German Commentary

This game took a markedly different course than our first Groza playtest. Statistically, the Soviets suffered slightly fewer losses (1018 vs. 1100+) and the Axis as well (464 vs. nearly 600) and the breakdown of casualties on the Axis side shows the Germans lost only 268 points as opposed to 490 in our first playtest. Additionally, panzer forces remained basically intact since the 5-3-10 panzer regiment in the dead pile could be rebuilt using armor RPs in October I.

These results show two things: first, the Axis Allies will be greatly abused in an all-out Balkan offensive, and second, that the Soviets in this game rolled poorly against the panzers, and despite repeated opportunities, could not exchange against armor with the exception of the RX near Lwow on Jul II. The war between the Luftwaffe and the VVS was much bloodier in this game due to my monomaniacal and futile attempts to destroy Soviet fighters.

The numbers suggest that I achieved some measure of success in reducing Soviet fighter-cover, but the ratio of Soviet to German fighters remained fairly constant throughout the game, and in fact, worsened to some extent. The robustness of the VVS becomes even more apparent when one takes into account the fact that the air losses we tracked don't include the many aborted groups that Jason voluntarily deactivated without diminishing the VVS's effectiveness.

The situation on the ground was more favorable for the Axis in this game. The Soviets possessed two dot and two reference cities in Romania, but lost much ground along the Polish front, particularly north of the Pripet where they suffered something close to a strategic collapse.

Our first game saw the Germans only with Lwow and a few reference and dot cities-here, both Riga and Lwow fell, and one more turn of clear weather might well have allowed me to seize Minsk.

I cannot accurately assess the strategic viability of an all-out Russian assault into the Balkans because early Soviet errors and bad luck ruined my opponents' plans, forcing them to dilute the Front intended to deploy into Hungary. However, I made a few errors of my own, which Jason and Joe brilliantly exploited to move immediately adjacent to Ploesti and Bucuresti; this need not have occurred given a better Romanian set up.

While I'm not totally convinced that the broad-front active defense is the optimal Soviet strategy, this game certainly reinforces my intuitions in that direction. For one thing, the Grand Slam is much more vulnerable to mistakes and misfortune than the Small Slam, and almost requires things to go absolutely perfect for the Soviets in the first two turns. Unfortunately, even in the best of circumstances, one can hardly expect perfection against the very powerful Wehrmacht.

Given this, a more robust and idiot-proof plan than the Grand Slam may well be preferable. Simply put, the range of possibilities resulting from a Grand Slam are broader than the Small Slam, and a Grand Slam can (under the right circumstances) achieve greater victory for the Soviets, but, on average, the Small Slam may be more effective.

On the other hand, the Soviet errors by Lwow are totally avoidable, and their bad luck was rather on the improbable side, since statistically they should have maimed 3-5 more panzer divisions than they did. Jason rolled low in both the air and ground throughout the game with predictable results. I'm not sure why this happened--after all, I used the same dice and got fairly average results. For those who are curious, we used the black and gold dice from First to Fight, two dice Jason, I'm sure, will never want to use again, at least not in ground combat!

In the final analysis, perhaps this playtest raised more questions than it answered. I still strongly believe in the Small Slam, but whatever the truth of the matter, it is Operation Groza's ability to generate such a large amount of strategic (as opposed to merely tactical) debate that makes it such a fascinating scenario.

Soviet Commentary

What he said! Our stupid mistakes around Lwow ruined my entire concept of operations and the whole point of this exercise. Flavio derailed me as I had to scramble to contain his Lwow spearhead. I was unable to recover; I couldn't seem to kill anything that had tanks in it, thus giving him the operational freedom to do anything he wanted. Additionally, my inexperience in playing the Soviets was amply demonstrated by my failure to adequately garrison Hero Cities within the German's reach. This simple error resulted in the coup de mains in Lwow and Riga, and almost cost Minsk as well.

I had planned a larger presence in Hungary, but had little choice but to pull units out to contain Flavio's Lwow thrust. I may have left my armor gnawing on 11th Army too long. I was expecting a crust defense in this area as opposed to Flavio's defense in depth.

Curiously, the VVS was very effective at shutting down the Luftwaffe due to my die rolling. Flavio had roughly 20 German fighters across the board and I had probably twice that many. This proved to be a real problem for him, though no picnic for me either. I ended the game with a GA around 103.

The lack of a separate Leningrad MD proved to be very troublesome in managing the disasters in the Baltic. That MD's units need to be segregated. This should be combined with Charles Sharp's new cavalry OB from TEM # 24 so that the most up-to-date OB possible is used in this scenario.

In summary, I still want to do a real Grand Slam, without any mistakes to attribute to the dead crypto-fascist Soviet generals who derailed this plan. (A running joke during this game was that Pavlov, commander of Western MD, bad been transferred to Kiev MD for Groza and was shot shortly afterwards for gross incompetence, as he was historically.)

I find the Grand Slam fascinating at the strategic level due to the opportunities it offers the Soviets. It is indeed very risky and does play to the German strengths of mobility and combat density, but it can be fun to see tank divisions rampaging through Hungary and Romania rather than being cut to ribbons near Smolensk as per the usual game of SE.

Groza II: The Great Eastern Grand Slam A Europa Series Replay

Introduction, Set Up and July I Turn
July II Turn
August I Turn
August II Turn
September I Turn
September II Turn
German and Soviet Commentary