Team Game

[Strela]

The only scenarios I have played that are very tough for the Germans are those that have bunkers and too short of a period of time to clear them.

The early korps scenarios all have lots of bunkers, and even though you might theoretically have enough time to clear them, it could quite probably be too costly. 0705_06 might currently be the early korps-sized scenario where you have a reasonable chance to win.

Currently, there's a night and day difference between scenarios where the defenders hold a bunker line and scenarios where the defenders are in trenches or improved positions, like the scenario you just finished. The Soviets, particularly with platoon-sized D quality defenders, don't really stand a chance without bunkers due to trenches and improved positions only reducing casualties by a small amount (the game has the same significant difference in protective benefits for bunkers compared to trenches as PzC)

The scenarios where the Soviets are attacking seem to be as difficult as the ones where the Germans are attacking bunkers, so it certainly wouldn't be easy pickings to play as the Soviet attacker.

I'm reluctant to play an early korps sized German scenario with Soviet defenders in bunkers or the later army/korps sized scenarios you mentioned, as you're likely to run out of time as the attacker or suffer unsustainable losses.

I really want to make it clear that the slow grind through bunkers vs. much faster progress vs trenches/IP's is completely historical. The Soviets were tenacious when in their prepared lines much less so when in more temporary positions. Much of the action you see in the first two days scenarios are the Germans breaking through the first two (of three) defensive lines. The last major line was up on the Psel River/Prokhorovka and that was never to the same depth and preparation as the first line. The action was much more fluid in the days leading up to Prokhorovka. The Germans suffered the bulk of their casualties when assaulting the Soviet prepared defenses.

The same issue happened to the Soviet assaults. They were poorly coordinated and facing an elite enemy. The major counter offensives on both July 8th & 12th were typified by heavy losses for the Russians. The scenarios essentially show this and were balanced with this in mind.

Now that said, we never got the depth of testing we would have liked for the head to head (HTH) scenarios. If we did you would not have seen the game for another year. It takes a significantly longer time to play test a scenario between two players than it does against the AI and we never had time to do more than one or two HTH play throughs.

Many of the issues being identified in the HTH scenarios are being addressed and will be available when we patch the game. That said, it is an iterative approach and we need the game to be played to understand where the issues you are seeing are. In some cases it is problems with the scenario setup, in others it is players not understanding how to best use the game system or not understanding the particular historical situation that is being simulated. We will continue to feedback on your observations and highlight which category any issues fall under.

Essentially, you will see modifications for the HTH games in regard to number of game turns, releases and victory point requirements. these changes will be more accurate the more feedback we get.

Don't hold off playing the scenarios!!!

David