Ready to answer your Kharkov '43 Questions...

[Strela]

What is the reason behind the atrocious "on foot" movement cost?

Infantry can move 1(!) hex / turn on clear hexes.

It's in the campaign notes I believe, the weather was atrocious between the snow and mud and the movement rates are reduced considerably.

Correct - it's in the designer notes on page 7 under movement and also page 10 of the designer notes.

In our first test version of the game we were finding everything was happening ahead of the historical movement rate. With the low unit density players were able to run rings around each other. Forces were getting cut off which never were.

We then slowed movement down with a new parameter file that increased the overall impact of bad weather and guess what, the historical advance rates fell out. Even nicer players had to look at the transport net and pick and chose how they went forward - which allowed the defender with his low density some idea where to defend.

And the final 'nice' outcome was that the different types of units came in to their own. Cavalry are great off road but not great for storming a position, infantry are great at assaulting but take time to come forward unless they get on a road and mechanised are good all rounders.

It was interesting to see the comments from the play testers - most found it challenging to begin, but then agreed that it felt right for the climactic conditions, Additionally, there was no rushing from one side of the board to the other - you had to think about where you were going and then you were committed.

It was a very important design decision and we tested it pretty extensively before including it - one tester even went as far as suggesting the other Eastern Front winter titles would benefit from this change.

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I have just noticed the word "interdiction" mentioned in the notes for this game. Can you explain how it works?

Are you just meaning air/artillery attacks on units I can see, or do you mean air/artillery units firing on a road junction that is unseen, in the hope it slows down units that move through?

Cheers
Neil

Hi Neil,

Interdiction is air interdiction - details of how this works is on page 55 of the user manual.

The change implemented is :

Change so that Interdiction attacks have twice the chance of Disruption and can cause the loss of up to half the movement allowance in movement points.