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I seem to recall that the Road to Minsk scenario in WitE1 was longer, and that it led up to the historical battles for Smolensk. It was a great scenario for learning the game as Axis as it involved supply, advances, air support, etc. in a pretty well contained situation without having to tackle the whole of Barbarossa.

My question is, why is the WitE2 version just two turns long? Is there a longer version available somewhere? Is there anything missing if the player just continues the 2-turn scenario after?

Thank you!

It is 2 turns long in WitE2 and was 3 in WitE.

There is a Road to Smolensk scenario in WitE (10 turns), but was not created for WitE2.

Coming from WitE1, I also expected three turns. But I like the change. The scoring/victory points are tuned to two Axis turns, not three. It would be too easy to get a 5:1 ratio with an extra turn: Mogilev is reachable on T2 if you stretch, but there would be no point to stretching if you had three turns (since the scoring for all the non-Minsk cities is EG). My reading is that the scenario intends to give the player a feeling of being all-powerful relative to the Soviet enemy but squeezed and pressured by the terrain and sheer distance.

Also, turns play longer in WitE2 because of the air phase, but part of Minsk's charm is it can be played in one sitting. I wonder if this was a consideration?

The opening turn, and the followup turn are very important for a good start to the campaign. We wanted a Minsk scenario that would allow players to practice that portion of the front quickly, and see the results. Although it has more units, by keeping it short, it's still a good introductory scenario where players can practice their blitzkrieg tactics. Two turns gives you one to encircle/isolate the Soviet border units (and take Minsk), and the 2nd turn to see if you've contained them while moving on to second line objectives. Although there were discussions of doing a longer Smolensk Campaign scenario, we weren't able to get to it.

Wow. I totally misremembered the length. I had it in my head that WitE1's Minsk scenario was six turns.

Please pardon my error, and thanks for the responses.