William Terdoslavich  - Apr 9, 2009 8:20 am (#27845 Total: 27852)  
I'm in print again--seven contributing chapters in "It Looked Good 
On Paper," edited by Bill Fawcett. 
	 
Re: VPG's No Retreat. 

The game ended in early 1942 with a German "sudden deth" victory--12
cities held, including Moscow. 

I think the game Scott and I played last night was an "outlier" on the
Bell Curve. I was playing with "Hitler Hindsight"--screw Leningrad,
screw the Ukraine, I'm taking Moscow! 

The game was "touch and go" from that photo above onward. I took Moscow.
Scott cut my LOS. Third Panzer Army went out of supply. I opened up the
LOS with a counter-attack. He attacked Moscow and scored a step loss. I
restore the step and reinforce "the shoulders" of the position,
pressuring Tula and Kalinin, while secondary efforts in the south added
to the city count. 

Last 2-3 turns were played without the German fair weather advantage.
Mud and snow imposed column shifts against me. Defender retreat results
got my cities without losses. 

Having played Barbarossa many times as part of larger WWII games, I've
always hated invading Russia (or defending it). It's difficult,
thankless, bloody, long and desperate. I'd rather visit my dentist. What
attracted me to this game was its size--11x17 map, very low piece count,
partially card-driven to inject unpredictability and make crooked linear
inevitability. 

Some thoughts about the game design: 

May be its the map scale, but Russia has a lot of cluttered terrain to
complement its wide open spaces. I screened Leningrad because the
terrain there was such crap. Moscow offered no clear approaches--I'd be
fighting through woods or cities to make those hexes, with column shifts
against me. 

We never got to see the Russians begin conversion to their more powerful
units. Factoring in this game fascinates me because the Russians have
some decent numbers for once. 

Different CRTs for both sides add a nice "design for effect" feature
without messing around with unit factoring. Russians score more
exchanges, while Germans force more retreats. Attacks at 1-2 and 1-3
aren't so bad, as they can trigger counter-attacks or retreat results.
This makes every unit useful, regardless of factoring, so we don't get
the inevitable "I can't do anything" dead-end that can ruin a game when
one side gets pounded too hard. 

More importantly, the DFE-CRTs fulfills Glantz's observation about the
eastern front. The Germans were fighting this war with the "rapier" of
mobile warfare in a conflict that required a meat ax. 

I'm glad I bought this game at GMT East, and I am looking forward to
playing it again in the near future.