From: Markus Stumptner Subject: [Consim-l] Sakhalin 1945 Another one from the Six Angles Collection. I have since looked on Boardgamegeek and found that the original graphics were much more drab than the ones in the Collection; happy I didn't go for the original magazines way back when. This game looks deceptively similar (in particular it again uses uses 2 turns per day and another variation of the OSPASC and EBRIEZ (*)) but is quite different. It shows part of the Soviet overrun of the southern half of the island of Sakhalin in late 1945 and presumably was chosen as a topic because the Soviets found this particular part to be a bit tough. The Russian border is at the north end of the map (1.2km per hex) and near the southern end, about 20 hexes away, is a town, Koton, whose occupation means a Soviet victory. This is actually across the map's short dimension, but most of the map is swamps bisected by a major river passable at a single bridge, and the western third is a mountain range. Most of the Soviet offensive has to run through the narrow strip of clear land in between. The Japanese defenses, apart from a number of border observation posts, are concentrated in an entrenched line reaching from the fringe of the swamps into the mountains (and you can forget about making headway in the mountains part). In addition, there's a series of minor rivers, tributaries to the big one, to cross, that run across the axis of advance at essentially right angles. This makes for a pretty slow slog. There is a chance to outflank the Japanese by going via the big river bridge, the Soviets will certainly take it, but that also takes some time. System-wise, Soviet units are battalions (only tanks can stack) and Japanese ones are mostly companies. The key feature of the system is ranged artillery fire - one must decide on fire or movement mode for artillery (bit similar to the old Vance von Borries North Africa games, but here one sets the mode at the start of one's player turn). Artillery mostly disrupts but the three big ones (which only enter the map after all the Japanese observations posts have gone) can outright kill steps. Since barrage comes before movement and combat, this helps enormously in speeding up the advance. I was still spectacularly inept in dierolling and thus the Soviets merely ended up adjacent to Koton on the last turn, to be repulsed in all their desperate assaults, but they couldn't have taken both hexes anyway. I do suspect this one is pretty tough for the Soviets. Markus (*) Old SPI Push-and-Shove CRT and Elimination By Retreating Into Enemy ZOCs for those who haven't memorised the Zaporozhye article Last 3 games played: Okehazama 1560, Gettysburg 1863, Harvest of Death --------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ --------------- "Bakayaro! Bakayaro!" ("Stupid Bastards! Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942 _______________________________________________ Consim-l mailing list Consim-l@mailman.halisp.net http://mailman.halisp.net/mailman/listinfo/consim-l