Rollbahn Ost

 Tim had brought a filler game to our Mons 1914 day in case we finished early. Rollbahn Ost is one of our old Wargames Developments show participation games and all the components were still boxed up so it was easy enough to bring along.

The game covers the 1941 campaign in Russia and is for three players. Each German Army Group (North, Centre, South) has an axis of advance, with an objective (Leningrad, Moscow and Kharkov respectively). First to their objective wins, but if noone takes any of the objectives, all the Germans lose.

Each player gets a little tank to represent their Army Group. Each uncaptured zone has an notional defence strength of '10' and the Germans advance by playing cards of the right suit (hearts for Army Group North, Clubs for centre etc), the total of which, plus 1D6 which must exceed the Russian defence total.

If you draw cards of the 'wrong' suit in your hand, you may play them on the other Army Groups in the spirit of cooperation, or hang on to them like a big meany. Diamonds had various events, mainly beefing up the Russian defences with extra units, or even conducting counterattacks.

Army Group Centre got off to a flying starting, taking Pinsk.

You aren't forced to attack, instead each player tended to build up a decent set of cards (supplies, men, tanks etc) before playing them in clumps. There was a bit of a run of diamonds early in the game, whcih meant the players had to add one Russian division to a zone of their choice, which funnily enough was usually in someone elses Army sector.

Army Group South is in big trouble now, must be all those Soviet Mech Corps in the Ukraine.

AGS did finally get moving, only to run into a Soviet armoured counterattack (the Ace of Diamonds) ! Fortunately they defeated it.

Army Group North made fine progress and captured Leningrad before the weather turned. Now to see if the others caught up.

After their initial successes, AGC was stuck at Minsk, although AGC had pushed past the Pripet Marshes.

The game is run on a clock timer, and after 10 minutes, it starts to snow. Not a problem for AGN safely tucked up in Leningrad, but in the other sectors, every turn the Germans do not attack, adds another Soviet division against them in the objective zones. Attacking at low odds just burns cards, waiting for better cards stacks the defences.

There are suddenly an awful lot of Russians on the table.

As time finally ran out at 15 minutes, AGC had pushed up to the outskirts of Moscow, but poor old Army Group South was stuck miles from Kharkov.

Well played Russell (AGN) who I'd noticed was cannily hanging onto the other Army Groups cards, and a hard earned German victory.

This was a very popular participation game at various shows, and I'm glad it saw the light of day once more.