From: Chris and Jeanne Salander Subject: A game review (Taman '42) Game Review of Taman '42 (Pacific Rim Publishing) (Just Plain Wargames) by Christopher Salander Are all WWII operational board games starting to look the same to you? Are you tired of pushing German or Allied infantry and armor over hills and through woods against enemy infantry and armor? Then Taman '42 may just be the unusual sort of game you need to perk up your interest. Most of the Axis forces are Rumanian. Most of their units are cavalry! Most of the Soviets are marines. There are ships and amphibious landings and evacuations. There are air units and an armored train and a river monitor. Pretty wild. This game recreates the Rumanian effort in 1942 to seize the Taman penisula, east of the Crimea, which was critical to supplying the Axis advance into the Caucuses. Although the game is inexpensive, the attractive counters are die-cut, and the map is quite colorful. Counters carry attack and movement factors, with additional bombardment and range factors for artillery units. The turn and movement systems are unusual. Chits for each brigade on either side must be drawn out of a cup. Units cannot conduct their turn until their chit is drawn. There is no player A - player B sequence. Instead, you never know which side will move next! Further, a "unit turn" consists of a mechanized movement phase, combat, and then a movement for all phase. Cavalry can move half during the first phase. (You will see this movement method in several other games from this company.) Combat is one area that was kept simple. You use ratios and a d6, with results like exchange, retreat, and eliminated. ZOCs are rigid. The Axis can throw in air support and the Soviets can add naval gunfire. There is a combined arms bonus. All Rumanian and most Soviet units must be within range of an HQ to function, unless they can make an iniative die roll. Artillery is offensive only, so the Soviets must counterattack to use it. The game pretty much assumes that the Axis will take the penisula. So they get victory points for destroying Soviet units and ships. The Soviets get points for destroying Axis units and for evacuating Soviet units and ships. (You have to leave the armored train behind.) While this looks like a tough job for the Soviet player, the penisula is full of lagoons and swamps, greatly limiting the avenues of attack. Play Both sides start with three brigade size units. These deploy near the base of the penisula, in three different zones: a very clear area in the south, a completely marshy area in the middle, between two rivers, and a partly marshy, partly clear area between a river and the Sea of Azov. Two thirds of the units must deploy in certain areas, but both players are free to put 1/3 of their forces anywhere. Soviets set up first The Soviets have various reserve units further back on the penisula, including their three armor units. The Soviet player put a brigade into each zone, using the rivers as a boundary. The Marine brigade went into the north, the Azov flotilla force into the middle, and the Rifle brigade into the south. The gunboat provided artillery support in the north, the river monitor in the center, and the armored train in the south. The Rumanian player put one cavalry brigade in each zone, each with an equal amount of air and artillery support. He put the engineers into the two northern areas, where they could help units cross the rivers. Marshes halve attack factors, so each of the two northern brigades could only muster one effective attack each. But both succeeded and made two small bridgeheads across the river between the two sides. In the south, one attack eliminated a unit and the mostly motorized cavalry force was able to exploit through the gap, breaking open the Soviet position. This breakthrough would set the nature of the rest of the game. In subsequent turns the Soviets held the Rumanians in the north and center, and tried to pull back in the south, activating what reserves where in the area (heavy armor and artillery). But almost all of the Soviet units were on foot or towed, and could not move as rapidly as their opponents. This opened up the southern flank of the Azov flotilla in the center. It had to start to refuse that flank. Not getting anywhere in the marshes, the center Rumanian cavalry brigade set up an Engineer unit on an intervening river and started to feed units into the southern area to join the advance. On the third turn the German infantry division was ready to try and land. The roll allowed only two units to come in, and both were hit and eliminated by coastal gun fire. The Soviet player had placed his four coastal guns right on the flanks of the two landing beaches. While this caused significant casualties, it also placed them right next to units that survived the landing attempt and they would be taken out in a 4:1 attack the next turn. The Soviet player said later that he would place the coastal guns a little further out next time, so that they would not die so quickly. Then the Soviet player remembers the rule where the two ships in the game eliminate any enemy unit attempting to land within two hexes. When their turn came, he place one in front of each landing beach. The Rumanian player had only one remedy, which was air attack. He felt that he was not progressing well enough and that bringing the new units in was critical, so he devoted all his air resources to the task. After two turns the gunboat was sunk and the German could start coming ashore. The river monitor was damaged. Then the Soviet player reread the victory point schedule and after he saw how valuable the ships were (+2 points if you evacuate them, -3 if you lose them), he evacuated the monitor. The Germans lost two more battalions to the coastal guns before they were able to get sufficient forces ashore to eliminate the guns. They then had to fight Soviet reserve forces which had been placed just behind the beach. One failed attack caused two more battalions to be eliminated because they had to retreat onto a beach already full to its stacking limit. After that, both players could be seen leaving empty spaces behind attacking units. (There are many bottlenecks on the map that cause units to pile up.) Meanwhile, the Rumanian brigade in the south had forced the Soviet Rifle brigade towards the coast, exposing a levee between two lagoons that lead to the Soviet rear and the evacuation beaches. A cavalry battalion went out of HQ range on its own initiative to try and cut off the enemy's retreat. It did not make its initiative roll every turn (1-4), but the only Soviet units in the area were Reserve units that could not make their activation roll (1-2) to respond and stop the cavalry. A second cavalry unit followed and soon the Rifle brigade was cut off from the beaches. It was about turn 6 or so that the Soviet player realized that his main mission was to get his units off the map He had been please with how well he was holding up the Rumanians on two thirds of the board and the landing beaches, but now he realized he should have been slowly withdrawing each turn. He immediately started to withdraw all of his units. The waterways and lagoons allowed just a few units to stymie the pursuing Rumanians. One unit was left behind at each landing beach as a sacrifice to delay the Germans, who had already landed, and the Rumanian Mountain division that started to land on this turn. But the retreating units had a long distance to go to the evacuation beaches and there were very few turns left in the game. The last turns saw the southern Rumanian cavalry brigade surround and eliminate most of the Soviet Rifle brigade. Two of its units did fight their way to a beach and evacuate. There is no indication in the rules whether a unit can evacuate while in an enemy ZOC. We decided they could. Two reserve units from the center were also ready to evacuate, but as the Rumanian cavalry overran one evacuation beach and closed in on the second, the units decided to stay and try to hold the beach open to allow other Soviet units to escape Unfortunately, the Rumanians pushed them back far enough to create an opening through which a few units passed to set up a road block for the large number of Soviet units streaming down to the beaches. The Axis units which had landed were out of the picture, as they walked slowly across the map. The other two Rumanian cavalry brigades were out up it too, held up by fortifications and a village defending a narrow spit of land. The game has a variable ending. First roll, the game keeps going. Retreating Soviet units move up to the blocking force. Second roll, the game keeps going. In a combined arms attack the Soviets push back the blocking force. One more attack and the way to the beaches will be clear. Third roll, the game ends. Surprisingly the game was a draw, 18 points each. Many of the Soviet points came from 6 dead German battalions. In the next game the Soviet player was going to make sure that he started to evacuate more units sooner. This would push up his score, assuring victory. It was not clear what the Rumanian player could do better to also raise his score, but he swore that he would go after the Soviet ships with all his air power from turn 1 - not just for the VP, but also to open up the invasion beaches. You have to play a game or two of Taman '42 to learn what to do with the funny units and the funny terrain. Eventually, however, the Soviet player can block up the few bottlenecks between the lagoons and should win easily.