We were casting around for something to do, and another run through of Catastrophe Games 'Fall Blau' seemed in order. Avid readers will recall our great victory in the last game, amassing no less than 30 VP (27 required) and taking Astrakhan in the Caucasus. I won't overly rehash the game info, you can read about it here: https://catastrophegames.net/campaign-fall-blau/ but essentially this is the 1942 invasion of the Caucasus covering July through to the end of October at three turns a month. The game uses an abstract point to point area movement system, each area being unlocked as a 'campaign' in an expanding sequence as you advance deep into Russia.
Previous game report here: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/05/fall-blau-by-decision-games.html I had incorrectly attributed this title to Decision Games before.
Variety in each play through is via the Armies the players are allocated, which are drawn as cards. Last time we had Italian 8th Army, German 17th Army and German 4th Panzer Army. The 8th and 17th were mountain warfare specialists.
This time we drew an all-German force, 2nd, 6th and 1st Panzer Armies. Each commander had special characteristics - Von Salmuth (2nd) was good against counterattacks, Paulus (6th) whistled up extra supply and Kleist (1PA) could recce upcoming event cards. 2nd and 6th Army were also city warfare specialists, while 1st Panzer had the usual panzer trick of getting double hits on 6 in combat and being able to manouvre against two Soviet armies in a turn instead of one.
Given the Army specialisms, we were going to be relying on special event cards to take on the stronger mountain areas and would probably have to focus more on city busting - which meant Schwerpunkt Stalingrad instead of Astrakhan.
Sorry about the in-game photos, there is a lot going on and the screen display is lousy. We relied on Tim for a lot of verbal description of what is happening. John, Jerry and I were the players for this one, and as we had two infantry and one panzer army, we followed the same broad scheme of tactical manouvre as last time - we used Kleist panzers to manouvre one or two Soviet armies into position, then rearranged the front for the powerful infantry armies to attack them.
Early in the game the areas aren't very well defended and aren't worth many VPs, so we focussed on opening up the road net to expand our operational options.
We managed to capture Rostov fairly early, This was a tough fight and it left us very low on supply as we'd done a lot of manouvre up to that point. After losses sustained and to rebuild our supplies we were forced to mainly halt for two turns (iirc we reorganised four of the armies over two turns). This at least allowed us to build up some decent event cards, and we also drew both(!) 'Major Soviet Counterattack' cards, which Von Salmuth fended of at some cost. At least they were out of the deck.
At maximum supply, albeit not full strength, we pushed into the Caucasus and managed to capture Maikop (or Grozny? I can't recall) burning our fortuitously acquired mountain troops in the mountains. The far Caucasus was looking increasingly out of reach though given the attack and supply restrictions. I t had been so much easier with our two mountain armies in the previous game.
Time for Drag Nach Stalingrad. We took on the fortress at Kalach, the most heavily defended area we had encountered so far and which makes an automatic counterattack when activated. This managed to reduce 1st Panzer Army to 1SP! We were forced to commit both 2nd and 6th Armies along with the Luftwaffe to reduce it, but finally the Russian defenders were crushed and the road to Stalingrad was open.
That seemed a good time to break for the night.
The following evening was mainly the Battle for Stalingrad. We had to make up scads of victory points to even come close to winning our best bet was to pick up the 4 and 5VP areas of Stalingrad Centre and Volga Riverbank.
We'd attacked Stalingrad in the previous game and knew that ideally you had to take Mamyan Curgev before attacking the Centre. In a very timely fashion the Luftwaffe and Assault Pioneers turned up and we ground our way into the city. As October wore on, even Dora the rail gun turned up and we were able to capture the centre of Stalingrad, but only by throwing in Italians and Hungarians to reinforce our depleted formations.
Finally on the very last turn of October we actually captured the Volga river bank for another 5 VPs! Unfortunately we had a total of 25VP and needed 27 to win. We had two more areas we could attack (Elista and Stavropol) each worth 1VP, but sadly after capturing Stalingrad we only had Kleists shattered 1st Panzer Army left. Throwing in 3rd Panzer Division, Kleist amazingly managed to capture Elista against the odds giving us 26VP but sadly the Germans ran out of puff out at that point and the Soviet winter counter offensive started with the Germans just short of victory.
Agh, pipped at the post! Rather like Market Garden, the operation was 90% successful.... That was a very different game to last time, it felt like a real challenge and those are always fun to play. Unlike the previous game, we had tons of supplies but our forces were perennially under strength as losses were so heavy. The supply situation was probably so good as we'd not pushed far into the Caucasus, but we came so close to a win. There were a couple of turns where we were perhaps a bit more cautious than we needed to. If only we'd attacked Stavropol earlier... well, we didn't. Time for an unpleasant chat with the Fuhrer.
What a great game, very entertaining and good value for money. Tim says this is the ninth time he's played it.
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