Had a great game of Columbia Game's EuroFront yesterday with my friend Cal.
EuroFront is strategic WWII in Europe, North Africa and USSR.  We've both
played it quite a few times, but real life has always intruded before we
could play it out to the bitter end in May 1945.  Cal has often talked about
a "to the bunker" game and we decided to give it a try.


We agreed to start in summer of '44 and I took the German's.  I set up the
night before and was briefly tempted by the free setup option.  The game
includes several fortification blocks that are very hard to reduce with a
direct assault, essentially the Atlantic Wall.  Cal has pointed out to me in
the past that if those blocks are deployed not on the coast, but in the
relatively few open terrain hexes between major towns, themselves great
defensive places, then the Allies coming east from France can be looking at
a "fortress Germany" where every defender is in at least doubling terrain,
and usually with doubled firepower and behind a river to boot!   However,
Hitler's goal was not to terrorize Europe for a few years, then built a
German Maginot line, so I went ahead and poured concrete on the coast of
France.


The East front presents a different set of problems.  I started by setting
up using the Volga map (territory east of Moscow) and told Cal I expected it
to come into play!  I was hoping to rattle him, but other than a quick grin
I don't think it effected him much. 


There aren't many good places to hide as the Germans in the east.  The
Carpathian mountains are a great barrier, but Romania is both vulnerable
and, with Plosti, a natural Soviet target.  Losing the southern flank seems
inevitable, all the more so as a real commitment to Romania leaves open the
distinct possibility of a Soviet breakthrough in Hungary, trapping and
destroying the armies in Romania anyway.  South of the Pripat marshes there
is a natural invasion corridor into southern Poland and the Soviets start
this game already poised to exploit this in force.  North of the marshes the
Germans still hold Minsk and Riga and the front line is just west of the
forests protecting Leningrad.  Good news in terms of territory, but
difficult to defend and this large eastward bulge in the German lines
threatens to become a trap. 


Cal kicked off Overlord right on schedule and fought his way ashore in
Normandy without much trouble.  He managed to avoid hitting any of the above
mentioned fortresses, so my careful attention to historical detail paid off
big, for him.  His Soviets attacked all up and down the line, as is typical
for them, but made little headway.  The German army in the East is still
quite potent and in all modesty the General Staff will be studying these
defensive setups in admiration for some time.  Unfortunately, this initial
success caused Hitler to be over-confident and he issued his famous "stand
fast" order which prevented the prudent retreat of the northern forces.  


In the west, the Germans toyed with the idea of attacking the beachhead, but
Allied air superiority so restricts German mobility that it looked
impossible to concentrate sufficient force to prevail.  Rommel was right!
Instead the Germans have to content themselves with moving a few
understrength units into hexes where they can at best hope to slow the
Allies down.


The Allies concentrate on expanding the beachhead and try to cut off some of
the Germans who are now fleeing France.  But they are hampered by the lack
of a major port, which restricts the number of blocks they can move in, and
even the slower Germans are able to fall back behind the Seine in some good
order.


The Soviets launch another massive attack all up and down the line and this
time sheer weight of numbers is rapidly thinning out the German forces.
Fortunately no great cracks appear but the threat is sufficient to get the
no retreat order rescinded and the Germans begin to pull back in the North.
Fighting in the Carpathians is inconclusive, but the extreme southern end of
the line is forced to fall back into Bucharest and Ploesti.


The allies now open up their offensive in Italy, quickly dislodging the
handful of Germans on that flank, who are then compelled to pull back north
of Rome.


in France the allies have managed to cut off a few German units and open
more ports, but an attack eastward runs into both a coastal fort and some SS
mech. units along the Seine and is bloodily repulsed.  The further spread
southward of the Allies across France threatens the few German defenders of
Marseilles with surrounding and they begin a long and nervous retreat
towards Munich.


In the East the Germans anchor their final line on Konigsberg and the
Vistula.  There is no hope of winning a battle of attrition with the Soviets
at this stage of the war, but the doubled defense makes it very expensive
for the Soviets and the Vistula makes it fairly easy to repulse the Soviet
attempts to cross the river.  The Soviets banged away against this barrier
for a few weeks, then realized that once winter comes and the Vistula
freezes they can assault right across with no problems, so they switched
their summer campaign to concentrate more on the south.  The rail lines
leading from Ploesti were cut first, depriving the Germans of critical oil,
then Bucharest fell, the oil fields were captured and the Romanians and
Hungarians surrendered.  (Bulgaria never gave up as the Soviets turned
north, but we eventually decided that even with an intact army and Sofia
untouched, the loss of national Supply would cause them to surrender).


Meanwhile the Allies had gotten across the Seine and the Germans began to
fear they'd left the retreat to the Rhine too late.  With degraded mobility,
and the ability of the Allied HQs to maintain almost constant blitzing it
looked like they'd get caught in open terrain, and this in fact is what
happened somewhat, but not as bad the Germans feared.  


Winter set in and the Soviets poured across the Vistula.  The Germans simply
moved west, their defensive strategy being little more than clogging up the
hexes with increasingly reduced strength units.  The Allies in the south
cleared Italy and began to press into Bremmer Pass.  On the west they were
slowed somewhat by the density of cities and the defensive value of those
cities to the Germans, but the Ruhr was isolated and several German corps
surrounded.


Battered on three sides now, and with their economy reduced to almost
nothing, the Germans could only build infantry cadres in the few remaining
cities surrounding Berlin.  Their would be no glorious final fight for the
capital because few, if any, of the first rate divisions would be able to
make it back in time.


Racing against the clock now (my son had a piano recital that evening) Cal
and I furiously rolled the dice,  the Allies occupied a hex adjacent to
Berlin and the Soviets were only two hexes removed to the east.  But, we had
to call it as April '45 dawned.  Cal graciously suggested he wouldn't be
able to take Berlin until May I, but I think he might well have made it in
April II.  One way or anther I suspect we would have finished within a
fortnight of the historical outcome.


What a great game!  In about 6 hours of actual playing time we had covered
10 months of the war and with another 30 minutes we could have finished it
"to the bunker".  We're both fairly proficient with this game, so there were
no pauses to consult the rules (itself a true joy!) and neither one of us
agonized over getting the absolute optimum moves every time, leading to a
fast game with undoubted mistakes on both sides, but our concentration was
on playing!  Very good fun!