What it does?
Hitler’s Turns East
covers the first 10 months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union from June
1941 to April 1942. It also, at least according to its blurb, allow you to
understand why Barbarossa filed or why its designer, Ted Raicer, thinks it
failed.
How it looks?
 |
| Map |
Well
it looks quite nice. You have a 17x22” map covering the bulk of European Russia
and the western soviet republics. Counters representing German armies, German
Panzer Corps, Russian Rifle and Mechanized Armies. The counters have NATO symbols, historical
names, set up or reinforcement information, and combat value on them. Some specific
counters like the Stukas and the soviet T-34 have stylized silhouettes on them.
The map is drawn in light colours and possess a conventional hex grid in it.
Boxes for orders and tracks for time and victory point are printed on the map
itself. The turn track possess all the relevant information (weather, supply
range, number of Stuka available, replacements) in each turn box. The rules are short and have the relevant
tables (movement, combat, orders, command points) on the back. The rules are also clear and concise. I have
not found any real problem in reading them. The only serious issue was the
setup of three German armies that was wrongnly printed on the counters.
Replacement counters have bene provided and the corrected set up hexes are
provided online.
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| The Counters, the Crosses and Stars are the front of the order markers. |
How this thing plays?
Hitler
Turns East is a reasonably simple game with army units supported by Mechanized
and Panzer Corps. It is based on hex and the underlying engine is pretty
conventional as far hex wargames are concerned. Unit have only one combat
factor printed on them, their movement values being attributed to them based on
the order their command organization receives. The sequence of play is again pretty
conventional, at least on the surface. During each turn you have a weather
phase, a reinforcements and replacement phase, a command phase, a movement and
command phase, and a victory phase.
Weather is based on historical patterns with some twists. It does not
only influence movement, but also availability of air supports, supply lines,
and, critically, initiative. The Germans have the initiative when the weather
is good or passable, the Soviet when it is bad. After the first half of the
game the weather is not nice for a stroll, or a war… thus the game is neatly
divided in two halves. The German onslaught east, the Soviet payback. Weather (good one) also allows the conduct of
the all important mobile assaults by the German panzers.
The Command
phase is important and not as tradition as you think at first. You roll for
command points (with modifiers for weather and some specific situations) and
then buy orders for the NEXT turn. Then
you place the orders you already bought in the activation cup. The orders are important.
They allow specific movement directions (westward or eastward) and attacks. They
are quite limiting in what you can do and you cannot do. The fact that you have
to decided priorities (based on an amount of command points that will not allow
you to do everything you want) before
seeing what will happen in the current turn forces you to plan in advance and cater for different
course of action.
This
necessity for a sound plan (or at a
least a plan at all) is reinforced by the movement and combat phase. Here you
activate your big command groups (more on that shortly) in a random order. You
pick an order marker from the cup and allocates to a command activating it.
Well you decided what command will
activate and what it will do, but the order of activation is random. You do not
know if the next order chit will be yours or from the enemy. You do not even
know if the next order chit will be the one that you need to complete your
masterful scheme. As command friction is concerned this a quite nice way to
introduce fog of war and limited intelligence without plots and umpires. The basic
of mobement and combat are easy to follow. Movement is based on the eternal
movement points (and the order allocates a movement allowance to infantry and
mobile troops) and the combats are a simple odd based affairs with a d6. Supply
rules are simple, based on a chain of controlled cities, and have twists for
deterioration of logistic network with bad weather and pockets.
The
last element to discuss in this package are reinforcements and victory. As you expect the Germans have a big army at
start and very little in the term of new units and replacements. The soviet
have a big army (not that good but big) and a bigger one coming constantly.
They have also a lot or replacement and the ability to generate new units as
the Germans take victory points. Victory
points are important towns and cities, all located in Russia proper. This will
force the Germans to rush forward and leave Ukraine and Belarus behind them as
soon as practicable. It also means that the more they push east, the more they
kill Soviet troops, the more Soviet troops are raised to push them back.
Completing
the package you have attrition (do not get encircled), Panzer Leaders (they can
give their own orders to their panzers), Stukas, partisan, and the soviet Black
Sea fleet (allowing to keep Odessa in supply and moving troops by sea). As much the package is small it is complete.
The Fronts and Army
Groups
Command
requires a few more words. One of the first thing you notice when exploring the
map and the rules is the emphasis on the fact that both sides forces are
divided in autonomous entities, Army Group for the Germans, Fronts for the
Soviet. Each entity is assigned a
specific order each turn and perform its activities independently from the
others. Even the play order is based on them. This means that, as happened
historically you have to plan for your operations inside the command boundaries
and, even more importantly, adjust them to what happens outside. It also breaks
the IGO-YUGO mould quite handily. Even if you are lucky and get all your
activations in a row the restriction on moving outside the borders made you
The
downside of this system is that these divisions feel perfectly symmetrical and
artificial. For each German Army Group there is a corresponding Soviet Front. In
history the boundaries were not so clear cut. Also the rigid boundaries make
the historical opening for Army Group Centre a moot point. Historically Hoth
Panzergruppe moved north straddling in AGN territory as the northern pincer of
the Minsk envelopment. You cannot do that because the rules do not allow you to
do a mobile assault across the boundary. Yet Hoth’s panzers cannot mobile
assault south of the boundary because there is a forest hex that prohibits
mobile assaults. There are ways to repeat the historical net results, but the
thing feels a bit puzzling to me. Anyway
this is just a minor quibble.
Is this Barbarossa?
Descriptions and discussions are important, but how these
elements in the end stack up for a final judgement on this game?
Well,
despite all the historical balance issues linked with Barbarossa itself (namely
the Soviet player see his army wiped out, rebuilt, and wiped out again a couple
of times before starting to fully get in
the game…) I think that Ted did a very good job with Hitler Turn East. First of
all the game works. Second the game presents historical problems for the most
part. Of course there are some inaccuracies (like the inability to perform the
correct opening) but the feel of Barbarossa and the early counteroffensive are
here. I like how the differences in
Soviet and German doctrines are portrayed in the game.
At
first I was a bit worried about the possible lack of German attrition. As much I do not like David Stahel's books (he
spend too much time in political discussions…) he has a strong and valid point
on the casualties suffered by the Werhmacht in the summer of 1941. Even
Guderian hints that his panzers were running out of spares and steam at the end
of the summer. Even Ted in a recent
article points out that the summer attrition was one of the deciding factors of
Barbarossa. But, at first reading the rules makes you wonder if the Germans
will suffer losses at all. When they are under Blitz orders the Panzer Corps
ignore losses in defence, they convert DE results to DR. in attack the ignore
A1 results. This seems a nice way to roll forward toll free. Well when you start to play the game you
discover that exchanges or B1 (Both Side Loss or Bloodbath?) results are less
uncommon than you thought at first glance.
Even more noteworthy is the way the counterattack rule interplay with
the German tank forces. The soviet
player totals combat factor of Soviet (in LOC) and Germans units in contact and
then roll on the Counterattack table. Results can be A1 or B1. Losses have to
be taken from in contact forces. Well, this means that, on average, the B1 results will end up on the panzers. Why? Well you end up having the panzer in
contact with supplies soviet forces more often than the infantry. If you push
(as you are more or less forced to do) your panzers forward they will bear the
brunt of the Counterattacks. The net
results is a panzer force quite powerful but reasonably brittle on the long
run. I think that this approach is the best one at this scale. With such big
units (infantry armies and panzer corps or Soviet armies) the day to day
accumulated attrition on the German mobile formations is difficult to simulate
with only two steps and monthly turns. Furthermore you need to find a way to
still allow the German player to push as far as was historically possible. In the end while not the most transparent of
the representation the attrition ingrained in the counterattack rule works.
Yet
this attrition will not stop the German steam roller alone. And here we have
the biggest ‘problem’ of the game, or rather the biggest problem of the
campaign. In the end the Germans were stopped by a combination of reserves,
attrition, overextension and competent soviet leadership. In the game you need
to have a competent soviet player. The Soviet player needs to plan in advance
and start to build in depth defences (only to see them moved forward by Stalin
and his mandated counterattacks) as soon as possible. Even doing that he has to
realize his whole army is going to disappear at least twice during the game. He has also to hurt the Germans. Simply
running away will not save the motherland. As much there is space to trade
there is also a necessity to weaken the German forces. As much this seems an
impossible task the fact that there is a gap between the slow moving infantry
armies and the panzers means that there will be opening for "successful"
attacks. One thing that has to be remembered is that as much the Soviet army is
replenishing its forces constantly the germans have a very limited number of
replacements and paltry reinforcements.
Yet Hitler Turns East is a
game were both players, at least in the first half, are running in the same
direction, eastward. In a broad
historical sense this is correct, yet I also realize that it can be
frustrating, error prone, luck based, and not welcome by some players. On BGG
there have been several comments about Barbarossa games in general and the fact
that they are boring for the Soviet player until the winter. Well I think there
are hectic and desperate, not boring. Still if seeing one rampant army is not
your cup of tea stay away from it.
In
summary I think that Hitler Turns East largely succeeds in providing the
players with a fast, reasonably accurate game capable to present some strong
insights on the actual Operation Barbarossa.
There are some compromises (like the evenly matched army groups) but as
a whole the game highlights what is important in a small and fast package.
There is the difference between infantry and mobile formations. The fact that
German advances were closely related to the number of armoured formations
committed along a given axis is here. There are differences between the two
armies. The fact that the German have access to the Blitz order and airpower is
a broad brush, but successful, representation of the different doctrines. There
is Stalin forward defence approach and it makes sense. Stalin attacks have some
abilities to hurt the Germans were they feel it most, in the mobile formations.
The game is also effectively dealing with the big encirclements. You can
graphically reproduce them with the fast moving panzer corps and their mobile
assaults. I think that this reinforces the first point of this list. You cannot
have an historical game on the Russian front were all forces are the same. It
will simply not work. As much Phil Sabin’s Eastern
Front II aspires to cover the whole war it is a flawed game that, even if
it presents a plausible narrative, attach the narrative to the wrong reasons.
On this same blog I once strongly criticized Ted for having put so many
restrictions in place in his game on the invasion of France. These restriction
were there to force an historical script but, in my opinion, they were a
striking case of doing the right thing on a game for the wrong reasons. With
Hitler Turns East Ted demonstrated that he can provide a package where the
right things are done for the right reasons.
Well
you will now argues that the Stalin
Counterattack rule is a sort of straight jacket put into place to avoid the
soviet player to simply run to the east and barricade himself out of reach of
the Germans. It could be, but it also forces on you pre-war plans (based on
counterattacks and forward defence) and the fact that you cannot run to the
east until you evacuate your factories (an element directly represented in
other games) and especially you cannot simply surrender mobilization areas
without a fight. Yes it is a straight jacket, but it is a straight jacket as
movement rates. Historical wargames are historical because they attempt to put
you in a specific situation faced with options and restrictions that were
plausible for your historical counterparts.
A player is not a counterfactual historian devoid of any connection with
reality. In this case the Soviet player has to balance his own priorities with
those of the boss. Stalin wanted (with reason) to keep the invaders as far away
from Moscow and its mobilization basin (and rail hub) as possible. We have been
served for years by historians that created a myth of the Soviet Army willingly
trading space for time. It was wrong. To a certain extent in my opinion the
Stalin’s rule also obviates to the need of
detailed mobilization rules. There is also the fact that the rules is
quite beneficial for the soviet player allowing him to attack several time in
the turn with little risks. Also, as I pointed out earlier, often this rules
will be the only way the dreaded German Panzers will suffer losses. Considering you want to inflict losses and
really keep the Germans away from the victory point cities and towns the Stalin’s counterattack is a bonus. Of
course as the soviet player you have to nail in your head that these
counterattack will happen and you have to plan accordingly. If you just
consider them random events they will ruin your defence.
The (minor)
complaints
Well minor complaints… I have one… I think that
the layout of turn record track is puzzling. I understand why it has been done
this way, but I do not find convenient at all Having the text oriented in the
same direction all across the map makes reading easier, both solo and face to
face…
Said
that, this is only a very minor complain. The other “negative point” of this
game could be game balance. The Soviet player need a lot of experience. Playing
the Germans tends to be a tad easier an probably more fun for the first half. You
have to play the soviets times and time until you are comfortable with juggling
your troops between the various fronts.
The net result
As
much the reader know I can have some doubts on some of Ted’s designs I think
Hitler Turns East is a very good product. It does not only give you a good representation
of Barbarossa, it is also fun and engaging. And what to say about the big
subtitle on the cover the ATO special issue? Well I think that Ted’s answers is
attrition, soviet resistance, and overextension. More or less mine.
