From: Doug Murphy Subject: Russo-Finnish Wars As the original poster on this subject, let me offer a bit of clarification. IMHO, Molotov's War (DG) is a nice game which could have been an even better game with some further development: there were some annoying lapses (like a Finnish/Russian border missing on the Karelian penisula.) I helped put together some unofficial errata which dealt with some of the more apparent annoyances and questions (such as some Finnish units seemingly appearing at the same time in the game under different designations used by the Finns to confuse the Russians and the world about their relative strength.) I enjoyed the different level of detail in this game in comparision with other games I have on the subject: primarily Winter War (by SPI) and Arctic Storm (by GMT). Winter War is somewhat biased toward the Finns because of the interesting but game-busting special events, has low counter density, an uninspiring SPI-era map of the entire country (in comparision w. maps of 1995: this game is about 20 years old), a very traditional UGOIGO move/combat sequence. Arctic Storm is a much bigger game than the other two and full of the well-known GMT attention to detail. It's just hard for me to get through solitaire or in an evening which is easy to do with the other games. Just a question of scale and taste. After about a dozen playings of Molotov's War, the following consistently occurs: The Russians have enough units to create stacked columns of fairly strong units to inch along most of the precarious road net north of Lake Ladoga toward the all-important VP hexes. The Finns harass these columns, in some cases throwing enough units around them to place them OOS. Since the Finns don't have many units (or nearly enough to hold all the columns), the Finnish player must judiciously transfer units around to hold the most threatening stacks. As the Russian does not have enough units to follow on these northern attacks and continue to attack in the south, (he usually realizes that victory lies in cracking the Mannheim line in the south) these northern thrusts usually stall. It is very difficult for the Finn to amass enough powerful units to killsome of these Russian pockets unless the pockets are really weak or reduced. Some of these pockets survive for the entire game. In one game, our Russian player threw everything he had in the north instead of against the Mannheim line. Of course this allowed the Finns (whose rail net allows more rapid transit due to interior lines) to concentrate the majority of their units in the north as well. The Russian created a few steamrollers with heavily guarded supply lines but ran out of game before pushing close enough to the VP hexes. The Mannheim assaults seem true to history. The Mannheim line wasn't a bristling sea of fortresses like the Maginot line (I acknowledge the Maginot line wasn't either but want to use it for comparision) but a series of succeeding lines of pillboxes and obstacles that allowed the Finns to separate Russian tanks from their infantry and kill/suppress either separately. Only toward the end of the war, when the Russians got more-or-less combined arms attacks together did they break through. In the game, the Russian assaults usually break initially into the line, but the Finnish units can counterattack using a devastating concentric attack rule to (barely) throw the breakthrough units back. When the Russian finally can survive one or two of these counterattacks, the Finns retreat to a succeeding line. In some of our games, the Finns eventually run out of room on the Penisula but not before throwing back many Russian attacks. One of the key Russian disadvantages is not having enough space within the rules to deploy most of their strength (which stack up behind the initial assaults and cause havoc when the assaulting units retreat). Doug (dmurphy@wppost.depaul.edu)