WW2: Barbarossa to Berlin
Nobody ever invades Sweden
I finally broke out my totally tricked-out copy
of WW2: Barbarossa to Berlin: the deluxe map, new cards, plus – and this
is the cool part – my new C3i-supplied extra bonus Wermacht infantry corps
that was accidentally not included in the base game but which nobody ever needs
anyway. I like Barbarossa to Berlin a lot – more than Paths of Glory,
actually – but the amount of errata had gotten seriously out of hand,
especially card errata. It was to the point that the game was more or less
unplayable, which is probably why I hadn't actually played it in a long
time.
I have to say, the new map (in
either its Deluxe edition, or in the new second edition of the base game) is a
huge improvement over the original, first-edition map. The river crossings are
much clearer, and having the terrain symbols in circles outside the actual
spaces (where they won't be covered by unit counters and you can actually see
them) both enhance playability significantly, and there are a number of other
more minor, but still useful,
improvements.
Having not played
Barbarossa to Berlin probably in a couple years, we were rusty. As we pulled out
the counters to set up, we noticed the Swedes and Turks and commented about how
these just seemed like wasted space on the countersheet. Who ever invades
Sweden? Or Turkey? We mulled over scenarios. For Sweden, all we could come up
with was going after the Ore. For Turkey ... nothing. We couldn't come up with a
single plausible situation in which Turkey would be worth invading by either
side.
Anyway, Matt kicked off the game
with Von Paulus Pause, and pushed the offensive very hard in 1941 in Russia. He
sacrificed all to ops, trying to surround Moscow. He even forwent playing
PanzerArmee Afrika or making any effort at all in North Africa. This used to be
a winning strategy (or so the internet says, anyway), but it seems like the new
Yellow cards for the Allies (including the critical Industrial Evacuation) and
the rules allowing the Allied player to fish for Soviet reinforcement cards make
this a really tough row to hoe now. The Germans did well in terms of VPs, taking
Leningrad and comfortably exceeding their Eastern Front objectives, but there
were a lot of eliminated and depleted units, and Moscow was never seriously
endangered. This made '42 a tough year, and one mostly of repairing the
Wermacht.
In the meantime, I had
cleared out North Africa. With only token Axis resistance, I realized I had no
need to launch Torch. The American units were not needed in North Africa, and
Vichy would ultimately switch side when Casablanca came out, even if the
conference wouldn't really be in Casablanca. So I thought "sure, let's go for
Sledgehammer instead. I've never done this, and Norway would be a lot more
threatening than invading an already-liberated North
Africa".
This theory is not quite as
solid is it sounds. There is no supply source in Scandinavia, so you've got your
Allied Beachhead locked down in perpetuity, which means you can only launch
subsequent invasions that use separate British and Allied beachheads: that's
Husky, Overlord, the always rather dicey Roundup, and that's it. The smaller but
still threatening Shingle and Avalanche (given Italian weakness, and when
combined with US Reinforcements) are ruled out, as is Anvil-Dragoon. This is a
problem. A related issue is that all your serious battles are going to be fought
from Limited Supply, making activating units up there incredibly expensive
(you'll most likely need spend a 4 or 5 ops just to
try
to force the straights in
Denmark).
Plus, you're pretty much
forced to invade Sweden. There are two links from Scandinavia to Denmark, one
through Norway (which is across a body of water that, for game purposes, is a
river) and one through Sweden (which isn't). You're going to need that second
approach. Which means invading
Sweden.
(A small aside at this point on
Sweden: I was operating under a misunderstanding about the Ore rules in
Barbarossa to Berlin. The Swedes have an Ore space in this game. In every WWII
game ever made with any detail, there is a rule about the now-famous Swedish
Ore; usually, as long as the Germans can trace supply to Sweden, they get some
production advantage. I was sure there was a similar rule here, but after
scouring the rulebook, I believe there is not – the Ore space in Norway is
the critical one. The Swedish Ore is just another space in another neutral
country, and if the Germans want it, they need to invade. Which will happen
about the same time that GMT decides to start including an index in their
rulebooks so it doesn't take 20 minutes to figure these things out. So, invading
Norway is enough to knock the Axis hand down to
6).
So anyway. I invaded Sweden. We got
to use those two blue pieces. It wasn't that exciting. I had to destroy the
Swedish units, which was annoying, and seemed unrealistic – I have a hard
time seeing the Swedes taking up arms against the Allies in 1943, especially
with several powerful armies hanging out next door in
Norway.
At the end of the day, I think
the deck is stacked against doing Sledgehammer instead of Torch. It's just too
hard with so little supply, and it constrains your options too much by depriving
you of the ability to reuse that Allied Beachhead and severely limiting your
options in the Mediterranean. You just can't drain off enough German units, and
it's too close to German replacement centers. Italy seems a much better way to
go. Norway does knock the Germans down to 6 cards by depriving them of Ore,
which is definitely something, but I just don't think it's enough given the
risks to subsequent invasion possibilities. If you invade Norway, and then get
Husky or Roundup or Overlord in a timely manner, maybe it's OK; but if an
invasion of mainland Europe is delayed a turn or two because you couldn't do
Shingle or Avalanche, I just don't know. I'd have to think really, really hard
about doing it again. I think you would need not just to clear North Africa
early, but also enter Total War as early as possible (Summer '42) in order to
minimize your risk of not seeing a follow-up invasion in a timely manner. A
Sledgehammer invasion will put you more at risk of a strange card distribution
situation.
We haven't finished yet;
we're to '44, but will need one more session to finish the game. After blunting
the initial invasion of the Soviet Union, and clearing North Africa, I was
feeling pretty good about my prospects; but I think the whole Scandinavian
campaign has been too much of an expensive sideshow, and I fear I've lost
ground. We'll see.
In the end, I really
like this game. It's not perfect – I wish it had more latitude for
different strategic approaches – but every game has to make
trade-offs, and of this style of card driven games, I find Barbarossa to Berlin
to be one of the most successful. The trade-offs between events and operations
generally make sense, a (generally) good selection of events has been chosen,
and the tactical game is rich but not too fiddly. I really like how the
offensive power of armor drives events on the Eastern Front, with both players
always having a strong incentive to attack, and it feels nicely historical. The
complexity is quite manageable. The only real complaint is the game length, but
it's not hard to record and re-set-up, so we usually play over a couple
sessions.
I still don't have a
plausible scenario in which Turkey would enter play though...
Posted: Wednesday - August 16, 2006 at 05:43 PM