Fall Blau by Decision Games

 This week Tim took us to Decision Games 'Fall Blau', another solo game this covers the German 1942 summer offensive into the Caucasus and Stalingrad. Sadly like so many of these games, it seems to have had a microscopically short print run, but second hand copies do pop up from time to time. 

If you are interested in looking at the rules, they are here: https://gamers-hq.de/media/pdf/54/7e/e2/CFB_rules_V9_small.pdf, but in brief it as operational game where you manouvre Axis army sized formations against a system run Soviet enemy. The 'map' is an abstract point to point system where  you take a particular area (denoted as a 'campaign card') it unlocks other areas, so gradually you make your way across southern Russia. Each area has variety of characteristics, how many VPs it is worth, how many defenders and special features or terrain - eg cities and mountains are harder to attack and some areas consume additional supplies. 

Rather than model all the German forces, three armies are randomly selected. We drew Hoth (4th Panzer Army), Ruoff (17th Army) and Gariboldi (Italian 8th Army). All these formations have a strength in blocks, and various special characteristics eg both 8th and 17th Armies have attached mountain troops which helps attacking mountains, 17th Army can re-roll one combat dice, the Panzer Army inflicts extra damage on a '6' but mostly importantly can manouvre agaunst two areas per turn using extra supply AND if Hoth burns a strength block, can re-activate themselves for another action.

Here is the general game layout. Campaign map and VP track on the left. Army layout and Soviet opposition on the right. At the moment the red (Soviet)m boxes are empty as we are about to start another phase. The potential areas to attack are the stack of cards to the right of the Axis forces.

Under the Axis armies are special event cards. Some of these have to played at once (Soviet counterattacks etc) but a lot of these can be kept, so eg we've got some pioneer support (good for city fighting), Luftwaffe (can be used for combat or resupply), Rumanian mountain Corps (good vs mountains or can be used as reinforcements). The event cards are single use and you can only have a maximum of five. Two are drawn each turn.

Campaign progress. VP track at the top. 27 VP for a basic victory. An interesting wrinkle is that if you end the turn with VP on one of the red circles, bad things happen (essentially more Soviet forces turn up) so you need to plan your advance to avoid this.

You need supplies to do anything - manouvre, fight etc. You can recover these mainly by stopping for a turn and reorganising your forces. An operational pause.

Finally we have the turn marker, each month has three turns, and we go up until November. Each turn each army can do stuff until it is 'exhausted' - but that essentially means one manouvre, one reorg, one combat. You need to manouvre to bring Soviet objective cards into play, and then you attack them as a separate action.

We played this as a team game with John, myself and Jerry playing the Axis, adjudicated by Tim. I apologise in advance for the dreadful 'action' shots, we were using a split camera to track the action and I was playing this on two screens. I'll keep these horrible blurry shots to a minimum.

Our first objective was Veronesh, which unlocked some other objectives. Fairly early on we worked out an operational approach - we'd use Hoth to manouvre and bring on one or two objectives (one in this case), then we'd reorder the front to put the objective(s) against one or more of our powerful infantry armies, and then we'd try and defeat them that turn. If any active Russian units were left next to our troops, they would counterattack, and we didn't want that.

This approach was fairly supply intensive - Hoth would use one or two supply to bring on the objectives, another supply to reorder the front and then one or two supplies to attack the enemy. So every three turns or so we'd stop and reorganise, which gave each army an extra 2 supplies (or up to 6 in total) and would replace one lost block.

This one was quite a big battle. Our losses weren't high but they were steady, and we were careful to use our event cards to best effect as either combat bonuses or reinforcements. so that we never actually lost a battle, even if some were expensive. 

As we got deeper into Russia, the opposition got stronger. Both in terms of enemy blocks and also terrain restrictions (lots of mountains in the Caucasus!) and supply. The more distant objectives required 2 supply points to attack instead of 1.

We continued to bumble forward however, survived one major Russian counterattack and one minor one and by the end of September had accumulated a respectable 16 VP, 11 short of the toal needed for a marginal victory. We had pushed far into the Caucausus and taken Rostov and Grozny, but not Maikop or Astrakhan. Progress had been slower on the Stalingrad axis where we'd taken Kalach, but not actually reached the outskirts of the city. 

So far we'd managed to avoid losing any complete armies but both Hoth and 8th Army had fallen to half strength at times. We ended up deploying Rumanian forces to prop them up as we couldn't afford to reorganise for an entire month to bring them up to strength.

We broke for the night at that point, six turns and 11 VP to go. I wonder if we will make it?

After looking at the various options, the following evening we decided to continue our offensive to the Caspian. The objectives were really quite tough now, defended by at least four Russian blocks, unusually mountainous and consuming additional supply. 

Fortunately we had our two mountain armies, which helped, and our usual combination of using 4th Panzer Army to set the Russians up, followed by assaults from 8th and 17th Armies carried us to the banks of the Caspian. Astrakhan finally fell after a vicious fight in which the Italians suffered heavy losses and the reinforcing Rumanians were annihilated. 

We now switched our attention to the Stalingrad front, where progress had been slow. 

The first objectives were to press into the city, we took Kotelinovko and the Stalingrad outskirts fairly easily. We were then faced with fighting to the Volga, which meant taking the Mamyan Gurgev Hill, the the city centre and finally the Volga crossings. We could have bypassed the hill but it gave the defenders a big advantage if you didn't take it. 

After a run of bad event cards, we finally got lucky, and drew some which would be useful in city fighting. Like this one.. 

We drew Dora on the penultimate turn, and just in time as we were about to assault the centre of Stalingrad. 

The city fighting was brutal with heavy losses, and we also burned through our supplies. With two turns to go, we had a choice, stop and resupply followed by a big push supported by massed Luftwaffe strikes, or try and bounce the defenders with what we had and use the Luftwaffe for air supply. In the end we staked it all on one big push after spending a turn reorganising. 

We had 25 VPs, needed 27 for a marginal victory, and Stalingrad city centre was worth 4 but heavily defended. After reorganising all our units were at full strength so once again we manouvered with Hoth, put 17th Army against Stalingrad and for some bonus points, 8th Army against Elista. The Italians easily took Elista, but there was a mighty struggle in Stalingrad, defended by 5 Russians. The Luftwaffe destroyed 2 Russians, Dora destroyed another 2 and in heavy fighting fighting, 17th Army inflicted one hit.... which was enough, and the centre of Stalingrad fell. 

At game end, we'd accumulated 30VP, for a tactical victory. Although we hadn't taken the Volga crossings, our progress in the Caucasus made up for it, so we achieved more than the Germans did historically. All very pleasing, but of course at the end of November, the Russian winter counteroffensive starts, a very different game... 

What a great game that was, very enjoyable and it actually felt like an army level command game, particularly having to balance combat power and supply. Although these are designed as solo games, they work very well as cooperative team games.