Barbarossa - The Day of Battle

Note: This games day was run in September, but for a variety of reasons I've been worrying away at this report for a little while. 

The Soviet High Command putting their heads together
Comrade Siskey (left) has clearly been marked for purging and didn't get the memo.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Barbarossa Campaign in Memoir '44 Campaign Book One.  It is a campaign of two player Memoir '44 games linked together.  The campaign is divided into Army Group Centre, Army Group North and Army Group South.  Each player takes on control of one of these groups and plays through a series of games that advance that particular part of the grander campaign. All the players draw from a greater pool of reinforcements which are assigned at the beginning of the game.

The game is divided into two phases.  The first phase consists of two scenarios, after which each side can deploy their reserves across the whole front.  The second phase consists of another two to three scenarios.

The dastardly Germans doing the same

I had set things up before most of the players arrived so we were actually able to get the show on the road reasonably quickly. Du Gourmand had not need able to make it, but had generously lent me his copy of the Campaign Book so that we were able to give each side a copy each. Sydney brought his along as well - which speeded things up admirably. 

A soviet excursion party by the River Bug thinking "There are an awful lot of Germans over there."

Over the day we had ten players, some of whom were able to stay for the whole day and others who weren't - but everybody who wanted one got a game. I was happy with that.  One advantage of the single board format rather than our more usual Overlord is that the players can play at their own pace, rather than playing at the pace of the slowest player. 

The German assault started with the traditional drubbing at Bug River.  This is one of the most unbalanced scenarios in the game, so much so that the German player must win by a margin of three medals to count it as a win.  It does run up the German medal count though and Mr. Target really struggled with the Commissar rule. 

The panzers are laying all about them at Brody

Meanwhile, the Soviets at Brody were dealing with a massive penetration of German armour and again were on the back foot from the word go.  Mr E began the game damning the Commissar rule and it was a refrain that lasted for the rest of the day. Brody wasn't quite the kicking that Bug River was, but it was still a German win. 

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Commissar rule. In Memoir '44 each player has a hand of cards which he can use to activate his units.  Each turn he plays a card and then draws another.  The Commissar rule simulates the often crude command arrangements of the Red Army in the early portion of the war, when it struggled to overcome the legacy of the purges, which had stripped it of senior leaders. 

Rather than playing a card from his hand, the Soviet player must take a card and place it under the Commissar chip. This card is then played NEXT turn, where it may have been totally superseded by events. 

"Sergei, does that look like a lot of tanks to you?"

Cut off at Pripet marshes - the Soviets launch a counter attack. 

Kiev - a grudge match between Mr E and Savage

This was, if memory serves, a very tight game. The armoured train proved tough and childhood foes Mr E and Savage, conducted a close fought match.  

I'm no poker player, but I think Comrade Siskey's Ivanskoye counter attack is going rather well. 

As I only had one Commissar button, so Savage produced this thing. 

Lady's and germs that is a gold Kruger-rand. I can only presume he hand forged it from gold he pulled from the teeth of his enemies. 

It's all getting a bit too much for Savage as Mr E takes that last roll of the dice. 

And fluffs it. 

Phew! A win for Team Nazi.

Meanwhile, the Germans mount an amphibious landing on the Baltic islands.  

I was very happy with how this turned out.  The beach landing setup was the first outing of my beach and sea overlays. I made these using a stencil from Litko accessories and felt.  They were laid over the standard green mat and shingle added with cat litter. Ultimately the plan is to try some of the D-Day scenarios, but that might take a little while and the addition of some landing craft. 

If I recall correctly, Siskey had a hard time dealing with the German onslaught.  The combination of an amphibious and a paratrooper assault being too much for his defences. 

Mr. Target is looking distinctly nonplussed at the Gates of Moscow 

It's all very serious here. Sydney versus Lorcan Hibernia McEireanneach

Well he's not happy with that dice roll. 

But even less happier when a German flanking force shows up in his rear. 

And the dice are on fire at the Gates of Moscow. General Creaner and Mr Target can't even look...

After a hard days gaming, we retire to the bar 

The end result was a major German victory.  Looking back on the campaign, the German team were able to stack up a commanding lead in the first few scenarios of the campaign.  As their resources began to peter out, the Soviet numbers began to bear, but the Russians were unable to make up the ground.  This is the second time we've run this campaign and the second German victory.  I wonder perhaps if it might benefit from just a shade of rebalancing, perhaps scoring the Bug River scenario differently might be an idea. 

After the battle, the tidy up. 

I really enjoyed the day, though I'm not sure I would do things the same way again. Because each player was playing his own game against his opponent as an individual and there was no concluding Overlord battle which brought all the players together, I think it lacked some of the shared experience that I've found so rewarding in our other games. 

That said, playing so many individual battles allowed everyone to play at their own pace and ensured that no-one was stranded in a "quiet sector".  There may be a case for a middle ground approach* to a games day which combines a series of two player games with a multi-player Overlord to finish. A series of starters with a main course to finish? 

All the boxes must go back on their shelves before Kinch can declare the game over. 

But dissecting the technical aspects of the day aside- it was an exceptionally pleasant way to spend a few hours in the company of good friends, who turned up and played the game in the best way possible. 

NOTE: I've received a couple of emails wondering where exactly "Joy & Forgetfulness" has been of late and suggesting that I should get a wriggle on and write something. Thank you for taking an interest in the blog - I'm always mildly astonished that people do so, particularly so much so that they take time to write. 

I'm afraid that I will not be able to post to J&F as much as I would like for at least the next couple of months. There are two reasons for this.  The firstly, I've become a father, which is wonderful and of which more later.  Miniature Kinchs demand a great deal of time, which sadly leaves fewer hours in the day to write for you lovely people. 

But secondly and to be honest, the far more limiting factor at present is that I'm recovering from a brain injury.  A confrontation in work in August resulted in me taking a blow to the head from which I have yet to fully recover.  Fortunately, the Good Lord has blessed me with an unusually thick skull so I've avoided all the nastiness of a depressed skull fracture, but it has left me with balance problems, headaches** and even more frustratingly, difficulty concentrating for prolonged periods of time. This has impacted on my reading and, even more maddeningly, on my writing.  I have to ration my attention carefully and make the best use of available resources.  Unfortunately this means that I have to prioritise and J&F has had to take a back seat for a little while.  

Thankfully, there is no permanent brain damage***, but the recovery time is a little longer than I'd hoped.  I'm still writing, just slowly and in small bursts. Facebook is proving a useful means of keeping my hand in in the mean time. 

But J&F is not going anywhere. It's just catching it's breath. 

*Ok, so some days I'm more Anglican than others.
**I will never complain about another hangover ever again, so help me God.
**To quote my darling father, Mr Kinch Senior "How would they tell?"

Mustering for Barbarossa

Laying out the troops

Contrary to all expectation and thanks in no small part to the help of David Crook, Tim Gow and Old John, I've managed to get the Barbarossa campaign on track.  So much so in fact, we'll be playing it on Saturday. 

In advance of the game, I've been making sure that we've enough kit.   This included getting tanks from the aforementioned David Crook, Tim Gow and Old John, painting up seventeen Revell Cossacks and forty four Strelets RKKA infantry. The tanks are all base coated and will need detailing over the next two days.  There are a few other jobs that need doing, but honestly I surprised at how quickly this came together.  Having a list helped and being ruthless about the bare minimum that was required to get the campaign on the table was a big factor.

The other advantage of the Barbarossa campaign is that once we have the gear to do it - we can always play it again with very little prep required.  Laying everything out on the table certainly helped establish where the gaps are and made it easier to muster our forces.  It also prevented me from falling into a false sense of security and making simple errors like...

...the time Du Gourmand and I forgot that a Memoir board is nine hexes deep not eleven. 

...forgetting to print out any of the scenarios and trying to find a net cafe at 10am on a Sunday. 

...that I'd double counted the French infantry and had gotten too many.

We are not clever men sometimes. 

My apologies for the terrible picture. 

Operation Barbarossa Campaign

Young Master Hitler attempting to add Russia to his "list"

I think most wargamers in their heart of hearts would admit they enjoy making lists. 

Far more lists get written than are ever completed, but I think there's a certain "fantasy shopping" element to it. There is a pleasure to be had from building castles in the sky, even if we know in our heart of hearts that those castles will never be constructed.  It's a similar sort of impulse to the sort of day dreaming that a lot of folk indulge in - usually revolving around "What I would do if I won the lottery?"  Wargamers ambitions are usually more modest, coming to a few units of cavalry, a dozen tanks and so on, rather than jet skis and Ferrari's.

An excellent addition to the Memoir '44 stable

For those of you, who are familiar with Memoir '44 Campaign Book 1 - it includes a number of campaigns, a British and an American Normandy campaign (need some paratroopers before I can play that, better add them to the list) and a Barbarossa campaign which is epic in scale.  We've played the Barbarossa campaign before and it's a really slick piece of design.  Unlike the other campaigns in the book, it can be played by multiple players simultaneously. The German team takes control of Army Group Centre, Army Group North and Army Group South, while the Soviets command the resistance to the Fascist viper. The campaign is playable in a day and can, depending on the scoring, be resolved in three games or it can stretch out to five.  Unlike an Overlord game where the players are interacting all the time, in this campaign each player is playing their own one on one games, but is drawing on a shared pool of reinforcements and resources. 

It makes for a grand and epic days wargaming. However, when we played before, we'd only used the plastic figures provided in the board game.  I have a mind to assemble a rather more formidable show using 1/72 figures and tanks played on three six by four mats.  Du Gourmand has already booked a place on Stavka.

Now such an epic days wargaming requires some epic list making. I could muster the resources to play any individual game without any real difficulty, but running three of them simultaneously would stretch things.  With that in mind, I decided that I would compile a roster of what would be required to play each "stage" of the game. Once I'd done that, I could work out what the maximum number of troops required would be and plan accordingly.  Depending on how things run, in terms of wins or losses, the scenario that is played can vary - the scenario can be played at a different stage.   This complicates matters, but I think I've worked it out.

Should you wish to give this a try yourself, you'll find the troops count by stage below and with a final total at the end.

Stage One

Bug River - Raeinac - Brody

Soviets: Infantry 11  Armour 8 Artillery 1 Heavy Armour 7 Cavalry 2 Mechanised Infantry 2 Train 1

Germans: Infantry 6  Armour 12 Artillery 3 Panzer Grenadier 7 Brandenberger Commando 1

Stage Two

Smolensk - Pruzan - Ingermanland - Vel. Bridgehead- Russian Breakout - Pripet Marsh

Soviets: Infantry 26  Armour 5 Artillery 5 Heavy Armour 4 Cavalry 3 Sniper 3 Train 1

Germans: Infantry 13  Armour 17 Artillery 5 Heavy Armour 1 Panzer Grenadier 11

Stage Three

Kamenwo - Yelna Timoshenko Assault - Smolensk - Ivan Bridge - Luga Bridge - Lipovec - Kiev

Soviets: Infantry 29  Armour 10 Artillery 5 Heavy Armour 5 Cavalry 1 Sniper 2 Train 2

Germans: Infantry 20  Armour 13 Artillery 5 Heavy Armour 1 Engineer 1 Panzer Grenadier 9

Train 1

Stage Four

Gates of Moscow - Yelna Timoshenko Assault - Kamenwo - Baltic Islands - Starayarus - Tikhvin - Sea of Azov - Rostov

Soviets: Infantry 27 Armour 11  Artillery 7 Heavy Armour 4 Cavalry 3 Guards 3 Sniper 1

Germans: Infantry 25  Armour 18 Artillery 6 Heavy Armour 1 Panzer Grenadier 5 Fallschirmjaeger 3

Division Azul 1 Train 1

Stage Five

Breakout at Klin - Yelna Zhukovs Assault 

Soviets: Infantry 9  Armour 6 Artillery 2 

Germans: Infantry 7 Armour 2 Artillery 2 Heavy Armour 2 Engineer 2 Panzer Grenadier 1

Maximum Forces Required

Soviets: Infantry 29 Armour 11  Artillery 7 Heavy Armour 7 Cavalry 3 Guards 3 Sniper 3 Train 2 Mechanised Infantry 2

Germans: Infantry 25 Armour 18 Artillery 6 Heavy Armour 2 Engineer 2 Panzer Grenadier 11 Brandenberger Commando 1  Division Azul 1 Train 1

Thoughts & Conclusions

I'll be honest one of the reasons, I thought I'd tackle this project is the fact that it's a small self contained campaign that can be played in a day and that doesn't require an umpire and I was relatively sure I had sufficient troops. Having compiled the figure totals, it becomes clear that while I have a goodly selection of what is needed - there are still some gaps.

The Soviet armour is unusual, as I have quite a bit, but what is required is early war stuff like T-26s. What I reckon I do is use T-34 and KV-1 as Heavy Armour and everything else as standard armour units.  I have a couple of T-26 and T-70 light tanks, so I'm going to keep my eyes peeled on eBay for some of those cheap diecast armoured cars and tanks that were available at "The Works" recently.

The infantry and artillery are no problem, though I'm short the cavalry.  Fortunately John Cunningham set me up with a set of Revell Soviet Cossacks (which are probably a little later than Barbarossa, but they look well), which will do the trick. I'll add a truck to a standard infantry unit to show Mechanised Infantry and a Commissar figure to Guards units.

I have plenty of German infantry and will use a mixture of Panzer I, II, III and armoured cars to represent German armour. Heavy tanks will be represented by a pair of short barrelled Panzer IV from Armourfast.  I'll need to do an exact count, but there shouldn't be too much difficulty in finding some early war German armour to plug that gap.

Hanomags and other half tracks will mark Panzer Grenadiers. Engineers will be marked by a flamethrower armed figure, though I might add some clump foliage flame to make them stand out a bit as a 1/72 scale flamethrower can easily get lost in the mill of troops. The Division Azul will be some German troops with a Spanish national flash added in paint, though perhaps something more flamboyant to make them stand out might be in order.

Realistically, that isn't too bad of a list. We may be seeing Barbarossa before long.