Korsun Pocket: Decisive Battles of WWII

Rating:
Summary: Realistic Game
Review: This is a great game. The Avalon Hill board gamers will instantly recognize this as a super board game which, with the use of computers, impressively improves on prior board type strategy or tactics games. The two playing manuals are massive (80+ pages taken together) and there are a lot of detailed rules to learn and remember. Once those rules are grasped, and most of them are intuitive, the game moves along very well and it is realistic.

In my opinion this is a true war game which involves strategy and tactics on the "Army" level. Generals fighting on the front, such as Bradley or Patton, were always yelling for more stuff but they had little control over what the nation did to supply them with more stuff. They were not concerned with building recruit centers in New York, or what amount of iron ore was available for the manufacture of tanks. They were concerned with what they had at the moment and what was going to arrive within the next month. Too many of the so called 3-D games take the iron ore problem into account in the game and they do no even try to show what is going on at the front on the multi divisional level. The 3-D "strategy" games just do not recreate a real war game, such as the type used in the military, at any level. Controlling a few men marching through a forest is not strategy. Telling your men where to place a machine gun isn't strategy. The 3-D war games are fantasy and that is about all.

This game is a much better representation of what a commander of an Army or Army Group would go through in meeting and fighting the enemy. The operational demands on the player are realistic, demanding and sometimes overwhelming - but that is why the game works. The player must focus on supplies, reinforcements and the combat power of his units. It takes a long while to digest all this in such a way that the player can successfully function within the game but it is a playable games even before all this becomes more or less second nature.

No hand eye coordination problems in this game. It is brain work all the way.

I started war gaming with a board game published by Avalon Hill entitled Tactics II. I was in grade school at the time and thought the game was very complex. I guess for its day it really was. In reality the game was pretty easy to get into. There were few unit types (armor and infantry mainly) and the terrain features were simplistic. Weather was usually not a factor unless you wanted it to be. The battle outcomes were by dice rolls (still are in this game) and easy to understand. Later games like France 1940 increased the realism and complexity massively but kept the same basic movement and combat ideas. This game is a quantum leap beyond those complex board games of long ago and the realism increases with the complexity.

I think the publishers would do well to include with any of their games, as part of the bundle so to speak, a Tactics II kind of game as a primer on how to play. Those gamers who have not played these old board games may have trouble getting the foundational items mixed up with the details. A simple to play game like a Tactics II format where there is no attempt to recreate a historical situation and both the red and blue armies are equally matched with only the most basic moves and combat would make learning the more complex game much simpler. Just my idea.

Print out and at least skim the manuals prior to starting even the tutorials. The game manual looks great with lots of color and good explanations of how the game is played. The tutorials are ok in that a player gets to know the game well, but a lot of things seem to be put off too long. The first thing I would do is teach the player about combat rather than movement and the first tutorial should concentrate on combat. It would be easy to set up the tutorial that way. After all, combat is what we buy this stuff for.

The game itself involves a clash on the eastern front in World War Two between fairly equally matched Soviet and German armies. The game map is a long ribbon of land rather than the entire eastern front and all game play is limited to that ribbon of terrain. Air power is present for interdiction of supplies and for air support during combat, although probably not as important as it was during the real campaigns it is at least present. Artillery is a key component in this game, as in WWII, and learning its use is key to victory. Weather plays a good role and it is realistic in its impacts. Supply is also massively important and a failure to take supplies and reinforcements into account will lead to ignominious defeats.

I like this game a lot. I am looking forward to other SSG/Matrix games using these same principles.

Rating:
Summary: Realistic Game
Review: This is a great game. The Avalon Hill board gamers will instantly recognize this as a super board game which, with the use of computers, impressively improves on prior board type strategy or tactics games. The two playing manuals are massive (80+ pages taken together) and there are a lot of detailed rules to learn and remember. Once those rules are grasped, and most of them are intuitive, the game moves along very well and it is realistic.

In my opinion this is a true war game which involves strategy and tactics on the "Army" level. Generals fighting on the front, such as Bradley or Patton, were always yelling for more stuff but they had little control over what the nation did to supply them with more stuff. They were not concerned with building recruit centers in New York, or what amount of iron ore was available for the manufacture of tanks. They were concerned with what they had at the moment and what was going to arrive within the next month. Too many of the so called 3-D games take the iron ore problem into account in the game and they do no even try to show what is going on at the front on the multi divisional level. The 3-D "strategy" games just do not recreate a real war game, such as the type used in the military, at any level. Controlling a few men marching through a forest is not strategy. Telling your men where to place a machine gun isn't strategy. The 3-D war games are fantasy and that is about all.

This game is a much better representation of what a commander of an Army or Army Group would go through in meeting and fighting the enemy. The operational demands on the player are realistic, demanding and sometimes overwhelming - but that is why the game works. The player must focus on supplies, reinforcements and the combat power of his units. It takes a long while to digest all this in such a way that the player can successfully function within the game but it is a playable games even before all this becomes more or less second nature.

No hand eye coordination problems in this game. It is brain work all the way.

I started war gaming with a board game published by Avalon Hill entitled Tactics II. I was in grade school at the time and thought the game was very complex. I guess for its day it really was. In reality the game was pretty easy to get into. There were few unit types (armor and infantry mainly) and the terrain features were simplistic. Weather was usually not a factor unless you wanted it to be. The battle outcomes were by dice rolls (still are in this game) and easy to understand. Later games like France 1940 increased the realism and complexity massively but kept the same basic movement and combat ideas. This game is a quantum leap beyond those complex board games of long ago and the realism increases with the complexity.

I think the publishers would do well to include with any of their games, as part of the bundle so to speak, a Tactics II kind of game as a primer on how to play. Those gamers who have not played these old board games may have trouble getting the foundational items mixed up with the details. A simple to play game like a Tactics II format where there is no attempt to recreate a historical situation and both the red and blue armies are equally matched with only the most basic moves and combat would make learning the more complex game much simpler. Just my idea.

Print out and at least skim the manuals prior to starting even the tutorials. The game manual looks great with lots of color and good explanations of how the game is played. The tutorials are ok in that a player gets to know the game well, but a lot of things seem to be put off too long. The first thing I would do is teach the player about combat rather than movement and the first tutorial should concentrate on combat. It would be easy to set up the tutorial that way. After all, combat is what we buy this stuff for.

The game itself involves a clash on the eastern front in World War Two between fairly equally matched Soviet and German armies. The game map is a long ribbon of land rather than the entire eastern front and all game play is limited to that ribbon of terrain. Air power is present for interdiction of supplies and for air support during combat, although probably not as important as it was during the real campaigns it is at least present. Artillery is a key component in this game, as in WWII, and learning its use is key to victory. Weather plays a good role and it is realistic in its impacts. Supply is also massively important and a failure to take supplies and reinforcements into account will lead to ignominious defeats.

I like this game a lot. I am looking forward to other SSG/Matrix games using these same principles.