East Front Columbia Games

Lawrence and I finished up our game of East Front back in August - yup behind the times again on blogging.  This would be our next to last Face to Face game before he moves away and I'm going to miss a good friend.

Start of October 41 and CLEAR.  The Germans get lucky on this first activation.

Germans make a lunge for Leningrad!  The bombardment unit would go there as well to help things along.

Near Sevastopol the Germans are moving to cut off the city.

Another shot of the board at the end of the Russian Activation.

November Starts with mud.  Don't remember if second impulse was snow or not.

Situation at end of turn, Russians went first each time since it was snow or Mud.  Leningrad still holding out since getting reinforcements there is a real bear.

December 41.  Russians go first again.  Slow going now since the Germans are hoarding activations and the Russians are tending their wounds.

Slow movement does not matter near Leningrad since the swamp would limit movement to one hex anyway.  The reinforcements for the siege have arrived.

January 42. 

Leningrad Falls!  The winter slows down operations due to high costs of replacing HQ steps and the slightly slower movement.  Due to this only the Leningrad operation is pushed, other HQs are rested for the month - sparing Sevastopol for now.

February 42

The attack on Sevastopol begins and the German siege unit is sent there by train.  Another move order is spent to move the forces at Leningrad forward.  The Moscow front is static due to lack of supplies.

March 42, Spring (and mud) is in the air - but first more snow...

The front is pretty static this turn.  Both sides are low on supply.

April 42 and General Mud is out in full force.

Mud forces the line to stay static, except for Sevastopol where the railed in Siege unit along with the other units that were adjacent move their one allowed space and attack in each impulse.  Sevastopol folds up like a wet book freeing up a LOT of combat power in that sector.  Just in time for Summer of 42.

Second impulse of May 42 is clear - don't remember if first was mud or not.  Next game I'll use two dice to mark this.

The troops in Leningrad sector move forward, Moscow troops plug a whole in the line and the Sevastopol troops clear up the line to allow making a defensive spot at the straight.  The Russians can only move one unit across an impulse and it could be repulsed so now the Germans can send the bulk of their force the other way.

End of June 42.

The Leningrad front is now combined with the Moscow front and as can be seen the Russians are being folded back on themselves.  Another turn would have seen the Germans bagging Moscow or rampaging the Russian rear and we called it a game.  

The Russians are hard pressed in this game.  The winter was not much of a reprieve though the Russians did miss a chance to put some Germans Out of Supply which would have forced a German response and thus the use of an activation.  The Russians may not have had an activation to spare without facing their own disaster though.  The need to use HQ activations to get troops to move or fight with support (you can fight without support but not nearly as well) and the ability to only replace one HQ step a month means that offensives can lurch, so can retreats for that matter.  It is possible to use up four steps of an HQ in a turn (and thus eliminate from the board) if doing two blitz actions.  That would be a desperation move.  More normal is two activations a turn for a couple turns in a row followed by a pause.

Looking forward to playing this one again via vassal or if I find a new FTF opponent.  It is a reasonably quick playing game, Lawrence and I managed a year a day after learning it, and has enough depth to be interesting.  So my list of Russian Campaign games that I like is now Russian Campaign, No Retreat: The Russian Front, and East Front.  I've also purchase West Front to go along with it and may pick up Eurofront someday to try the whole war in block form, well, vassal block form...