Proud Monster: Analysis of a Game System ======================================== The essay below is an analysis of the victory point system in Proud Monster and its effect on play. The game is unusual in that the Soviets are easily strong enough, militarily, to stop the Germans in Summer '41. The Soviet weakness in this game is political, and flows from the instant victory conditions which force the Soviets into a "forward defense." The first time I played this game, my German partner and I did poorly, running into a "Soviet Wall" in the middle of the summer. This wall proved virtually impenetrable despite our best efforts, a virtually undamaged Wehrmacht, dry weather, and air supremacy. After two more games of PM, I came to the following conclusions. The single most important feature of Proud Monster is the instant victory system. It drives all the action, in ways that are not obvious at first. Not realizing this essential fact is why my German partner and I did so poorly the first game we played. Basically we decided upon an unorthodox strategy in order to confound our more experienced opponent: utilizing the Von Paulus Pause (which gets rid of German attenuated supply problems) and then driving straight for Moscow and ignoring everything else. We used the time leading up to the Pause to target and destroy the bulk of Soviet mechanized forces, with the goal of preventing any serious Soviet offensive operations during the Pause. What we did not realize was that the game is very much based on pace. This pace consists of the relationship between Soviet losses and German victory levels. The mechanic works as follows: if the Germans are threatening to win this turn based on the victory level for the turn, the Soviets have no choice but to stand and defend all the objectives which the Germans could use to win. This forced priority forces the Soviets to spread out and defend weakly everywhere; this weak defense allows the Germans to make high-odds attacks and kill a lot of Soviet units. The deeper the German penetration, the more objectives the mobile panzers can threaten, and the more places the Soviets must defend. The more places they must defend, the weaker each defense force is, and the higher the odds the Germans will attack with wherever they do decide to attack, with resulting higher Soviet casualties and lower German ones. It is essential for the Germans to keep up this high Soviet death rate, for the Soviet reinforcement and replacement rate is so high as to virtually drown the Germans in a flood of Soviet units unless they can keep killing them every turn in large numbers. (In my last game the Germans killed an average of 40 Soviet pieces per couplet over the first three game-turns - 200 total.) Now, if the Soviets can ever establish a tough defense - meaning stacks of Soviet units 4 or 5 high - the odds the Germans can attack with go down dramatically - and correspondingly, so do Soviet losses. The Soviet goal, then, is unit preservation, although of course this often must take a back seat to preventing the German from winning each turn. Once the Soviets manage to put together a tough defense, the resulting low rate of Soviet losses will enable them to maintain this toughness and thicken the line elsewhere, until finally, if all goes well, "Soviet Wall Syndrome" sets in and the Germans stop cold. Now, the trick here has to do with the victory point levels, and this is where Proud Monster departs dramatically from other strategic games. The fewer objectives the German is threatening, the tougher the Soviet defense can be of those the German *is* threatening. The tougher the defense, the lower the Soviet loss rate, and the sooner the line will thicken. The Soviet thus must do everything to prevent - and the German to accomplish - deep panzer penetration that threatens multiple objective hexes in the Soviet rear. But more than that, the Soviet need only defend those points which could result in a German win *that turn*. Soviet play in Proud Monster is the art of knowing when to let go. Proud Monster is unique in that while the defense of Minsk may be a do or die matter this turn, next turn the Soviets can let it go without a regret, abandoning the area completely in order to pull back, make tough stacks, and preserve his forces. The victory levels are everything. The Soviet must never defend anything on principle; only those things that must be defended that turn, should be defended. This is quite different from many games where an objective is an objective and there is never a point at which it is worth letting go unless holding on could result in a mass encirclement. There are many towns in Proud Monster that have no strategic value whatsoever except for the victory points they are worth, and that value can be meaningless unless the Germans are threatening to win that turn. The poor Soviet play I have witnessed in the last two games I played in resulted from Soviet players who would defend an objective a turn or two later than it needed to be defended. Instead of abandoning towns to preserve forces, they would stand and die there in a vain attempt to make the German pay for every yard, and as a result the Soviets never accumulated sufficient forces to form a 5-high wall. This weakness meant that the Soviet loss rate would continue to be high - a vicious cycle. They never got a rest from the carnage. Now, the flip side of the coin is, if the Germans ever fall behind on the victory schedule - meaning they are more than several points away from the instant victory level for the turn - they are in severe danger of being stopped cold. The reason is that the Soviets can simply abandon objectives and concentrate their forces at a select few objectives. Once the Soviets get a "breather" like this their reinforcements can accumulate at such a rate that they can eventually defend well everywhere they have to defend. This is the reason the Pause is usually such a bad move for the Germans - it automatically puts them three couplets behind on the schedule, and thus frees up the Soviets to abandon a bunch of objectives and establish rock-like defenses of the ones they choose to defend. The fact that the Germans can't attack at all during this period means the Sovs can still defend the objectives they "abandon" with a token force of one brigade per objective if they want. But the point is, the victory levels have a strategic significance all their own. If, for example, the Germans allow a ZOMO incursion early in the game, the resulting loss of victory points is devastating. It is not cleaning out the Russians that is devastating, because relatively few Germans can take care of that, nor is it the end-game result of having fewer victory points, because the Germans can theoretically take Moscow and win anyway; what is devastating is that losing those victory points can put the Germans far enough behind schedule, point-wise, that the Soviets are no longer under the pressure of an instant win and can abandon objectives they normally would have to try to hold. The Soviet defense therefore can be more concentrated, the Soviet loss rate goes down - in short, even though the German and Soviet forces are the same as before the incursion, even though the Germans hold as much territory as before, the entire nature of the defense has changed due solely to point totals. Try playing Proud Monster sometime with the Germans starting out with -5 VP and getting those 5 VP's back as a "gift" on the last turn, and watch what happens. It will be a totally different game because the Soviets suddenly do not need to defend so much and their defense will be correspondingly tougher. A few victory points on Turn 2 are worth more to the Soviets than 30 rifle divisions, due solely to the nature of the instant victory point system. The lesson for the Germans (which we learned the hard way) is that the instant victory system cannot be ignored in favor of a long-term strategy which concentrates solely on who wins on the last turn. It is absolutely essential for the Germans to always be on the edge of victory, in order to spread the Soviets thin, force them to make desperate defenses, and keep their losses high. Should the Germans ever fall behind and the danger of an instant win pass, the Soviets are well on the road to victory. Correspondingly, the Soviets should not hesitate to abandon victory point hexes if enough objectives can be defended strongly to keep the Germans from an instant win. While it is tempting to try to hold on to every victory hex in an attempt to put the Germans behind schedule, the Soviets are not strong enough to do this and live with the resulting losses. It is far more effective to let the Germans have everything they want minus what it takes to win that turn (because otherwise they will take it anyway) and preserve the Soviet forces until that time when a massive wall can be formed. Though the Soviet reinforcements may seem endless, the Germans can handle them as long as enough Sovs die every turn. The key for the Soviets is to build strength so when they have their backs to the wall, they are so strong that nothing can break through. New Soviet players leave their troops in place and put reinforcements at the next level of objectives further back; experienced Soviets always try to salvage the last line and combine it with the new reinforcements to make a tougher line than there was before. I hope this essay will be of service to new players. Germans, you must always keep the Soviets off balance; send the panzers deep and threaten as many objectives as you can. Soviets, defend what you must and save what forces you can; don't hesitate to abandon an objective if it cannot be held anyway - your primary mission, besides preventing an instant win, is to accumulate troops. Build a thick enough line and victory will be yours. ----------- Gary J. Robinson