Players 2 or more
Playing Time at least several hours
Period WW2 Eastern Front
Scale Strategic Turn 3 months
Map 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hex, covering Eastern Europe
Unit armies

Components

ziploc bag or cardboard box
1 12 page rules booklet
400 double-sided die-cut counters in at least 15 different shades of the rainbow
1 22" x 28" three-color map depicting Eastern Europe from Oslo to Archangel in the north and from Tirane to Baku in the south

Counter Manifest

32 Axis leaders
36 Soviet leaders
12 Axis Panzer Armies
59 Axis Infantry Armies
19 Soviet Tank Armies
63 Soviet Infantry Armies
1 Allied Infantry Army
1 Axis Parachute Army
1 Soviet Parachute Army
3 OKH counters

SimCan says:

“Lebensraum! is a grand strategic, moderate complexity game of the war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, starting with the German invasion in late June of 1941 through to the final battles to Berlin in 1945. The game focuses on the Army Group level, with players controlling subordinate armies as the main combat formations. Leadership is a major component of the game, with each player having a pool of named and rated leaders available. Airpower, naval support partisans, production centers, and transportation networks are all covered. There are four scenarios, ranging from three to 13 turns, as well as a 16 turn campaign game covering the entire war. Turns are quarterly, with a map scale of 50 miles [80 Km] per hex. The game includes a full color 22” x 28” map, 400 die cut counters, and a 12 page rules booklet.”

The Reviewer says:

“One of the genuine beauties of the game is the ease of play. Games flow smoothly and, more often than not, quickly. My opponent through several playings, Jeff Hutton, and I, struggled through our first two sessions. Not so much, I surmise, because of the game’s complexity, but rather because it took us a while to learn how to use the system to establish our priorities. Later playings of the game allowed us to develop planning perspectives, priorities, and the always delightful: ‘Ah-ah-ah! You forgot Rule 7.37 which says...’” --Paul Pigulski in F&M 55

Comments

As mentioned above, it joins with West Front providing a two-map, two or three player, 600 counter strategic game of the last four years of the European campaign in the Second World War. 16 years later, it still can be found at quite a discount compared with games on the same topic and scale produced today. One may still be able to purchase it new from Clash of Arms Games for under $10 in ziploc format, when purchased with other SimCan games in quantity.

Collectors Notes

This SimCan game is reasonably easy to find. It is frequently available at a sensible price on eBay. With persistence, one could purchase both this and West Front together for around $20 or so. Boone lists low, high and average prices of 4/11/ 7.17 at auction and 5/20/13.57 for sale.

Errata

None in the SimCan Newsletter.

Steve Newberg says:

Every North American game designer deep in their heart wants to take a slice at two topics: Gettysburg and the East Front. I tried Gettysburg early, because I had been thinking about it forever, but it took a long time for me top decide what I thought was missing in all those East Front strategic games: leaders and economics. Most games brushed one or the other, but in a lot of ways the war in the East centered on these influences, so the design of Lebensraum! made them major systems. I liked the result, though this was another of our games that sold very well but vanished from a public notice standpoint. Exceptional cover by John Kula, by the way, with the smoke of a German advance lifting into a Russian soldier raising the star and sickle over the ruins of the Reichstag.