Assistance Playing East Prussia `14

[jim pfleck]

When France 14 came out I bought it right away, played with it a bit for a month or tow, then shelved it for several years. The game moves at a slower pace than the Panzer Campaigns and at first I thought it was boring and I could not make sense of the best way to play it (even after reading the designer notes). I started playing it 2 years ago after reading a book on WWI and becoming interested in the period again, and am totally addicted.

Each army in the games (Germans, French, Russian, British) all play very differently based on their morale, firepower, melee, and command range ratings. As Grumpy said, the Russian army is a very fragile thing in EP14. It has a high firepower if its units are not disrupted, but its morale is very low and its command range (as noted) is horrible so its units disorder very easily. Once disordered, you can mass for melee if you want.

So, soften up the undisordered units with ranged fire or with one, maximum two infantry battalions in a hex. Also, with the "fragile" morale, once the Russians are disordered they can me captured if isolated in one attack. So once you break their line they come apart rapidly. Human players, at least, will use the "Russian Two-Step" to avoid destruction. They will just keep taking two steps back so your pursuing infantry cannot melee them, and the Russians hope that your infantry will gradually become disordered in the process.

So, in the long scenario you are playing, you may feel frustrated now, but the tide can shift so rapidly in EP14. With all of the rivers, one mistake by the Russians and a whole Russian corps can be gobbled up in 4 turns....

Maybe try something smaller too, in order to start practicing tactics without having to think about eh operational movement.