You know it's gotta be something unusual to pull me beyond the rifled-musket era, and a game from the ole rhino, himself, Mark Simonitch, is one of the few things that will qualify for that crown. Apart from the fact that Mark seems to be doing everybody's maps - so much so that I've seen maps he hasn't done that look like his work - Simonitch is a designer who always manages to produce some very clever, and very applicable, systems to the subjects upon which he works. And his newest effort, which we will hereinafter call Rhinograd, is quintessential Simonitch. Here is a game to gladden even the darkest heart of the East Fronter - be he pure, Lenin-hugging Comrade or just plain, Running Dog Capitalist. Granted, there are a few chunks of pyrite amidst the panzer gold, but Rhinograd is why aficionados of this popular genre haunt the halls of the few game stores still open. Having learned, first-hand, the folly of trying to sell a game in a bag (The Legend Begins), the Rhinomen have boxed this one, and the results are interesting if not exactly eye-catching. I think it would have had more sales "sizzle" (which one should never under-estimate) if the neat, Stalin-era poster took up more than half the cover. (Before I read the translation of the Cyrillic text, I thought it was an old Timex add, Front-line Boris telling us that his Timexski with the Lenin face " keeps on ticking.") The maps are Ur-Simonitch, crisp, clean, appropriately spacious looking and easy to read during play - which is no mean feat, given the number of counters on them. The same applies to those counters, which manage to look about as colorful as one can get while staying within the Europa-style parameters. The biggest plus is the profusion of charts and tables sheets, all of which serve to make the game fairly user-friendly. The rules book is in the same vein, and it includes some excellent visual examples. A major caveat, however: make sure you get the Errata Sheet (which came out at the end of September) before playing. It contains major revisions and corrections, none of which changed my opinion of the game but certainly plugged some huge holes (which I, as a player, seem to have avoided taking advantage of). The topic herein is the Axis summer, 1942, offensive and the subsequent Soviet Fall counter-offensive across the Volga/Don line. Rhinograd covers this in two, separate scenarios - "Fall Blau", the Axis break-thru, and, "Uranus", the Counter-Attack, each about 15 turns - which can be joined in a massive, 62-turn monster special, covering a half-year of endless steppes. Scale is divisional, and the hexes are about 10 miles. Rhinograd is essentially counter-intensive, front-lineage, "where-can-we-punch-thru" gaming that snaking, undulating, massive and lengthily linear-style operational warfare that only the East Front seems to provide. Personally - and you should take this into account while reading this - I find this sort of stuff rather uninspiring, as well as far-too-repetitious for my jaded gaming tastes. It says a lot, therefore, that I found the game to be far more enjoyable than the last few such Ruski Conga-Line specials over which I glazed my rapidly rolling eyeballs. And this despite the fact that Simonitch pretty much abandoned his very interesting Legend sequence mechanics, opting for (and correctly so) the usual Igo-Hugo format. The result is that, while the rules are not short - 13 fairly crammed pages for the basic stuff - the systems are instantly recognizable and assimilatable by most gamers; play can be underway in, oh, about 15 minutes. Well, not exactly "under way". First you have to set this beast up. I'd say that while the Soviet Player spends the time and strains the eyes doing his initial work, his relaxing, Teutonic opponent can run him thru the rules. On the other hand, it truly pays to know what the rules are - and especially the errata - before laying those soon-to-be-sorely pressed rifle divisions down. Set-up is one of Rhinograd's few drawbacks: it's difficult to find some of the counters, and there are no specific, assigned hexes - so YOU have to foment strategy while you are deploying. (There are also no counter trays or envelopes to store this horde of similarity, so it's best to plan ahead in this area, too.) This makes for eyestrain, backstrain and any other strain you can think of. I heartily recommend use of the errata here, because far too many eagle eyed Loopholists spotted an easy method of negating the game's rather neat Secondary Attack/Overrun rules, rules which Simonitch uses to simulate those panzer-generated breakthroughs so beloved by Eastfronters. Once you've got all your guys in place, play speed really picks up. And that's one of the amazingly (good) things about Rhinograd. Despite its size, scale and scope, it plays rather quickly. I would say that, excluding set-up, you could finish a full scenario in an evening. Granted, it would be a long evening - and I usually play without any thought other than is the re-heated pizza ready - but this is a game and a system that invites fast, lively "play". The action is usually frenzied (Axis), frantic (Soviet), and continual. Rhinograd also has the distinction of being one of the few (if not the "only") game to come up with a new - and workable - wrinkle on Zones of Control. (Ed. See the comments on Decision Games' rather sophomoric efforts to change zonal acronyms in mid-stream, somewhere herein.) Simonitch has brought forth "hex bonds". Units do not exert what we serfs use to call ZOC's in and of themselves. They only control a hex - or a hexside - if there is another unit with which they can bond. That means if there is a one-hex space between two combat units, the two units form a"bond' through (or across) which enemy units may not move. Works nicely, especially for this type and level of warfare. As Arte Johnson used to say in TV's "Laugh-In", " veeerrry interestink." Perhaps the most evocative rule is the method by which victorious units - and especially the panzers - can exploit enemy retreats to blow huge holes in lines. The CRT uses two different dice (six-sided) to produce two levels of results: step losses and advances. The individual die each produce their own result, so the level of advance is not dependent upon the level of loss. If there is any attacker advances result, the loser must automatically retreat any remaining units two hexes, and the winners can continue to move up to five hexes (regardless of the length of retreat BUT dependent on unit type). The kicker is that advancing units can attack (once) any units in their path (a rule expanded by the errata). This attack-advance-attack is quite useful in "pocketing" enemy units. (There is even a special rule - and track - for the large, "isolated" pockets of several+ divisions that this form of warfare creates.) Further enlarging the scope of the combat system is the attacker's ability to step up his level of attack intensity with a "Maximum Effort", in which he gains column shifts at the expense of possibly doubling or even tripling his losses. Then again, the defender gets to use Determined Defense, in which he trades advance/retreat hexes for step losses. The only downside to the combat system was the paucity of results available with the six-sided die CRT. My feeling is that this is a combat system which could have benefitted from a ten-sider, or, even better, the Bell Curve results that the 2-12 readout from two sixers provides. There are the usual rail-line-dependent supply rules, although the game's supply system is a bit more sophisticated (and deadly, for the advancing Germans) than this statement might make apparent. There are also some very neat rules for off-map activities in the Caucasus (unless you want to whip out your Eddelweis every time a Panzer division wanders south), but don't look for any air rules. Markie shuffles his feet, aw shuckses, mea culpates, and says he couldn't get 'em to work - so you don't get them either - even though you DO get a bunch of air counters. In my opinion, no great loss. I had never seen the word Rasputitsa before in my life - except, perhaps, in reference to Rasputin's younger sister, the one with the . . . .oh well, never mind. However, it rears its head in two (!!) games in the same month: Rhinograd and the Gamers' Guderian's Blitzkrieg (Ed. soon to be reviewed when I find someone with a few decades to spare). Anyway, it's a fancy mud rule which the German Player will sacrifice his nearest relative to have not show up. There are also some good, if not exactly break-through, rules covering replacements, rules which, however, I found to be bit opaque in terms of implementing. (I was never quite sure what to do with those "Replacement" counters, or where they went, or what they did probably because I had far too many units that needed replacements.) Equally obscure was the (now-defunct) Armor Matrix Table, which penalizes the Ruskis for having lousy tanks and equally lousy tank units. The table has been deep-sixed by the errata, almost as deep as my Russian tank brigades were. It was sort of panzers vs pansies most of the time. And guess who got to be Pansy of the Hour? Understand, that when they choose up sides to play Europa, I get chosen last - and get to handle the Murmansk front, or something equally taxing of my dierolling capabilities. Even so, Rhinograd is a pretty good history lesson in Steppe-gobbling. We - the Fox and I - played the Fall Blau scenario, the one where the Axis Player rushes for the eastern edge of the map to make sure somebody doesn't usurp his reservation at the Stalingrad Hilton, while the Soviet player does his road show version of The Little Dutch Boy, valiantly - but vainly - plugging huge holes with small units. It didn't take long - 3-4 turns - before a huge vacancy, complete with coordinated designer pockets, appeared in the Vuluyki, railroad junction region. Panzers, mechanized divisions, guys on foot, teen-agers on bikes, and who knows what else, poured through as the hard-pressed Ruskies fall back to the Don cagily allowing the goose-steppe-ers to outrun their supply - especially as rail-line is in very short supply out there in No-Serf's Land. Which historicity brings up a minor sore point. How many non-Eastfronters are going to want to play this sort of thing more than once. It's not the "now you fall back, now you advance" sort of problem, it's the fact that there tends to be a sameness in what happens in each replay. I think this is a problem pandemic in Russo-German operational games on this scale more than with the game itself, and one that's endemic to my "area of enjoyment" factor. In other words, if you get that same deja vue feeling as I do, I would think twice about putting this on your Santa List. But if it's just that type of historicity that you want, you'll find that, and in spades, and backed up by some impressive research from Henry Lowood - who may not be talking to me but whose work is still greatly appreciated. Rhinograd is plain, good wargaming professional graphics work combined with solid research and innovative design. Its accessible, and it's fun. That it isn't exactly my glass of tea is more my problem than that of your every-day gamer/consumer. Me? I enjoyed it anyway - even though I got my bunskis basted. Then again, wha'do I know? I'm still looking the Polish heavy cavalry . . you know, the ones with the whistling feathers. CAPSULE COMMENTS: Graphic Presentation: Excellent, but not splashy. Crisp, clear and evocative. Typical Simonitch. Playability: After the excruciating set-up, quite good. Turns move quickly, and play proceeds smoothly. I think you could complete a scenario in a long evening. As for solitaire, OK, but some mild schizophrenia required for initial deployments. Replayability: For me, not much - but that's my problem. I think Eastfronters, alone, will have a ball trying to find where to "crack the line", etc. Historicity: Excellent, not only in terms of OoB but also in period and level of operational feel. Kudos to Prof. Lowood. Comparisons: The only direct "competitor" is the old Hessel/SPI clunker, Drive on Stalingrad, which had its problems when it first came out and is assuredly not state-of-the-art now. Bomba's done a lot of one-mapper stuff in this general area, some good, some less so; while they are probably easier to play, none are as elegant or creative as Rhinograd. Overall: Sure to be a hit with the Eastfronters, and deservedly so. But make sure you get the errata. from RHINO GAMES 1 33" x 22 map, 1 8" x 33" map, 800 counters, 12 Charts & Tables Cards, Rules Book; boxed. Published by Rhino Game Co., POB 5660, Vallejo CA 94591. $35 Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 6 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com