From: "Skip Franklin" Subject: Campaign to Stalingrad - The first four turns ----- Original Message ----- From: Ed To: OKCMAGS@egroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2000 7:17 AM Subject: [OKCMAGS] Campaign to Stalingrad Skip and I got together last Sunday to attempt Campaign To Stalingrad (rhino games, Mark Simonitch designer) The game covers the initial German campaign to take Stalingrad up to the counter attack by the Soviets. The map covers from a little west of Rostov to 5-6 hexes east of Stalingrad. The annoying part is the southern Caucus region is covered by Offmap boxes. We chose this game because of some of the unusual rules. The most unusual one being the ZOC bond. A ZOC can only be developed by having two units on both sides of the hex the ZOC is being exerted in. Think of each unit only having thier ZOC extend half a hex. Because of the hex grain you can also achieve a ZOC bond along a hexside. As long as two units are on directly opposites of a hex/hexside it achieves a ZOC in that hex/hexside. A ZOC is not permable. It stops all movement into or across that hexside (including any advancing after combat unless it is the first hex of the advance.) The units are divisions with a couple of soviet corps. Each unit has multiple steps...up to 4! The combat chart consists of step losses. The system is a standard IGO/YOUGO with no Armor/Mech move phase...a simple I move all my stuff, I attack, I check supply, your turn. Hidden within that simple turn sequence are some subtlies. Advancing after combat is determined by the attack dice rolls. An advance can be from 0 to 5 hexes. (Non Motorized units are limited to a two hex advance.) Overruns CAN be performed during an overrun, by a single stack of armor. An overrun doesn't cost any of the advance(You are assumed to have advanced into the enemies hex) An example of this happened in the first turn. The GD division broke through the starting line, and did an overrun of a rear area unit, and then another overun of an HQ unit. So it is possible to break holes in thick lines. General Supply isn't a critical factor in the game, simply trace to a non isolated HQ unit (in some cases even an Isolated HQ can provide supply.) However to attack at full strength you need Attack Supply.) One SP will provide enough attack supplies to supply one HQ. that HQ can support any attack within 8 hexes. Each turn each player recieves 2 measley supply points. Each player started with 12 I believe. Already by turn four Supply is becoming scarce. I believe I(Germans) have 5..the Soviets 4. (Attack supply can also be used to move HQ's around..(an unsupplied HQ has 1MP. A supplied one has 5.) Which is how all of the Soviet supply has been used. So how has the game progressed? We managed to complete four turns in about 8 hours. (The campaign game is 62 turns, the opening scenario is 15.) However also in that eight hours, we went through the rules (skip hadn't read them before the game..claiming something about having a family. :) He had a whole evening to read them! ) So that took up a chunk of time. And since this was the first time Skip had been to my house, I had to show off my "Wall of Games" I also continued my "OCS3.0 IS GREAT" campaign in the hopes of getting Skip to try DAK or Sicily at some point. (I'm a big Gamers fan. I own more Gamer's games than AH games) So I don't think we really began rolling dice for about two hours. Just as we started Skip's friend Paul arrived, and after a brief description of the basics, took over the southern half of the Russian line. (He seems to be doing very well with it. I'm nowhere near Rostov yet.) The first turn is only half a turn, the Axis get no movement phase, just a combat phase. Unfortunately I didn't read that till after I had set up, so my planned overrun(a movement phase overrun works differently than the advance after combat overrun described above.) didn't work out. I had visions of Panzers on the Don the first turn. :( Plus Skip was sneaky and didn't follow the set up instructions for the russians. :) However both of these mistakes were minor, so we just played on. I only achieved a small breakthrough in the north (with the GD division as I mentioned above...though the GD division is now a GD regiment..I can't seem to stop rolling A1's on the combat chart. After a massive retreat of two-three hexes by the Soviets, The Germans started their second turn. This one went a bit better, cutting off an HQ plus a small stack of units in the North, plus some inroads in the middle. The south had a disasterous turn, taking two steps on the S.S. Wiking Division. Again a retreat by the Soviets. The third turn was a fine one for me, I achieved a massive breakthrough in the north, Solidifying the isolation of the units from the previous turn, plus making a huge sweep around catching around 20 divisions. The pocket was about half closed by the end of that turn. The soviets spent the turn again in retreat, using lots of supply to move their HQ's out of harm's way. Skip managed to pull a couple of divisions out of the almost formed pocket. The fourth turn was very slow for me, I moved up Hq's and solidified my lines a bit. The Russian's turn consisted of extracting several divisions out of the almost closed pocket. On the next turn I predict I'll catch around 10 or so divisions when I close the pocket with middle thrust. The South unfortunately isn't doing much. I have a hole..but a hole to nowhere. We'll see what happens with that later I guess. The game is definitely entertaining, (as long as you have all the additions, and clarifications( about 6 pages worth) This is the only drawback, there is a lot of shuffling to look up a rule. First you look up the rule, then you see if it has been modified or not. I'm not sure when we are getting together next, but I'm looking forward to it. Ed -------------------- Skip Franklin wargamer@gateway.net darksan@yahoo.com http://wargamer.webjump.com