Operation Uranus: Opinions on play, version, etc.

[HirooOnoda]

Been looking at this battle.  Questions:

1. Which version (scenario) is the most competitive/entertaining? 
2. Is the SS rescue scenario good or just a German "walk in the park"?
3. What about the "retreat" scenario?

I'm excited to game this battle, but don't want to start a game that isn't competitive.

[Landser34]

Been looking at this battle.  Questions:

1. Which version (scenario) is the most competitive/entertaining? 
2. Is the SS rescue scenario good or just a German "walk in the park"?
3. What about the "retreat" scenario?

I'm excited to game this battle, but don't want to start a game that isn't competitive.

Played the campaign a few times if your playing Germans in my opinion you will want the SS or the Russians will win hands down.

[HirooOnoda]

Been looking at this battle.  Questions:

1. Which version (scenario) is the most competitive/entertaining? 
2. Is the SS rescue scenario good or just a German "walk in the park"?
3. What about the "retreat" scenario?

I'm excited to game this battle, but don't want to start a game that isn't competitive.

Played the campaign a few times if your playing Germans in my opinion you will want the SS or the Russians will win hands down.

So is the "retreat" scenario unbalanced?

[Plain Ian]

Been looking at this battle.  Questions:

1. Which version (scenario) is the most competitive/entertaining? 
2. Is the SS rescue scenario good or just a German "walk in the park"?
3. What about the "retreat" scenario?

I'm excited to game this battle, but don't want to start a game that isn't competitive.

Played the campaign a few times if your playing Germans in my opinion you will want the SS or the Russians will win hands down.

I'm curious as to how the standard campaign game plays out? I've looked at 1119-01a and can see that the units in Stalingrad all start off at full strength with no fatigue and are not Fixed? To counter balance this there are some very large Victory Point hexes in the city to hold the German back.



However there looks to be a very nice scenario created by Atheory which takes the opposite approach which gives low Victory Points for holding the city but gives a more realistic picture of the condition of the German units holding the city by making them Fixed, heavily fatigued and depleted.



I can't see any German player trying to strip German units from the city in Atheory's scenario but I'm pretty sure that if I played the Germans in the standard scenario I'd send as many units as possible west to try to hold off the Russians.

[FLG]

Been looking at this battle.  Questions:

1. Which version (scenario) is the most competitive/entertaining? 
2. Is the SS rescue scenario good or just a German "walk in the park"?
3. What about the "retreat" scenario?

I'm excited to game this battle, but don't want to start a game that isn't competitive.

Played the campaign a few times if your playing Germans in my opinion you will want the SS or the Russians will win hands down.

The problem with the retreat scenario is that there are no supply sources behind the Don other than on the map edge. So if you pull back from Stalingrad you loose much of your supply and if you become surrounded on the Don that's it, your entire army is isolated. It's not like being surrounded at Stalingard where you are still in supply.

As the aim of the scenario is to make things easier for the Germans by allowing them to shorten their supply lines this is a major oversight.

When I played it we modified the scenario to add supply sources at a few locations like Gurayev to represent new air fields which supplies would have been flown into to replace Pitomnik and Gumrak. We set the supply levels so that they matched those at these locations at the start of the game.

With these mods the game was still tough for the Germans but enjoyable.