Comrades in Arms;
Axis Allies on the Ostfront

WWII Army Organizations

Review By Bill Rutherford

pub. by Tac Publications

Comrades in Arms (CiA) is an 84-page tape-bound book that details Soviet Army organizations from 1941 - 1945. Axis Allies on the Ostfront (AAotA), 110 pages long, deals with the Finns, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, and Slovaks during the same period (that is, the Finnish Army is that of the Continuation War and not the Winter War). These books, like Tac Pubs’ earlier book on the German Army, The Thin Grey Line, are scaled so that the smallest element appearing on the organization charts is approximately platoon-sized, or about 1:5 scale. This makes it easy to use the extensive organization lists included in these books with any other WW II rules using a similar scale to Tac:WWII such as Command Decision (CD), Spearhead (SH), Clash of Armor, and others.

CiA spends six pages laying out the ground rules for the balance of the book, including some notes on use with other three named rule sets, general notes, equipment notes, and comments on troop quality and artillery usage. A twelve-page section at the book’s end provides full Tac:WWII statistics for every bit of the equipment appearing in the book (including a variety of lend-lease and captured equipment), as well as conversion data to allow its use with CD and the other rules.

The meat of the book, of course, is in the 66 pages devoted to the organization charts. They are extensive, detailed, well-laid out, and easy to read. They seem reasonably accurate and match well to what I’ve read elsewhere (the CD organizational charts, the Nafziger series on the Soviet Army, by Charles Sharp, and other works). More importantly, they’re not simply an array of charts. Each formation has notes on its equipage, its circumstances, etc. Where appropriate or applicable, specific units and their equipment are identified, as well as variations and dispositions of captured equipment. The net result is to put everything into context in a clear, understandable, and useful way. The book wraps up with a bit under a page of bibliography, including internet links for those with such access.

AAotA is something like CiA in microcosm. Well actually, five microcosms. The book begins with two pages of general notes and wraps up with a page-long bibliography that includes some pretty obscure references and some pretty decent internet links. Each of the five nationalities has its own chapter, with introductory notes, equipment lists and Tac:WWII statistics, and, of course, tables of organization. Also included, due to the smaller nature of these five armies’ forces, are orders of battle for each nationality. I was a bit concerned about the apparent lack of conversion notes for CD, SH, etc., until I realized that they were consolidated into four pages in the back of the book. Most of the equipment in the orders of battle tend to be Soviet or German (either captured or supplied) and therefore covered in the previous books on those nationalities but the equipment and conversion notes cover all of the quirky national equipment unique to AAotA. I wondered at the absence of the Bulgarians from the mix but they will apparently be part of a later book on the Balkans during WW II.

These two books were both good reads and should prove valuable to the WW II gamer who needs (still) more information on the Eastern Front! Available for $14 from your local game shop or, if they haven’t got it, directly from the U.S. distributor, Brookhurst Hobbies, at 12188 Brookhurst Street, Garden Grove, CA 92840. Go to their website at http://www.brookhursthobbies.com for a full listing of their wares… Highly recommended - and a good value for the money!

More Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #84
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2002 by The Courier Publishing Company.
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