During the recent SocalGames day I had the chance to play a wargame from a company called Moments in History. The game is entitled "Ring of Fire". Ring of Fire covers the fourth battle of Kharkov (Eastern front WW2). I had never played Ring of fire prior to SocalGames day. I have forgotten who the designer for the game was, but the map was designed by John Kranz the consimworld guy. Each hex represented 2 kilometers. There was a cool piece of terrain called a fortification. For the German side a unit defending in a fortification received a column shift to the left and whatever the combat result the defender would get one less casualty and the Russians would automatically receive one. The map had quite a few lines of fortification for the German side to take advantage of especially around the city of Kharkov. I am relatively new to wargaming and I am still learning about the different concepts used in gaming. Most of the wargames that I have played use the concept of a Zone of Control. Ring of Fire did not use zone of control, but instead used the concept of hex bonds. The use of Hex bonds is a brand new gaming concept for me. In Ring of Fire a single counter does not have a zone of control protruding from it. The enemy counters can move past a single counter without having to stop or automatically fight. However if a counter is one hex away from another friendly counter then the space between the two counters is a hex bond. No enemy counter may ever cross a hex bond, with the exception of movement after winning a combat. Hex bonds also can cut a unit off from supply, and being cut off from supply is not a good thing in the game. In the game there are two forms of combat: regular combat, which is a standard CRT strength comparison, and a tank battle table. Normal combat is not mandatory for adjacent enemy counters, but for two adjacent enemy tank units tank combat is mandatory. Tank units still get to fight in the regular strength comparison combat, but only after all the mandatory tank combat in the turn and only if the tank unit has survived tank combat. The tank battle is not a strength comparison as in the regular combat instead each tank is assigned a number based on how well the tank does in tank to tank only combat. Tank battles only affect tanks and not non tank units. Instead of figuring out odds between enemy units a numerical tank combat value is shown in a little yellow box in the center of the counter. German tanks usually have higher values then Russian tanks in the game. The numerical tank values are 1-4. If a tank unit has a value of one and the player rolls a 1 on a d6 then that tank unit has caused a step loss for the opposing tank unit. If a tank unit has a value of 4 it may cause a step loss for the opposing tank on a roll of 4 or less. Each tank unit gets to roll separately for itself so if you have three tank units stacked in one hex they get three separate rolls to hit instead of combining their total strengths. Enemy units that are not tank units and are stacked with enemy tank units have no effect on tank combat. I like the way the tank combat was portrayed in the game. If you are at SocalGamesday and want to play a wargame it is probably best to play upstairs and bring your own table because taking up a table for too long is sort of frowned upon there. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 14 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2005 by George Phillies. 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