One map, 480 counters, rule booklet, four player aid cards, ziplocked $35. May be ordered through Admiralty House (805-534-9723) or The Gamers. In the last few years, we've begun to see East Front titles move beyond those old familiar battles and more to the latter period of the war. It's in the later part of the war that you can find what are, in game turns, more balanced battles, and what are tactically and operationally more interesting situations: the Russians get to do something more than throw a lot of cheap units in the Germans' way and pray the Hun makes some dumb mistake they can take advantage of. The Red Army is strong, experienced, raring to go and fully capable of dangerous offensive operations. The German Army may be missing some teeth by now but it is still a formidable opponent. It is here that we find John Desch's latest game, Eastwall, the second in his and Moments in History's "Ring of Fire" series. In the "Ring of Fire" series, the games are not overly complex, but they are designed to be hard to play "right". Anyone with any experience playing any sort of wargames can pick these up quickly, but winning takes some thought, a cool head and a good sense of timing. I, for one, was very excited by the release of Eastwall. The situation is one which, at first glance, promises a lot of action. The game begins in the aftermath of the Kursk and Kharkov battles of 1943 and the Germans are in headlong retreat to the Dnepr River, across which they will try to form an effective defense line. The Russians have to get across the river and break the line while liberating Kiev and several other Russian cities. Since the Germans are far weaker than the Russians and start out on the "wrong" (east) side of the Dnepr, in not very defensible terrain, you have a classic breakthrough and pursuit situation followed by the probable establishment of a good German line along the Dnepr, a mighty Russian effort to breach that line, and then, once that line is breached, furious German counterattacks to contain Russian bridgeheads and prevent more breakthroughs. This, at least, is what I thought the game would be when I first saw it set up . Sorry to say, Eastwall was, ultimately, a letdown in that regard. Eastwall uses the same rules as "Ring of Fire" (ZOC bonds, tank combat, offensive and defensive reserves). What it has added are Russian off-map boxes: the Stavka Reserve, Stalin's Special Reserve and the Maskirovka (Russian for "strategic deception") Box. Each turn, the Russians have to roll two dice for their tank and mechanized formations and one for their leg units. The result gives the number of units that Stalin yanks off out of the battle, presumably for strategic reserves or for use along other fronts. Since the requirements for Stalin's Special Reserve change (by die roll) from turn to turn, units are constantly cycling in and out of this reserve. It may be a bother to the Russians, but, on the other hand, it also keeps the Germans guessing how strong a force with which they will have to contend. Russian units leaving Uncle Joe's reserve get released to the Maskirovka box from where they enter the map anywhere on Soviet- held ground. The Russians can use Maskirovka to set up some very nasty surprises for the German . The other Soviet off-map box is the Stavka Reserve. This box is at the player's (rather than Stalin's) own disposal and he can withdraw, as he sees fit, units to the Stavka Box to be refit with replacement points or to shift them over to the Maskirovka Box, next turn, for redeployment to the map. The Soviet off-map boxes elegantly simulate Stalin's hands in the pie and also allow the Russian player to pull some surprise punches on the Germans. Like many of John Desch's brainchildren, this is a simple but highly effective mechanism that adds a lot of tension for both players. Soviet tank units have been up-gunned in Eastwall. Ring of Fire players may remember those disappointing Russian tank armored combat ratings of "1" falling in droves before the German "4"s in fight after fight. In Eastwall, the Russian tanks are now "2's". That may not seem like much of an increase, but if a German Panzer division is up against 3-4 Soviet tank and mechanized corps, which is not an unlikely event in this game, it is going to get beaten up in the tank combat phase and then eliminated in the following regular combat phase. The Germans have to be very careful about making any sort of gratuitous or unsupported tank attacks in Eastwall. Eastwall also gives the Russians 6 paratrooper brigades that can be used twice in drops of three units each. They are not strong units and had better be used with care. Like the Russian Maskirovka unit deployments, they can, if used at the right place and time, cause the Germans a big headache. So far, so good. Why then did I find the game a letdown? The campaign is one I've wanted to see in a game for a long time, John Desch is a great game designer and Moments in History is a company I respect. Eastwall has some serious problems though. There has been a lot of arguing and discussion on John Kranz's internet board about the game. Uli Blennemann has been busier than a drug dealer at a Chinese swim meet trying to answer them, sometimes giving different answers to the same questions. It's hard to figure out how so many things go overlooked in the game. The rules, for one, are very incomplete and inexact. The single most glaring problem concerns the German fortifications on the map. These fortifications, like the ones in Ring of Fire, are a bear to break and require lots of Russian lives, artillery and air strikes. Eastwall's map has one set of German fortifications in red and another set of German fortifications printed in yellow along the Dnepr River. They are identified on the terrain key as "alternate" fortifications with no explanation in the rules about why they are there. My first few playings, I assumed they were not "really" there and that some subsequent MiH newsletter might include a scenario allowing the Germans to use the alternate fortifications. Furthermore, I am not aware from any of my WWII reading of any strong systematic or continuous fortifications being built along the Dnepr in 1943, since Hitler was still in his "stand fast" mode. The game played very well as long as the "alternate" fortifications were not in use. The Germans fell back behind the river, set up a line, the Russians broke through in a few places, the Germans counterattacked, and those huge swirling tank battles we love to play followed. Furthermore, it also played out much like the historical fighting. No problems so far. That is, until I began to read the game's discussion on the Manzanaland site and reading the "errata" this generated! Somewhere along the line, Moments in History decided to turn the "alternate" Dnepr River fortifications into "real" ones. OK, I thought, set it up again and play it out. I did, and after three play-throughs, the newly fortified Dnepr River line may as well have been the Atlantic Wall. I tried everything: para-drops, Russian infantry massed for overwhelming odds, barrages, air strikes and offensive reserve phase attacks. Nothing would break that line. Why? The Germans can save enough infantry, rebuild enough destroyed divisions and call on reinforcements to cover every hex along the Dnepr line before the Russians can bring up the forces sufficient to attack it. Furthermore, the Germans have enough Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions in reserve behind the line to reinforce most points the Russians will try to force a crossing. That would not be (and was not in my playings) an insurmountable problem were it not for those "alternate" fortifications that MiH threw into the mix. Problems One look at the CRT will show you the problem. At the highest odds column, the most damage you can do to a defender is three step losses. The CRT does not offer retreats so you have to clean out a hex to take it. Whatever points the Russians decide to try to force the Dnepr can be reinforced endlessly, battle after battle. And since the Russians have only four slow HQ's to support those cross-river attacks and a limited number of barrages to nullify the fortification effects, the game can be lost for them before it is halfway through. Since these "alternate" fortifications are historically questionable, their death grip on the game is unforgivable. It ruined the game totally for me. Some other problems have also surfaced. One is with the use of the Soviet off-map boxes. In discussions on Kranz's board, people have been talking about putting more units into Stalin's Special Reserve than the dierolls call for in order to get the free replacements that units in that box receive. Nothing in the rules prohibit that. True, only the "gamiest" of players would abuse the reserve boxes that way, but the whole problem could have easily been prevented by one sentence prohibiting the overloading the Soviet reserves to get free replacements. Bridgeheads are also a problem. The bridgehead rule simulates Russian ad-hoc river crossings by infantry units. These bridgeheads can be very useful to the Soviet player because once he does establish a bridgehead with an infantry force, he can then use it to drive armored forces over the Dnepr. What happens when a Russian infantry unit advances over the Dnepr after combat? Does it receive a bridgehead marker? The rules are silent on that subject. I reasoned that if a unit could "swim" its way across the river to form a bridgehead, it could do the same having fought its way across the same and asked Uli. His answer was yes, an advance after combat gives the Russians a bridgehead. Not two days later, another posting by him on Kranz's board withdrew the "combat advance bridgehead". I point this out because those bridgeheads are vital to getting the Red Army over the Dnepr. Given the painful fact that the Dnepr is "fortified", the lack of more ways to bridge the river throw just one more impossibility into the face of the Russian player. To top it all off, there's even a problem with deciding who goes first in the sequence of play. Normally, the standard sequence of play names the Russian as the first player in the turn. Scenario 1, which covers the Soviet breakthrough east of the Dnepr and the German retreat behind that river lets the Germans go first! We have a massive Russian offensive ready to go and the Germans blithely waltz away leaving the Russians chewing on thin air. When you get to the campaign game, the rules make no mention of who goes first, just that the unit set-up is the same as for Scenario 1. Now, in addition to the unbreakable Dnepr defenses, the campaign game starts with no one really knowing who goes first. This, too, is an issue that has been brought up on Kranzanaland that has, so far, gone unanswered. So should you buy this game? Believe it or not, I would say yes! I had a great time playing it, ignoring the alternate fortifications. I don't think they were really there and the game just won't "play" if you allow them. Playing without them, I've gotten historical results and had a lot of fun, with both sides. The same holds true for bridgeheads. I allow them for Soviet units advancing over the Dnepr after combat. However, if you are a purist and want to play by the errata (if the errata ever becomes consistent), you are not going to enjoy Eastwall one iota… unless you are the true Slavophobe. CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphics: Functional but attractive. Playability: Learning the rules is a snap. Winning, some thought. Replayability: With the "alternate" Dnepr River line in play, the game is hardly replayable after the fourth turn. Barring that, yes! The Soviet off-map reserve boxes create a lot of unpredictability and keep the Germans guessing. Creativity: As with all of John Desch's games, a lot of fun and brainwork with a minimum of rules. Historicity: Historical without entrenchments along the Dnepr. With those entrenchments, you're in Hitler's dream world. Comparisons: The only other game on the subject is Ty Bomba's The Tigers are Burning from an S&T of about a decade ago, a game on scale so different from Eastwall that no real comparison can be made. Relative to series, I'd compare Eastwall and the Ring of Fire line in general to the Gamers' SCS series. Not overly taxing in the rules but challenging to play and win. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #27 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com