War in the East...

[Shupov]

Please fix the Crimea in the new game.  In WiR it's impossible for the Soviets to defend due to supply restrictions.  As soon as the peninsula is cut off the Supply Level goes to 0 except for Sevastopol and the far east end of the Kerch peninsula.
 
In the real war there were important battles involving amphibious landings, naval action and immense siege guns.  Manstein's victories at Perekop and Kerch never happen as the Soviets usually abandon the field of battle. 

[PzB74]

Found this on the main page under "coming soon"! [X(][8D]
http://www.matrixgames.com/products/372 ... .1941-1945

Still no forum? Are you going to make this one "without us"? [&:][;)]

[Erik Rutins]

That page should have gone live later tonight, it's still being edited.

Forum will show up once the announcement goes out, so this should have a forum sometime tomorrow. Yes, we will finally make it official. [8D]

[PzB74]

[&o][:D]

Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.

Santa Claus is coming to town!

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

That page should have gone live later tonight, it's still being edited.

Forum will show up once the announcement goes out, so this should have a forum sometime tomorrow. Yes, we will finally make it official. [8D]

[:D]

[JRodda]

I'd be very interested in this if it had campaign scenarios you could play in a few weeks (or so) like Operation Typhoon, Case Blue, Citadel, etc.  From the sound of it though, not sure I would ever try to tackle the grand campaign. 

Anyone remember the old SPI boardgame (the name escapes me at the moment) about the Eastern Front that was corps/army level?  That was a great game.  It was sort of a more realistic version (at least in terms of scope/scale) of Avalon Hill's 'Stalingrad'. 

[Jonathan Pollard]

ORIGINAL: JRodda
Anyone remember the old SPI boardgame (the name escapes me at the moment) about the Eastern Front that was corps/army level?  That was a great game.  It was sort of a more realistic version (at least in terms of scope/scale) of Avalon Hill's 'Stalingrad'. 

They had one called 'Barbarossa' which I enjoyed very much. Gary Grigsby also released a corps/army Eastern Front game in 1984 called 'War in Russia' which I liked because it had a simultaneous order entry phase and execution phase and a scale appropriate for that kind of system (infantry moves 1 hex per turn, armor 2). Also unlike its successor 'Gary Grigsby's War in Russia,' it allowed stacking of 2 units per hex.

[Jeffrey H.]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

That page should have gone live later tonight, it's still being edited.

Forum will show up once the announcement goes out, so this should have a forum sometime tomorrow. Yes, we will finally make it official. [8D]

The link is live.

[JudgeDredd]

Good gawd - how long is a single turn going to take?

[DuckofTindalos]

Not as long as WitP: AE...[:'(]

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Good gawd - how long is a single turn going to take?

depends on which turn it is

a couple times we have started a turn and before it was over, Gary has released another update, so back to the beginning again

but overall, once you know what you want to do, it is not too bad

[rjh1971]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Good gawd - how long is a single turn going to take?

Barbarossa's first turn can easily take three hours or more, depends on how much you want to go on detail, apart from the attack path which you have to plan very carefully...

Of course once you get to know the game the first turn will be less time consuming, but be ready to spend that amount of time the first time.

Also I guess it will have a huge rule book... more time to spend [;)]

Edit: supressed some details which maybe I should have commented on...

[Joel Billings]

There will be many smaller scenarios. We currently have a Typhoon scenario that covers Sept 25-Jan 7 (15 turns) and covers about 1/3 of the front. It plays fairly quickly. We expect to have some partial map scenarios, and some full map scenarios that are shorter than the full campaign.

I expect that a typhical turn in the full map campaign can be played in about 1 hour (some faster, some longer). That's an educated guess.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

There will be many smaller scenarios. We currently have a Typhoon scenario that covers Sept 25-Jan 7 (15 turns) and covers about 1/3 of the front. It plays fairly quickly. We expect to have some partial map scenarios, and some full map scenarios that are shorter than the full campaign.

I expect that a typhical turn in the full map campaign can be played in about 1 hour (some faster, some longer). That's an educated guess.

For a comparison, would you say that WIR generally took 30 minutes per turn in full campaign?

[Joel Billings]

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

There will be many smaller scenarios. We currently have a Typhoon scenario that covers Sept 25-Jan 7 (15 turns) and covers about 1/3 of the front. It plays fairly quickly. We expect to have some partial map scenarios, and some full map scenarios that are shorter than the full campaign.

I expect that a typhical turn in the full map campaign can be played in about 1 hour (some faster, some longer). That's an educated guess.

For a comparison, would you say that WIR generally took 30 minutes per turn in full campaign?

Sorry, It's been too long since I played WIR to remember, but this game does take longer as there are more hexes and more units.

[Josans]

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

There will be many smaller scenarios. We currently have a Typhoon scenario that covers Sept 25-Jan 7 (15 turns) and covers about 1/3 of the front. It plays fairly quickly. We expect to have some partial map scenarios, and some full map scenarios that are shorter than the full campaign.

I expect that a typhical turn in the full map campaign can be played in about 1 hour (some faster, some longer). That's an educated guess.

For a comparison, would you say that WIR generally took 30 minutes per turn in full campaign?

No, all old wir players known you cant do a decent campaign turn in 30 minutes. More if you are focused in little things. But Gary give you the chance to choose how to spend your time[;)] You can choose to control all (more time) or give to the AI do many of the duties... And the AI is working so good [:)] We will see[8D]

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Josan

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

There will be many smaller scenarios. We currently have a Typhoon scenario that covers Sept 25-Jan 7 (15 turns) and covers about 1/3 of the front. It plays fairly quickly. We expect to have some partial map scenarios, and some full map scenarios that are shorter than the full campaign.

I expect that a typhical turn in the full map campaign can be played in about 1 hour (some faster, some longer). That's an educated guess.

For a comparison, would you say that WIR generally took 30 minutes per turn in full campaign?

No, all old wir players known you cant do a decent campaign turn in 30 minutes. More if you are focused in little things. But Gary give you the chance to choose how to spend your time[;)] You can choose to control all (more time) or give to the AI do many of the duties... And the AI is working so good [:)] We will see[8D]

I did plenty of decent campaign turns in WIR for the thousands of hours I played it in 30 minutes time, which may not had been the norm necessarily, but my question was meant more as an idea to see if Joel could figure out how much more time this one might take as compared to WIR; my proposed figure needn't be correct, inasmuch as it got the right answer from Joel. So if he agreed that WIR took 30 minutes, then his hour observation would mean double the time we spent with WIR. If he thought WIR took an hour, then the games in his opinion take about the same amount of time.

[latosusi]

Does 1 week turns create problems for defenders? Like if you have 10 mile hexes and one week to attack you can penetreate very deeply to defenders rear area and surround them. Defender will nearly always be cut off from supply? How is turn sequence set up to avoid that problem?
 

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: latosusi

Does 1 week turns create problems for defenders? Like if you have 10 mile hexes and one week to attack you can penetreate very deeply to defenders rear area and surround them. Defender will nearly always be cut off from supply? How is turn sequence set up to avoid that problem?

The turn sequence is not set up to avoid units being surrounded because that did happen quite often in this campaign. Hundreds of thousands of troops were surrounded from the opening days of Barbarossa to Stalingrad and beyond. If the defender can't break out of a pocket his troops will indeed face dire supply problems. Some supplies can be flown in but it may not be enough. The game does an excellent job of portraying the problems both sides faced with regard to units being surrounded and whether they survive that situation or not.

[latosusi]

What i mean is that one week is long time to consolidate your gains. Is there anything defender can do?

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: latosusi

What i mean is that one week is long time to consolidate your gains. Is there anything defender can do?

Well a picture is worth a thousand words, or two pictures in this case. First is a pic from the Axis part of the first turn in the '42 campaign. They have pocketed quite a few Soviet divisions but note the northeast corner of the pocket is weakly held. The hexes shaded in red show Axis control. In the second pic you see how the Soviets were able to reopen the lines to their pocketed troops which allows them to be resupplied. The Soviet player also managed a very modest pocket of a German HQ and another unit (which is the 9th Pz Div). So you can see that in some cases the defender is able to relieve pocketed troops and in other cases they won't be so fortunate. Note that the Soviet player did not elect to try and move all his units out of the pocket. Sometimes units must be sacrificed to force the attacker to reduce the pocket through attacks. That can slow the attackers advance and hopefully cause more casualties for them as well.