Alan Snider  - Apr 23, 2005 7:30 pm (#9659 Total: 9673)  
On the Playtest Table: Adam Starkweather's "The Devil's Cauldron"; 
and announcing the "Northern Knights Wargaming Group" in Vancouver, 
Canada with a retail store of it's own at http://www.stalag17wargames.com/ 
	 
GAMENIGHT, April 23rd: Terence Co finally makes his return to the
gametable after a really long absence. We decide to give AP's "Defiant
Russia" a playthrough. Terence takes the Russians, while I get to give
the Germans a try this time out. This will be my first attempt as the
German side in this game. 

Straight out of the gate, the Germans have very mixed success; although
they manage to take Riga on turn 2. It is with Army Group North that the
early success comes. The Germans are able to overwhelmingly dish out
damage to the Russians all along the front, with the exception of near
Odessa where the expense of replacing the Romanian troops is high. 

The Russians take a purely defensive strategy, choosing to take up good
defensive position rather than counterattack on the first few turns.
They attack between 2-3 hexes per turn for the first 3 turns. They fall
behind the rivers and bog the Germans down in the marsh areas where
their tanks are worth half strength. The Germans losses begin to mount
about turn 4, and are only replaced 2 pts per turn for much of the game.

The Germans manage to take both Minsk and Kiev by turn 4, but it is
closer to the truth that the Russians simply gave up ground instead of
taking losses much of the time. The German attack slowly began to grind
to a halt as they left a trail of 1/2 strength units behind them. 

At this point, the Russians looks like they will be tough to unseat from
Bryansk and Kharkov, both VP cities, as the Russian reinforcements
arrive to bolster the line. Zhukov and his forces did a great
counterstrike in turn 4, to splinter the German-Hungarian-Romanian
troops just to the west of Odessa (which could be big trouble). The only
real downside, is that the Germans have far and away destroyed more
Russians to Germans lost (something like 15+ to 4 losses for the Axis).
The Russians do have another big push pending during the final turn
(turn 7). 

My guess is that at this point, the Germans have taken too much damage,
and will falter in their attempt to take the VP cities required to win
the contest. The Russians will get to defend at full strength, and in
territory of their own choosing; as the German exploitation move become
less effective in Mud-Snow turns. We will complete the final 2 turns on
April 29th!! 

Terence liked this game so much, he walked home with his own personal
copy,and Defiant Russia becomes a personal favorite of ours for
simulating Operation Barbarossa in a single evening. The next game on
the slate for Terence and I will be BSO Games' "Zama", which Terence
will also be reviewing for Paper Wars.

Alan Snider  - Apr 30, 2005 11:53 am (#9701 Total: 9705)  
On the Playtest Table: Adam Starkweather's "The Devil's Cauldron"; 
and announcing the "Northern Knights Wargaming Group" in Vancouver, 
Canada with a retail store of it's own at http://www.stalag17wargames.com/ 
	 
GAMENIGHT, April 29th: Terence Co, Craig Nynych and I decided to turn
our 2 player game of "War and Peace" into a 3-player affair. Prior to
this getting underway, though; Terence and I managed to finish off our
game of AP's "Defiant Russia". 

Just to update things a bit: When we finished up last session, we'd
completed 5 of 7 turns of Defiant Russia. Terence has been directing the
Russian defence, while I commanded the Germans offensive. The main
battle lines run from just East of Riga down near Veliki Luki, on the
outside perimeter of Smolensk straight through to the eastern edge of
the Pripet marshes. The Russians do hold Dneprovsk. 

With just 2 turns left to play through, the Russians hold an
overwhelming 8-3 lead in VP's; the Germans holding just 2 VP cities and
a 30-6 lead in casualties for a 3rd VP. 

On the 6th turn, the Germans pushed hard in the north in a last ditch
attempt to take Leningrad. They did make it to the doorstep, but could
not co-ordinate their assault with the Finns on this turn. just slightly
south, the Russians did well to push the Germans back, which hampered
the German plans to trap some Russians in a pocket. 

The big trouble came from Army Group Center, as they completely
annihilated the Russians there, and splintered the Russian lines. On the
following exploitation move, the panzers rolled into Kharkov, taking the
city! Two Russian Armies found themselves overrrun and out of supply,
trapped in a pocket. Guderian, himself, did not fare as well; stalling
on the attack just short of Smolensk. 

The Russians then counterattacked to retake Kharkov, and attempt to
recreate some semblance of a line. Terence did an admirable job with
this, positioning himself to bolster troops near Leningrad and Kharkov.
Other than this, the Russians had to hope they could hold
Bryansk/Leningrad/ Kharkov to win the game. 

The Germans did manage to take Bryansk on turn 7, and took a run at both
Leningrad and Kharkov with eyes on the victory. At Leningrad, the extra
dice provided by the Finns took the Russians to the brink of defeat, but
the follow-up attacks on the exploitation move were not successful. This
essentially was the back breaker for the Germans, but we continued on...
At Kharkov, the Germans did not do well at all, but exploitation attacks
knocked the forces defending Kharkov to 1/2 strength. 

On their final move, the Russians took some retribution on the Finns...
Then made an attempt to retake Bryansk, but failed. This ended the game
with a 7-4 Russian victory. I will give credit to Terence's crafty
defence, as it matched up with the mechanics of the game to make it an
awful tough task for the Germans to succeed. I look forward to trying to
finding the solution to this type of defence when I convince Terence to
give me another shot!