Ubergeek
United States
Camas
Washington
Be Happy in your Game!
I spent 100 Geek Gold and all I got was this lousy overtext message!
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Operation Bagration signified the last vestiges of German presence on Russian soil. T-34 production was in full swing by this campaign along with the appearance of IS-2’s, and it was only a matter of time before overwhelming Russian forces overran the remnants of a static German defense and gave them the boot from Russian soil. This game gives you a chance to play as the host nation favorite delivering the knockout punch, or as the underdog holding on to the last man per the Fuhrer’s orders.
Having just reviewed Flames of War (FoW) Operation Market Garden board game last month (which I'll refer to here simply as Market Garden), I was inclined to purchase and try this game as well. That should be a hint that I like the system. I'm sure with enough games and die rolls there's a chance of skewing history significantly but a play through of this board game will likely yield the same results as the original operation. Still, there’s enough in the game to keep it interesting for both players given how the victory points are determined.
So here we have FoW, or more accurately Battlefront Miniatures Ltd’s actual first foray into the board game world (as I have since discovered, Operation Market Garden was their second). This game was designed for use with their miniature campaign system of the same name and is primarily designed for FoW miniature players. However, in the box is a board game version of the campaign that can be played self-contained, with no requirements for adding further rules or sideshow elements to the mix. There’s no doubt that what’s in the box will make FoW miniature fans happy in allowing their tabletop battles to be tied together in an overarching campaign, but it’s the board game rules that receive my attention and are the focus of this review. Now that I’m familiar with their Market Garden game, I can comfortably say that it mirrored this one in terms of simplicity and game mechanics. Still, that’s not to say that there aren’t a few differences that make the games stand out from each other. So, I’ll take the format of a standard review in trying to shed some light on this product, but will likely make comparisons to their Market Garden game in the process.
Components: Packaged in a similar box to most other FoW products, this one is no different other than being larger, yet still lower in height than a standard Axis & Allies game box. The board comes in four section fold out and measures 22"x33" and is fully mounted with colorful graphics depicting area from Smolensk in the East to Pinsk and Vilna in the West. The map also depicts a rail network linking each side to their respective three areas of supply.
The units (called Firestorm Troops) that represent the Divisions that fought the battles are very small and similar to what you might find in any Axis & Allies game. The differences in this game over Market Garden are the bits are made of metal rather than plastic. The T-34 tanks are distinguishable from the T-34/85s, as are the Tigers from the Panthers and given their size, they units are well sculpted. There are trucks representing Engineering troops (more on them later), artillery figures, and specialized units such as Partisans and Polizei. There are 33 Russian units and 18 German units to include two armored train units which are critical for supply.
The game also comes with ten plastic battle arrows that allow you to identify where battles occur as well as to mark exploitation moves in the strategic phase of the game. A counter sheet of one-sided counters contains control markers, proxy unit tokens, and the usual game tracking markers. To round out the contents, there’s an excellent quality full color rulebook and two FoW dice. All this for the manufacturer suggested retail price of about $60. As far as components are concerned, I’d consider them average for what you’re paying though I’d say most of the cost is due to the enclosed manual which contains far more useful information for the FoW miniature gamers. Personally, I prefer the plastic units over the metal ones in this game but that’s really a matter of personal choice and they’re functional regardless of the material used to make them.
The Rulebook: The quality of the rulebook is right up there with the quality of other full FoW campaign books. Heavy bond gloss paper with a cardstock quality cover makes it shine. It’s 120 pages long but only about 8 of those pertain to the rules for the board game. There’s plenty of information on the history of the operation, with the remaining 100 plus pages dedicated to unit descriptions and battles that will only benefit the tabletop players. The rules for the board game are in their own section entitled "The General’s Wargame" but are not laid out in what I consider a logical sequence. There’s a need to refer back to a previous section of general information which covers a few critical items such as supply, reinforcements, trains, and specialty units. They are supported by examples throughout. I’d have to say that they learned from this set of rules when writing the ones for Market Garden as those rules are an improvement in terms of layout. With regard to the rules, let me be very clear here that this is not by any means a meaty Grognard war game. They are pretty simple and straight-forward, and as such fairly easy to follow. They could probably be condensed onto a single reference sheet and be just as comprehensive (a future project for someone). There’s not a lot of detail to contend with, making it easy to set up the game and play after one read of the rules. The game can be played in about 1 to 1.5 hours as stated on the box so it’s easy to get a few games in during the course of an evening and good if you want to switch sides after the first play.
The Rules: They’re not too involved so I can cover the basic gist of them here. The game is played out over either 4 or 6 campaign turns depending on whether you start the game on 22 June or 26 June. The 26 June game is the shorter one and setup represents positions achieved by the Russians during the first four days of their blitz offensive.
Each turn consists of a planning phase, a battle phase, and a strategic phase.
The planning phase is nothing more than rolling two d6 dice and determining the number of battles that will be fought during the turn. During a turn, there will always be anywhere from 4(minimum) to 12 battles. There’s a bit of discussion in this phase about making a plan and Russian versus German strategy, but essentially, you’re going to thrust and parry on both sides following the dictates of opportunity and the fate of the dice rolls. As the Russian you’ll probably do more thrusting than parrying.
Before each battle, players will roll a die for initiative and the high roller determines where to attack, ties going to the Russians. If you play the 22 June game, the Russians have initiative for the first turn and will be able to determine where all the battles are fought that round. Then, on round two, they get a +1 modifier to initiative rolls for each battle. After that, there are no other modifiers to initiative for the rest of the game turns. If you have initiative, you place a battle arrow across the boundary of areas from where you are attacking from into the area to want to attack into. Each player will choose up to two Firestorm Troops if they have them to add to the battle, check for supply status, and roll dice to resolve the winner. High roll (after certain modifiers) wins and advances, loser retreats. Then the winner will get to reposition move certain units into the battle area. There’s also a chance that certain units will be destroyed. Much like in the Market Garden game, it’s all pretty vanilla in the treatment.
Finally during the strategic phase you deal with special unit actions, bring in reinforcements, and make strategic (non-combat) moves. Again, it’s very straight-forward in execution but there are a few interesting points to consider both during the battle and strategic air allocations which I’ll cover in more detail.
Game Play: So let’s get to the heart of the matter which comes down to game play. As mentioned, the game allows you to set up and play two different scenarios; one beginning with the initial Russian offensive, and one beginning after the first few days of Russian gains allowing the Germans to regain their footing somewhat after reeling from the initial attacks. Ultimately, the Germans are fighting a staying action at best. They’re eventually going to give up ground, but how fast and how much are the key questions. Minsk is obviously the key victory point city and overall the German forces are in good defensive terrain to fight a delaying action.
Battles are fought in areas represented by an overall terrain type. The terrain types are open, marsh, wood, hill, and city. Each unit type confers a different die roll modifier based on the type of terrain the battle is fought in. For example a Tiger in open terrain has a +3 modifier but if fighting in a marsh it only has a +1. But, an Engineer does rather well in cities with a +3. Deciding what Firestorm Troops to commit in a battle is key and the potential to lose units increases as the disparity between dice roll totals increases between players. Battles are resolved by die rolls adding the modifiers for each side. High modified roll wins the battle. It’s that simple. Unique to this game and the German situation is the ability for them to declare a defensive posture when attacked in a city or behind a fortified line. Normally the victor in a battle may advance regardless of whether they were the attacker or the defender. If the Germans use a defensive posture, it allows them to gain a +1 bonus to the combat die roll at the expense of forgoing the advance should they win the battle. As with the Market Garden game, the attacker can potentially lose ground in a battle if they are unsuccessful. If you attack and lose the battle, you must retreat from your attacking area giving the defender the opportunity to advance. You have to choose your battles wisely as the German player to avoid losing ground unnecessarily. Areas can be attacked or defended without the use of Firestorm Units with the victorious result simply being a transfer of control of the area. This could result in encircling actions and cutting off supply lines to the front which could later reflect the ability of reinforcements to reach the front areas.
After a battle, there is a chance that Firestorm Units could be eliminated on either side with a greater likelihood on the part of the loser. A unit eliminated in battle normally gets placed in your reinforcement box and has the ability to come back into play. This can occur if the unit was in supply when eliminated. If a unit is eliminated while being out of supply, it’s captured and earns victory points for that player. So supply becomes a critical aspect of the game and this is another area unique to this game where the Partisans and Polizei come into play. Russian Partisans can be used to block rail links within an area thus cutting off German supply lines. Polizei units have the effect of negating the Partisan operations. Polizei can also prevent Russian exploitation movement so it’s a balancing act on whether to use them to keep supply lines open or curtail Russian gains in terrain.
After all the battles are fought we come to the strategic phase where exploitation movement, reinforcements, and strategic moves are resolved. Exploitation movement allows both players to move Firestorm Units into enemy areas without any Firestorm Units, though you can’t exploit into cities as they are always considered "defended". Any previously eliminated units are brought back into play at one of the players’ respective supply depot cities. Finally, strategic moves allow your troops to be moved to forward friendly areas. This can be done either through rail movement or march movement. This is also where the armored train Firestorm Units comes into play. For the Russians, this unit acts primarily as an extra unit to throw into a battle. For the Germans however, it’s another way to move forward and clear out a partisan that may be blocking a rail supply route to the front. It’s all fairly simplistic but in theme with the use of rail lines which were critical to the German resupply of troops in that area.
I’ve skipped covering a few other minor details of the game but overall managed to cover the important material. So to what purpose does all our activity bring us? It’s all about supply lines and holding key cities. All the city areas have significant point values (along with two areas having minor point values). The Germans start out with nearly all the points, but by the end of the game you’re probably going to see a significant swing of fortunes as the Russians have an overwhelming superiority in numbers. Victory is determined by points and the level of victory is determined by the point difference with the overall success going to the player with the most points. Along with the critical victory point areas, either player can earn points for eliminating opposing units (captured units). In this area, the game does a good job of recreating the flow of the campaign. As the Russians, the pressure is on to grab all the key cities within the historical timeline of the campaign, with the Minsk of course being the key prize for them to liberate. Meanwhile, the Germans must not only delay giving up critical city areas but ostensibly plan for occasional counter attacks or flanking maneuvers to keep the Russians distracted from achieving their main objective.
Overall Assessment: So is this game for you? As with the Operation Market Garden game, Grognards beware! You’ll just find way too many things to complain about if you’re looking for a detailed reenactment of this campaign. There are no Zones of Control to deal with. There are no concerns with regard to the number of rivers that had to be crossed by both sides. But if you’re a fan of entry level war games like Axis & Allies: Bulge or D-Day, or perhaps even Memoir 44, you’ll probably feel comfortable playing this game. You can run this game to ground in under two hours of play time. Be assured that there is a board game in the box despite it being a tool for the FoW tabletop gamer to use. As an aside, the FoW player should note that this is not a complete product if you want to use it for playing the tabletop version of the game. You’ll need additional materials such as the rules and separate campaign manual detailing all the battles in this campaign. But as to the board game included in the box, it works. It’s a broad-stroke look at the Bagration Campaign played out on a board dealing primarily with area control. If you want details like attack and defense values, restrictive movement, detailed breakdowns of specialized weapons teams, flanking and elevation rules, weather options, etc., this is not the game for you. There’s lots of dice rolling throwing in a factor of luck that will upset some, but that’s inevitable in most war games. It’s apparent that the goal was not to include more detail in the game mechanics. Still, there are some key decisions to be made that might not be self-evident.
Also similar to the Market Garden game, the overall drive of the game is scripted in such that the Russians must constantly push hard and Germans need to fall back around and delay or prevent the fall of Minsk. As the Germans, keeping supply lines open is just as important as trying to cut off Russian supply lines to prevent them from linking up their reinforcements to the front. As such, both Partisans and Polizei must be used judiciously. And of course, holding Minsk as a key point city is critical for either side. Overall, I like the game as much as do the Market Garden game and am glad I purchased it. Having played the Market Garden game prior to this one and enjoying it was a major factor in my purchase of this game. It’s light war gaming fun that doesn’t tax the brain cells or get bogged down in detail. If I have one gripe about this game it’s that the rules aren’t laid out as good as they could be for the board game version in the rulebook. It’s all there but you have to look for it. Also, as this game has a higher MSRP, my recommendation would be to try before you buy and purchase the Market Garden game first if you like it. Then, get this one later for variety. As an entry level board game from a company that deals exclusively with tabletop miniatures type games, one could expect much worse. However, it is what it is. Though it doesn’t blare too loudly, it earns a respectable 70 decibels on the Mulder Meter which makes it worthy of a replay. So overall, you won't find me throwing the game out much like the Russians threw the Germans out in this operation.
Cheers and good gaming.
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Harvester of Eyes.
United States
Louisville
Kentucky
My demeanor was meaner.
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I bought A Bridge Too Far due to your previous review. Generally I'm glad I did. (In fact, it's set up on my gaming table now pimped out with Classic Armor and A&A minis.) I felt the rules to game were irritating on several levels for a game this simple, poor lay out, things that could have been made much clearer and most of all, to me ,the actual rules were in an italicized font and the flavor / background text was in a regular font. That may seem nit picky but it bothered me a lot. My regular gamer is a play tester / rules proof reader for GMT and Vance von Borries and he agreed it wasn't my lack of comprehension.
We had an opportunity to meet one of the play testers who explained the parts we couldn't easily grasp. He said he had pointed out all the muddy rule parts to the publisher who essentially ignored his every suggestion.
But that campaign fascinates me. I look forward to actually playing ABtF in the near future. If I like how it plays, I may buy this one as well.
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Ubergeek
United States
Camas
Washington
Be Happy in your Game!
I spent 100 Geek Gold and all I got was this lousy overtext message!
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The rules are indeed the italicized paragraphs. I need to take all of them and put them into one player aid. I don't think the rules for either of these games are at all difficult. Once you realize that the actual rules are in italics, there's really not that much of a rules set. Unfortunately there's just no cohesion to them, especially when compared to a rules set from GMT. But they are easy enough to grasp that you can be up and playing pretty quick and since they're not too involved I don't see much errata required.
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