15mm Polish Soviet War

I met up with a few old friends yesterday for a 15mm game set in the Polish Soviet War of 1919-21.  The rules were a home brew set using a variety of mechanisms from other rule sets for other periods.  I was on the Polish side and our objective was to capture two of the towns on the table but one had to be the town on the far edge.  Unfortunately we had no idea where the Soviets were and our plan ran into instant problems once we had seen their deployment (as they had almost all their full Division concentrated in the town we were intending assault first).  I was in command of the Polish 6th Regiment which took a bit of a pasting trying to push round the town whilst the 5th Regiment assaulted it.  Meanwhile our mobile column of cavalry, motorised infantry and armoured cars easily captured the other one by the railway line and then faced the might of the Soviet cavalry.

The game was a lot of fun with the almost compulsory inclusion of weird armoured cars, ineffective air support and an armoured train; but ended as a Soviet victory as we couldn't break into the first town and were about to be assaulted by the Soviet's second full Division!

It was a pretty exhausting day with a 340 mile round trip in the car and 7 full hours of gaming but well worth it.  Here are some photos from the day:

First Look: Strike of the Eagle

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Strike of the Eagle from Academy Games for Christmas.  Strike of the Eagle is a block wargame covering the Polish Soviet War and is the first (and at present only) game in the Fog of War series from Academy Games.

I was interested in getting this particular game for a couple of reasons.  I am interested in the Polish Soviet War itself, the game has a different take on the usual block game mechanisms and it is capable of accommodating more than 2 players.

The board represents the part of Poland, Soviet Russia, the Ukraine and the disputed land between them.  It is divided into two fronts, effectively separated by the Pripet Marshes, which mean that in the full game the units on each front can be split between players allowing up to 4 people to play.  Movement is point to point and the board shows the various towns and cities of the area and the road and rail links between them.

Whilst this is a block game with the usual fog of war that brings it adds some interesting new dynamics through the use of cards and orders.  Each side has a deck of cards and can use these for one of four different things:

1. Increasing the number of orders which can be issued (the default is two)
2. Generating reinforcements
3. Modifying combat
4. A historical event 

This provides some serious choices and decisions as you normally only a hand of 6 cards at the beginning of each turn and their are five operations phases when they can be used within each turn.

The orders are represented by thick card counters which are placed either on individual locations and units.  You have to place one recon order each turn which allows you to see the enemy blocks where it is placed and whilst this can be used to bluff the enemy it does mean that you only get one further order each phase unless you play a card to increase it.  The other orders are movement to or from a location (infantry one space, cavalry two spaces), forced marches (as movement but a further space), withdraw (if attacked), defend, reorganise (regain a single strength point) or rail transport (move up to 4 blocks up to 8 spaces along rail lines).

Initiative is tracked separately on each front and this allows the player with initiative to determine the order in which orders are placed and, within the order sequence, who reveals and executes their orders first (which can be critical as blocks can be pinned in place by advancing blocks).

Each block represents between 1,500 and 8,000 men as represented by its individual strength point value (and as you would expect adjusted by rotating the block) which is then combined with various modifiers and the value from a card to determine how many strength points are lost by the other side making the combat diceless.

Supply lines are important too and can have a serious impact if units end up out of supply.  There are also leader blocks which have other effects.

The game comes with 9 scenarios (I have only played the first - the introductory scenario - shown above) which provides for plenty of replay-ability.

The game is beautifully produced, has a good amount of historical information included and provides some really challenging decisions - I am looking forward to getting it to the table again.

If you want to know a little more here's a video review of the game from Marco Arnaudo:

Skirmish Elite: Battles of the Borderlands

The next Skirmish Campaigns booklet I own, chronologically, is The Russo-Polish War 1919: Battle of the Borderlands and, technically speaking, it's actually a Skirmish Elite (although the difference is a little lost on me).

Battle of the Borderlands is a 48 page, black and white, staple bound book in US letter format.  In addition to the introductory material it contains 8 scenarios forming three campaigns set during the Polish Soviet War of 1919-21.

The book starts with a single page introduction to the conflict, a two page history of the borderlands, a further two pages on the campaigns, a theatre of operations map, a single page explanation of the Skirmish Campaigns format,  two further pages covering notes on scale and figures, attachments and victory conditions; a table detailing how to translate the scenarios to various sets of rules and a bibliography before moving into the actual scenarios.

The scenarios are all platoon size or less but a couple require Polish cavalry. The terrain is all relatively straightforward but several of the scenarios require a number of buildings (6-10, including a church) and one requires a locomotive some freight wagons, a couple of abandoned trucks and a railway station.

Unfortunately I haven't actually played any of the scenarios from this book as yet.  I do have figures suitable for the Poles as you can use figures from almost any WW1 army as they fought in most of them.  It's the Soviets I need to pick up some figures for and that's on the list for my Russian Civil War project.

Obviously this book has a much narrower appeal than Rommel's Route to Verdun and with only 8 scenarios (6 if you don't have figures for the Polish Cavalry) I think it's not as good value; however, there is very little material around concerning this conflict and if you are interested it may be worth a look.