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As
time goes on, the supply level increases, as well as the arrival
of Third Army forces. Coupled with attrition of German forces,
the Allied player must choose the time and place of his breakout
. Premature launching of the offensive will result in too few
resources of proper exploitation of any penetration and another
long wait while supply builds up. However, it is not a cake walk
for the Allied Player.
Once the American player breaks through, he must balance the need to exit units off the map with the on map situation, leaving enough force behind to pin the Germans in place as he tries to encircle them . The breakout can be costly in terms of casualties, leaving American units weak. Coupled with ever extending lines of supply that diminish his combat capability, and you can end up with the same situation the Germans did - a chance to counterattack the thinly held American flank . Meanwhile , the Germans must try to execute an orderly withdrawal under increasingly stifing levels of Allied air power. Should he exit enough units or delay the Allies in exiting units, he will have fulfilled his goal of buying time to man the Siegfried Line for the final battles for Germany. There are three single map scenarios. One covering the British attacks around Caen onto Falaise, another dealing with the U.S. Army's fight through the hedgerow to Operation Cobra, and a shorter, introductory scenario of the dramatic German counterattack at Mortain. A pair of two map scenarios put it all together in extended campaign games . For more info about THE KILLING GROUND, including pictures of the components, go to: http://www.carpatina.com/nes/kg_home.html. There is also a discussion folder over at Consimworld in the W.W.II Individual Games section with more detailed playtest reports and photos of games in progress . Marty Sample is a game playtester who lives in southern New Hampshire.  PRUSSIA’S
GLORY and REDS! are two of GMT Games' recent offerings, and both
feature what GMT has been increasingly giving its customers over
the last several months -- non-WWII games with a big emphasis
on playability, strong graphics and rules presentations, and large
counters for aging grognards with trembly fingers and failing
eyes. Both of these new offerings are of medium complexity and
feature excellent solitaire possibilities, and both are good simulations
with nuance rather that overwhelming detail, though on very different
subjects -- the Seven Years War and the Russian Civil War.PRUSSIA’S GLORY is a grand-tactical treatment (with operational flavor as well) of four battles from the Seven Years War -- Rossbach, Leuthen, Zorndorf and Torgau -- in which the Glorious Prussians battle Russian, Austrian, and French armies. The scale is 500 yards per hex with hour-long turns, and the 5/8-inch counters, sporting a bright range of colors reflecting the pageantry of 18th-century uniforms, represent mostly brigades and regiments of infantry and cavalry; artillery counters represent 10-20 cannon. Leader counters represent overall commanders like King Frederick of Prussia, as well as wing commanders to whom their respective units must trace command to use full movement. Designer Bob Kalinowski has said his intent with PG was to recreate the playability of the old SPI quad games like Napoleon's Last Battle, but with more tactical flavor. I'd say he's succeeded quite well. The game has a basic "I Go - You Go" sequence that eschews defensive reaction, like countercharging cavalry, or unit facings that are found in detailed tactical games. But through step reduction, army morale, disorder and rout conditions, and special stacking rules, PG does a good job of capturing the flavor of linear warfare in the mid 1700s. |
The
game begins with each side trying to activate its army, using the
overall commander's initiative rating to modify the die roll. Armies
then roll to see if their separate infantry/artillery and cavalry
groups will have full or reduced movement. Units that pass that
die roll can go "In column" to increase their speed, with
the risk that the opposing army may catch them on the march and
attack them, which gives the attacker some scary DRMs. Part of the
challenge in the game is in fact maneuvering your army to get positional
advantage for an upcoming attack -- or as Kalinowski puts it, "getting
there the firstest with the mostest." With only about 25-40
units per side in each battle, there's a lot of room for operational
movement.
 Once
enemy units are adjacent to one another, the top four steps in each
stack become engaged" and are forced to attack and counterattack
until one side retreats, routs or is eliminated. The order of placement
within each stack thus becomes very important, simulating the successive
lines of troops used in this era of warfare, and the difficulty
in disengaging from the enemy, especially with no backup troops
to take your place. Cavalry can make a second attack during a turn,
called a "sweeping charge," that can be particularly effective
against an already disordered unit.Combat is the trickiest part of the game, with a CRT that features a slew of results and high attrition (most of these battles were bloody affairs, with casualties running anywhere from 30 to 45 percent per side). It will likely take most players a number of games to get the combat system down pat, but the low unit density makes this easier to deal with. In a manner similar to that of GMT's AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR series, each side also tracks army morale, which falls each time a unit is eliminated or routed, although you can gain back morale points by eliminating or routing the other side's units. If morale drops low enough, an army becomes demoralized, with all its units then laboring under negative DRMs during combat and rally attempts. If morale drops further, an army becomes broken, and most of its remaining units will soon be running full speed for the nearest exit hex. By then, as the Bill Paxton character said in "Aliens," it's pretty much "Game over, man!" All in all, PG is a treat -- fun to play and look at, pretty quick playing once you have some games under your belt, and with a lot of replayability, with eight scenarios and three variants. The Prussians generally have the edge in high-quality units, but the Coalition forces have the numbers and in some cases equal-quality troops, so most of the scenarios are pretty balanced. And Kalinowski and developer Joshua Buergel will cheerfully answer all your questions on the Consimworld board. What's not to like?  REDS!
is the most recent offering from designer Ted "PATHS OF GLORY"
Raicer, and it's at the opposite end of the scale from PG -- a strategic
simulation of the 1918-1921 Russian Civil War, played on a map where
each hex represents 65 miles and that stretches as much as 2800
miles, from Poland to Siberia to Central Asia. This low-counter-density
game has units representing brigades through armies, as well as
some of the more exotic forces from the conflict, from tanks to
armored trains to flotillas of river gunboats.The Russian Civil War was a chaotic affair to say the least, with widely separated fronts and a shifting tide of battle waged between the Red armies, led by Leon Trotsky, and the Whites, a polyglot group that included Cossacks, Poles, Siberians, and an Allied expeditionary force of U.S. and western European troops. The Soviets finally gained the upper hand after nearly two years of battle. To model this struggle, Reds! uses a chit-pull system to randomly activate armies from both sides. Two random events tables, simulating everything from political events to Cossack raids, inject an additional element of unpredictability. As well, a logistics phase during which supply is determined occurs randomly,
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