Soviet cities, Finnish fortified line hexes, mountains, rivers, lakes, ice, roads, and railroads. Lakes and mountains are impassable, and all units pay one extra movement point to cross an unbridged river hex-side.
In addition, all swamp and ice hexes cost Soviet units two movement points to enter; Finnish units pay two movement points to enter both ice and Soviet swamp hexes, but only one movement point for swamp hexes in Finland. Roads are especially important in WINTER WAR (particularly for the Russians) because they negate all terrain penalties so long as units are moving directly from one connected road hex to another. In addition, an unlimited number of combat units from both sides may be transported using friendly rail lines. Units that begin their movement phase on a railroad hex are automatically entrained; those that must move onto a rail hex must pay one additional movement point to entrain. Once entrained, a unit may travel without additional movement cost to any other connected rail hex in its home country. There is no additional cost to detrain. Finally, units in friendly cities or friendly fortified line hexes, or attacked across river hex-sides are doubled on defense.
Combat in WINTER WAR occurs between adjacent opposing units and is resolved using a traditional “Odds Differential” combat results table (CRT). The CRT displays a conventional range of combat outcomes (AE, AR, NE, DR, Ex, and DE); however, at higher odds, it also lists a certain percentage of combat results in parentheses. These parenthetical outcomes apply only to Russian attacks against Finnish units in fortified line hexes; and, without exception, they directly benefit the Finnish defender. The rules governing minimum and maximum attacking odds also work to the advantage of the Finns: for example, voluntary attacks at odds of less than 1 to 4 are not permitted, and attacks at odds greater than 6 to 1 are still treated as 6 to 1’s. Other rules governing combat between adjacent enemy units also differ in important ways for the two sides.
Finnish attacks against adjacent enemy units are always voluntary: a Finnish unit may attack all adjacent enemy occupied hexes, some enemy hexes, or even none. In the case of the Russians, however, combat is always mandatory, and all adjacent enemy hexes must be attacked at ‘legal odds’ by at least one Russian unit. Defending stacks must be attacked as a unitary whole; in contrast, different units in an attacking stack may choose to attack the same or a different adjacent hex, so long as all units participate in at least one of the attacks.
One of this title’s most notable innovations is that all Finnish 1-1-3 and 0-0-3 units have the option to retreat before combat if a legal retreat route is open, these units occupy a hex in Finland that is north of the ‘A’ hex row, and the Russians have not cleared all four hexes of the Mannerheim Line. Soviet Headquarters, assuming they have an unblocked retreat route may always retreat before combat whichever country they are in.
Supply effects in WINTER WAR are identical for both the Finns and the Russians, and there are only two supply states: ‘Supplied’ and ‘Isolated’. Supplied units operate normally in every respect; isolated units, on the other hand, are halved (retain fractions) for defense, may not attack, and may only move one hex per turn. In addition, neither Russian nor Finnish units are ever eliminated purely as a result of being isolated; however, all isolated units do lose their ZOCs until supply is restored.
The rules for tracing supply impose very different requirements on the two sides. Finnish units are in supply if they are able to trace an unblocked supply path of any length to a hex in Finland. This means, in essence, that Finnish units can never be isolated while in their home country. Things are much tougher for the Russians. All Soviet combat units — except for Headquarters and NKVD units which cannot be ‘isolated’ — are in supply if they either occupy an ‘active’ Soviet Supply City, or if they can trace a supply path of five or fewer hexes to a Headquarters unit that, itself, is then able to trace an unblocked line of ten or fewer hexes to an ‘active’ Russian Supply City.
An ‘active’ Russian Supply City, by the way, is one that is connected by an unblocked rail line to Leningrad. In addition, all Russian Supply Cities have a ‘supply capacity’ which limits the number of units (computed on the basis of attack factors) that they can actually support at any given time.
The winner of WINTER WAR is determined by victory points, and players may — depending on their accumulated victory points at game end — achieve one of five victory levels: Soviet Decisive, Soviet Substantive, or Soviet Marginal; a Draw; or a Finnish Decisive victory. The Russian player accrues victory points by capturing key Finnish cities and by clearing the whole of the fortified Mannerheim Line. In addition, the Russians can gain victory points by advancing into the western part of Finnish territory north of the ‘A’ hex row. If the Optional Game rules are in effect, the Soviet player can also receive victory points for any special ‘Allied’ units that are destroyed. The Finnish player, for his part, receives varying numbers of victory points for capturing different Soviet cities; he also receives points for each game turn that the Russian player fails to maintain seven combat units within five hexes of Murmansk.
WINTER WAR offers two versions: the Historical Game, and the Optional ‘Variable Scenario’ Game. In the Optional Game, the Finnish player rolls a die during the end-of-turn interphase and implements the specific scenario, if any, mandated by the die roll. These randomly-selected scenarios include, but are not limited to, provisions for such historically plausible occurrences as: Allied (French and British) intervention on the side of Finland, foreign Finnish volunteers, Russian paratroops, severe weather, better Soviet logistics, Russo-German tensions, and an early Cease Fire. There are no other optional rules.
A PERSONAL OBSERVATION James Goff’s WINTER WAR is, in a number of different respects, a very odd little game for SPI to have put forward. To begin with, the subject matter, itself, would appear to be an unlikely choice for an SPI design. After all, the historical details of the Russo-Finnish War were and are relatively obscure; the outcome to the conflict was seemingly preordained; the opposing commanders were all unknowns; and, even as the bitterly-fought war between the Russians and Finns played out, events elsewhere in Europe were rapidly building towards a much more important military confrontation on the Franco-German frontier. And if these factors weren’t already enough to discourage Dunnigan from publishing WINTER WAR, the game was also an independent design.
In fact, so far as I know, WINTER WAR was the only commercially-produced wargame that Jim Goff was able to design before blindness overcame him. So, the fact that the game ever saw print at all, was probably something of a minor miracle. Nonetheless, when I and my friends received our respective copies of S&T #33 back in 1972, the response to the insert game was enthusiastically positive.
In fact, WINTER WAR, PANZER ARMEE AFRIKA, BORODINO, and PANZERGRUPPE GUDERIAN were probably the only four magazine games ever published by SPI that virtually everyone I knew was happy to receive. This is not to say that play-balance issues did not begin to surface almost immediately. The Soviets may have managed to grind out a bloody victory in the real war, but on the WINTER WAR game map, the Russians started to run into problems just as soon as players began to gain a little experience with the Finnish defense. And it only got worse with time. Very soon, the occasional Russian victory gave way to an unbroken string of Soviet defeats. In most such cases, of course, this type of serious play-balance problem means that the offending game quickly gets shunted aside and forgotten. Oddly enough, that didn’t happen with WINTER WAR. And that, in its own right, probably merits a little discussion.
The willingness of my circle of regular opponents to continue to play WINTER WAR, despite the ‘baked-in’ certainty of a Finnish win, probably says something both about the uniqueness of the historical situation and also about the several interesting challenges presented by the game system. For the Finnish player, needless-to-say, it was a blast to take a badly-outnumbered force and then proceed to cut to pieces any Russian incursions into central Finland. For the Soviet player, on the other hand, there always seemed to be just one more strategic wrinkle to try; one more combination of attacks that might actually succeed in finally clearing the Mannerheim Line. Moreover, among my friends, paired games became the rule; that is: each player would alternate sides and then compare a tally of victory points and combat losses to determine the final winner of the pair of games.
And players being players, I should also note that it was inevitable that a number of minor rules adjustments gradually emerged that succeeded very nicely both in restoring play balance and in heightening the overall excitement of the game, itself. These rules changes and game variants, by the way, are useful enough that I will probably discuss them in some detail in a later post.
Contemporary game designs, needless-to-say, tend to be far more nuanced, detailed, and colorful than WINTER WAR. After all, 1972 was a long time ago. Nonetheless, there are elements in this relatively simple simulation that — in my eyes, at least — continue to have great appeal. For one thing, the wide variation in unit strengths and capabilities still makes this title interesting, and given its scale, almost unique. How many other game systems, for example, have successfully managed to mix counters as small as a Finnish 0-0-3 ski patrol with units as powerful as a 20-12-2 Soviet corps and still have the whole game work?
Moreover, the rules governing Russian supply are actually relatively sophisticated and, even more importantly, directly impact the strategic direction and flow of the game. And the game doesn’t take a whole day to play. All this, of course, doesn’t mean that WINTER WAR is going to be a good choice for every type of player. Armored warfare enthusiasts, for example, and players who like to see big moves and sweeping maneuvers are probably not going to crank up much enthusiasm for a game in which much of the map is covered by lakes and swamps, there is no mechanized movement phase, and the speediest unit on the map has a movement factor of ‘four’. On the other hand, for those players and collectors interested in games from the ‘golden years’ of SPI; or for those who are willing to do a minor amount of tinkering with the basic design, I recommend it highly. In my opinion, with just a few minor ‘rules tweaks’, WINTER WAR can be made to be both a competitive and exciting face-to-face challenge, and a really great solitaire game.
Design Characteristics: Time Scale: 10 days per game turn Map Scale: 20 kilometers per hex Unit Size: patrol/battalion/regiment/brigade/division/corps Unit Types: headquarters (Soviet only), infantry, armor (Soviet only), cavalry, artillery (Soviet only), ski, and NKVD (Soviet border guards) Number of Players: two Complexity: average Solitaire Suitability: average/above average Average Playing Time: 2-3 hours Game Components: One 22″ x 34″ hexagonal grid Map Sheet (with Turn Record/Reinforcement Tracks, Combat Results Table, Terrain Effects Chart, Victory Points Schedule, and ‘Special Events’ and ‘Scenario Charts’ incorporated) 120 half-inch back-printed cardboard Counters One 8.5″ x 11″ WINTER WAR Rules Booklet One small six-sided Die One 3.75″ x 8.5″ SPI Customer Complaint Card One SPI 12″ x 15″ x 1″ flat 24 compartment plastic Game Box (with clear compartment tray covers) and Title Sheet
Sources
Goff, S&T #33 (Jul 1972) p.27 · Rev. Jack A. Werth, Moves #61 (~1982) · Joe/Map & Counters (2010): review + Top-20 (#3) + “Tricks of the Trade” · Trotter, A Frozen Hell · van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–40 · WargameMags_Index. [KEV] Irincheev, War of the White Death (hardcopy); Lib_gamescans Winter War (S&T033).pdf.