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Turn 1: Summer 1941 Good morning Goons. The goal of this game is to conquer Russia and we’re going to try to accomplish this together. I’m going to play through most of this first turn before we start throwing things up to a vote so you can see the basic flow of a turn.  The first thing you do every turn is draw for events. Our current strategic mode is set to tank production, so we’re starting off with a special event!  And we roll a 29, netting us Soviet Industrial problems. The special event table is a roll of 1-40 on 4 different tables with the table being chosen by the year. Events in later years can be quite nasty.  This slows down Soviet economic development which is a fantastic way to start off the game.  Well I guess I have to explain the Axis Strategic mode then, I was trying to make this turn simple.   Every turn the player can change the Strategic mode to one of these 6 options, limited by the initiative counter. Right now we’re in Tank Production mode so we can’t pick that one for this event but here’s what they all do.
I’m going to hit Berlin Logistics with this event since it’s a permanent +1 initiative, very handy.    And our special event roll is an 8, netting us the Grossdeutschland and fortifying Leningrad.  Next up is redeployment, the Grossdeutschland moves down to Romania, kicking out a Romanian formation.  And as a special turn 1 rule Panzer formations are allowed to re-deploy 1 hex into Soviet territory, capturing Riga and Brest Litovsk.  Whenever you capture a Soviet city a card is drawn, if that card reads BONUS then you get a Capture Bonus chit in that city which gives you +1 initiative. You don’t do any of the actions on the card, you’re only looking for the Bonus icon. 2 cities means 2 cards and we end up with 1 bonus for Riga.  Now we do blitz combat. This is a chain of attacks that heavily favor the Axis, but you’re only able to perform them when the Axis holds the initiative. Combat is performed by drawing a series of colored chits and referencing the combat results table. Red is very bad but since it’s turn 1 I’m allowed to discard this without penalty and redraw.  Yellow, much better. Now since it’s a blitz and we got a favorable result the Panzer advances and is allowed to attack again on a slightly worse results table.  And the panzers roll to a halt after taking 3 hexes, not a bad run. At the end of every turn combat chits are normally recycled back into the pool but chits with an X are different. These are placed aside and you must take a penalty to recycle them. The reason you want to do this is because there are a lot more good chits with X’s than bad ones, so if you don’t recycle the pool will steadily get worse.  47th Panzer captures Minsk which does not draw a bonus. My rolls here are better than normal because it’s the 1st turn, In these 6 combats I drew 3 red chits, since I’m allowed to discard my first chit every individual round I would have to draw 2 red in a row for that to stop me.  Kiev falls to the 41st and down in Romania we’ve got our first Luftwaffe tokens. These are able to do several useful things but for now they’re primary use is they allow non-panzer units to perform blitzes, fun.  The 49th Mountain draws red on it’s final attack which is discarded to draw another red.  Red on a third attack is bad, it’s one of the few ways to lose units on the German turn. Thankfully the penalty draw is green, so the 49th is safe for now.  Not a bad blitz, 3 Soviet formations bagged and it looks like we’re going to get a few more in the regular combat phase. You’ve likely noticed by now that more and more chits keep appearing on the game board. The line system in this game is one of the more unique things about it. In short there must always be a continuous line. If a German unit advances out of a hex that is adjacent to a Soviet chit then you must immediately place a ‘spent’ German infantry on that hex (spent units can take no actions this turn.) If you advance past the Soviet line then Soviet chits are placed until a line is re-formed. Basically only the special units are ‘real’ while everything else on the board is just there to form the line and give the special units something to slam into.  Regular combat is much less exciting, you can take 1 hex at most and taking hexes is way less likely than it is during the Blitz phase.  Still, not bad thanks to my ability to discard the first chit. Another large pocket is formed and only the Mountain formation in the south fails to advance. Even the Finns manage to push a Soviet army around. Some chits are special, that Tactics chit in the south gains us a +1 initiative bonus next turn. Not like we’ll need it, with how well this turn has gone we’re going to max out the initiative track easily.  Axis encirclement phase. Normally only Axis units would be checked for encirclement here but since it’s turn 1 the Soviets get checked here as well before they get a chance to counterattack netting us 8 encircled chits. Now it’s the Soviet turn.   Well then. The Soviets first launch a pair of attacks against the 2 forward Panzer formations. The 39th holds but the 41st is forced to retreat and without anywhere to retreat is is removed from the map for the remainder of the turn.  For the Soviets red chits are a (usually) Breakthrough. This allows them to advance and then draw again, if they draw another red they advance again. Thankfully they drew blue and stopped here.  2 more failed attacks are launched and with that the Soviet turn ends. During this phase the Soviets attack every possible hex in order from most likely to succeed to least until there are no attacks left that are capable of producing results. Units that have already been attacked cannot be attacked again and the defensive shifts from the Gross Deutschland being both special and behind a river protect it from attack by the 3 Soviet chits facing it. These early attacks aren’t so bad but the Soviets can get scary fast.  Next initiative gets calculated, we get +1 for each capture bonus, +1 for Berlin logistics, +1 from the tactics chit and +1 for every 2 soviet formations encircled for a total of 7. The track maxes out at 6 and getting at least 6 initiative nets us a victory point. If we get 5 VP we win, easy right?  Final move of the turn is bring the Axis allies back onto the board, the amount of allied chits needed is determined by the number of German chits on the board and we’ve hit the max, what fun. Votes  1. What should we switch our Strategic Mode to? A. Logistics B. Tanks C. Economic D. Exploitation  2. Where should the 41st Panzer be re-deployed? A. North B. South 3. Goals? Where should the Panzers try to attack, should I burn more Luftwaffe tokens to allow non-panzers to blitz? Board State  Axis Economy  Soviet Economy 
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Aug 17, 2014 18:51
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 21:29 |
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Okay, I have no idea how most of the systems in this game work, but I've won at STAVKA-OKH before. So by golly I'll give this a shot. 1-B: Tank Production It seems we got lucky with our first turn events, duplicating two of the other mode's effects. So let's build up our tank numbers before things completely go to poo poo. 2-A: North It looks like it's possible to get more attacks than units we can use them with, so let's focus our numbers where we're likely to need more attackers. 3. How about a push in the north? We're so close to Leningrad and Moscow, let's see what we can get done this turn. As for Luftwaffe tokens, those seem hard to get, so only use them to save our most important units.
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Aug 17, 2014 20:06
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You put the marker in the left-most box?
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Aug 17, 2014 20:08
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Leningrad (accurately) appears to have rough terrain in front of it, which will make attacking it difficult. Moscow might be doable but we'd be leaving a huge salient in the line...
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Aug 17, 2014 20:19
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ArkhamPraetor posted:You put the marker in the left-most box? Right-most empty box, since all the boxes are empty that's the box on the left.
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Aug 17, 2014 21:01
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1 B 2 A 3 Go for the Northern cities. Especially Moscow.
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Aug 17, 2014 21:37
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R.C. Pro Am Porn posted:Okay, I have no idea how most of the systems in this game work, but I've won at STAVKA-OKH before. So by golly I'll give this a shot. Always neat to see LPs like this uPen, but I echo the sentiments of not really grasping the system from the OP. Are you assuming familiarity with the mechanics? If it wouldn't drag the thread down for everyone else, a bit more elaboration on the gameplay would be really appreciated because being able to understand the game better seems like it would make the LP more enjoyable. No idea what the economic track does, but considering uPen made it a point to mention the devastation token on the Soviet Industrial track was going to have an impact I'm going to vote 1-C : Devastate One, since judging by the numbers the biggest step up is between 2 and 5 so it seems efficient to get it up to that level at least.
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Aug 18, 2014 06:08
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I'd think the idea is to see where it goes when guided by people that don't know the system well. And to clarify: You don't perform the Strategic Mode action every turn, only when you draw certain events or tokens. 1-D: I think this is clearly the most underpowered one, so I never used it! 2-B: More open ground. 3: Close the Pripyat pocket, then drive like mad for the Caucasus and Stalingrad. Also shuffle the special infantry north and tanks south over time to correspond better to the dominant terrain. Also, for Tank Production, note that we literally can't get any more tanks in the field. The only good it can do is to build up a buffer in case a tank unit is defeated.
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Aug 20, 2014 17:53
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uPen posted:Right-most empty box, since all the boxes are empty that's the box on the left. Are you... quite sure? I mean, you know the game and I don't, but that's not really how English works.
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Aug 20, 2014 21:07
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Tanks North Cut off Leningrad, and capture Moscow ASAP
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Aug 22, 2014 11:29
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Tanks Gonna quote since its identical to my vote. However, if its possible to take Leningrad this turn, that should be done so as to allow us to send the Panzers to the Southern Front and the capture of Stalingrad. What's the effect of taking the "To Archangel" hex?
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Aug 22, 2014 17:28
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Coffeehitler posted:Gonna quote since its identical to my vote. However, if its possible to take Leningrad this turn, that should be done so as to allow us to send the Panzers to the Southern Front and the capture of Stalingrad. North is a much better bet, Stalingrads just a meat grinder. I would assume taking the "To Archangel" hex cuts off some soviet productions, or any events that give them free units thanks to Lend-Lease.
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Aug 22, 2014 22:44
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Sorry I meant to update this again the second day but works been super lovely this week out of nowhere! New update this weekend with more explanations of mechanics! e: To Archanagel is an event, if the event is played and the Germans capture that hex then the Soviets don't get Lend Lease which is really good.
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Aug 23, 2014 00:52
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Jobbo_Fett posted:North is a much better bet, Stalingrads just a meat grinder. Yes, North is where 2 of the 3 victory hexes are, that's why you want to secure them (Leningrad and Moscow) before turning to the third (Stalingrad). And given uPen's response re: Archangel, we want to take that hex if at all possible. Lend Lease (and a relatively endless manpower pool) won the Eastern Front, after all.
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Aug 23, 2014 04:55
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Turn 2 - Autumn 1941 Welcome back. On turn 2 we are going to draw 1 event, 2 econ tokens and then capture Moscow. Let’s get to it. Now we’re are going to be drawing 1 card per turn (2 in summer) and econ tokens as designated by the turn track. Over the course of the game the Soviets will draw more tokens than the Axis on top of the fact that some Axis tokens are negative while all the Soviet tokens are good. So yeah, the game gets worse for us the longer we go.  First up the 1st shock army is put into reserve and will join the battle at the end of the turn, joy of joys. Some units come in as time passes, we’ll soon be adding tank armies, more shock formations and guard armies to the Soviet pool.  All these specialist Soviet formations increase the odds of the Soviets succeeding during their counter-attack phase.   Partisans! We’ll deal with this jerk later in the turn. Partisans are simply a -1 shift in initiative but they can be annoying to remove.  Going forward we will be drawing econ tokens for one or more sides most turns. The Any Axis token can be used for 3 things. It can give us 2 Luftwaffe tokens, it can go on the axis armor track, or it can activate the current Axis strategic mode. In this case I’m going to use it to activate the Strategic mode since this will give us a 4th tank counter (the maximum you can have on the board at one time.)   Luftwaffe tokens we’ve seen before but I don’t think I’ve explained the armor tracks. Each side has an armor track that adds an initiative bonus (German) or malus (Soviet.) If the Soviet track is tied with or subtracts more than the German track then the Germans lose armor superiority. Without armor superiority it becomes more difficult for the German blitzes to last as long so it’s rather important early on!  The Soviets draw an industry token but since the Soviet industry track is devastated both tokens are removed from the game instead of being applied. Not bad. Devastations just remove the next token that would go in that slot, so since the #1 industry slot was devastated the Soviets need to draw a second industry token to place in that slot. Like many things in this game all the Industry track does is gently caress with the initiative track.  The blitz succeeds in getting 2 hex-sides on Moscow and cuts the Pripyat marshes off, not bad. I was hoping to take Kharkov but with Grossdeutschland failing to take a second hex that just won’t be possible this turn. While blitzes are extremely powerful there are serious limits on it. You may never blitz into a major city (Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad) or into any rough terrain. Basically that means we’ve advanced as close to Leningrad as we can with armor while for Moscow the armor’s job is now to secure more hex-sides from which to assault the city.   Partisans are pretty simple, they’re just a -1 mauls to initiative that counteracts the +1 from capture bonuses. To remove a partisan counter you must flip over any unit on the map during the combat phase and draw a chit. If you get a green (or blue for SS) chit then the partisan is removed, otherwise it sticks around. We lucked out here with the 1st cavalry removing the Warsaw partisans on the first try. It’s not necessary for the Axis unit to be adjacent to the partisan, that’s just how it worked out this time. Also no, cavalry isn’t special, it’s identical to normal infantry.  So, major cities. Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad work differently from other cities. You must draw a green chit to successfully assault the city and you must do it twice in a single turn to capture. Fingers crossed…  Well that’s unfortunate. Better luck next turn?  Regular combat is much more difficult than blitz combat as you can see, Panzers are the only unit that can get really favorable odds and that’s only when they’re attacking into open territory. Luckily we do make some gains towards Sevastopol, Leningrad and the 47th Panzer picks up a bonus in Smolensk.  Well we were making gains.   The only other attacks the Soviets are capable of making this turn is 2 attacks into the Romanians holding the Pripyat pocket which accomplish nothing.  The pocket is cleared and now it’s time to prepare for the next turn.  Enough initiative shifts to get another VP, barely. If we hadn’t drawn that doctrine chit or the Partisans had hung around we would have missed out. That final token is a shift for controlling both Kiev and Odessa at the same time, it’s a little hard to read in this format.  The 1st Shock army deploys in Moscow.  And 57th Panzer joins the fist slamming into Moscow. You can have a maximum of 4 panzer chits on the map at once so this is about as strong as our army is going to get until we see some SS reinforcements. 1. Next turn is a Winter turn which means no blitzing next turn, just regular attacks. It also means we’re going to get a Winter Build-up phase during which we can pick up either A. 1 Luftwaffe Tokens. We currently have 1 Luftwaffe token. B. 2 Hedgehog tokens. Hedgehogs are defensive chits that give a hex a positive defensive shift for the rest of the game or until the Soviets take the hex. If we pick up some hedgehogs where should we place them? 2. The axis strategic mode. Since we have 4 tanks and haven’t lost any yet this mode is rather useless to us now. Should we switch to: A. Logistics for +1 initiative B. Economic Warfare to recover some of our lost X chits or devastate the Soviet econ track C. Exploitation to have the chance to place more city bonus chits. Board State  German Econ  Soviet Econ 
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Aug 24, 2014 03:43
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1b Place them next to Moscow so we don't get pushed back. 2c Still going for the comedy option. Also the Shock army can only be placed north or south of Moscow, not in the city. It goes on the least engaged hex 
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Aug 24, 2014 04:16
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1-A We should prepare for the next Spring/Summer assaults on Moscow and possibly (fingers crossed) Leningrad. 2-B, Devastate Keeping the Soviet war machine on the back foot will win us this war. Morholt posted:Also the Shock army can only be placed north or south of Moscow, not in the city. It goes on the least engaged hex Would that put 1st Shock in 0412 (NE from Moscow) since it would then not be in any ZOCs?
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Aug 24, 2014 05:00
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1A 2C We aren't on the defensive yet, lets try to gain more territory while we can.
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Aug 24, 2014 05:01
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Coffeehitler posted:Would that put 1st Shock in 0412 (NE from Moscow) since it would then not be in any ZOCs?
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Aug 24, 2014 05:35
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1A 2B. Keep up the pressure as much as we can.
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Aug 24, 2014 10:14
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 21:29 |
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1. A We're still on the offensive! 2. B: Recover Looks like we can get back some of the green chits we'll need to storm Moscow.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:36
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