War in the East: 1-2-3 leader check, check

Title War in the East: 1-2-3 leader check, check
Author Bruce Geryk
Posted in Game diaries
When April 4, 2011

I'm pretty sure everybody reading this has at one time or another had the experience of overpromising something, only to underdeliver in the end..

Read the full article

Very interesting. The problem I have with a design that rolls 1000 dice instead of 2, is that there's a real danger in having very predictable results and losing some of the fun of an unpredictable encounter. However, while writing this I realised that's the difference between strategy and a Phalanx taking out a Battleship in Civ.

Thanks very much Bruce for clarifying my thoughts on strategy!

That animated gif reminds me of playing, gosh, it must have been War in the Pacific way back when, and seeing all those messages flash by about how many TBDs were shot down and how many Zeros were launched and whatnot, and having no idea how that was supposed to figure into anything. But it was the equivalent of eye candy for me back then, minus the eye candy part. Just imagining all this WWII hardware banging into each other was a real payoff when I used to play wargames on my Apple II, even if I did feel shut out of the specific calculations.

That animated gif reminds me of playing, gosh, it must have been War in the Pacific way back when, and seeing all those messages flash by about how many TBDs were shot down and how many Zeros were launched and whatnot, and having no idea how that was supposed to figure into anything. But it was the equivalent of eye candy for me back then, minus the eye candy part. Just imagining all this WWII hardware banging into each other was a real payoff when I used to play wargames on my Apple II, even if I did feel shut out of the specific calculations.

Bruce great stuff here...how much have you seen attached units influnce combat? This has been mentioned as critical in some other AAR's I have read.

Shades of TOAW all over again... all those numbers, but does it pass the essential "100 jeeps vs 1 tank" test?

Tom, the War in the Pacific text messages served a valuable purpose besides the drama inherent in watching the combat unfold, which is that you got an idea of how effective your attack had been. If you hit Shokaku with five torpedoes, you could be pretty sure you had sunk her. You also got an idea of how many enemy aircraft were defending (which gave you intelligence on enemy bases). And the targets were discrete, identifiable, even familiar entities. USS Lexington. USS Enterprise. Each time one of those got hit, you knew the consequences.

I have no idea what the consequences of these text messages are in a battle between 17th Panzer and some random Soviet rifle division. 17Pz has 89 motorized rifle squads, 39 pioneer squads, and 29 motorcycle squads, as well as 59 7.92mm machine guns, 68 mortars, and a whole laundry list of other hardware that I can't be arsed (Tom Chick Britishism) to care about. It's not clear to me what it matters if any single squad destroys any other squad. And that squad that just fired - is that the same squad that fired last time? Or is it a different identical panzer grenadier squad? Not to mention that the whole thing feels completely unlike the encounter I would imagine this to represent, in which I don't see these things happening sequentially. That works for the Pacific theater, where air attacks did happen like that, but on the War in the East scale it makes no sense.

KVolk: Yes! I debated whether or not to include the concept of support units, but decided against it in the end because it would make the article too long and unwieldy. That's slightly more advanced strategy. But yes, commitment of support units often makes a big difference.

Anonymous, as I said in my original review on that exact subject, I think the answer is yes.

Nick: Thanks!

-- Sorry about the mess below, apparently the comment system doesn't like the apostrophes from the original article --

Great article! I'm having a blast with the whole series, please keep going.


So if you see an enemy unit marked 1=1 and another marked 2=5, the second one actually has ten times the defense value of the first one, because in the first case you multiply 1 by 1, and in the second case you multiply 2 by 5. Yeah, yeah, it's actually 200 or 2000 by 5. Whatever. There are penalties for cross-river attacks, as you'd expect, which I lump into this category. Try not to attack across rivers.

It's even easier than that - you don't have to multiply anything.
The second number is already the total defensive CV NOT a (fortification) multiplier. In your example the offensive CV might be 2.7 (displayed as 2). With a defensive multiplier of 2 this would result in a total CV of 5.4, displayed as 2=5 on the counter.
Rivers do not factor into the the displayed CVs directly, but instead disrupt your units more or less severely based on their element types, armor more than infantry. There is a rule of thumb for estimating the effect in the manual somewhere.

These fortification levels in the computer game are clearly Soviet propaganda. Even space orcs know that Russian fortifications converted a 1-1 infantry into a 3-0.

Varity: thanks. That actually makes a huge difference. There is more to this game than meets the eye, or the slide rule.

Clark: Space orcs cannot defeat the Panzer Juggernaut!

Thanks for clarifying what the counter values mean. Tried finding it in the rules, but as you say, they can be a bit opaque.
You must continue. This is by far the finest blog on this unique game. Even bought Barbarossa Derailed from reading your posts. Very interesting book. Hope you get commission.

The combat details serves as a mechanism to appease those nit picking grognards who complain when their German elite units get battered by Russian conscripts.

These types of games fascinate me but I can never wrap my head around the scale when playing them myself. It almost seems like you need to be a history geek like Bruce to play these - you have history to follow and don't need to come up with your own grand plan, you can just modify what was done historically.

When I fire up HoI3 - I'm paralyzed with indecision. In short, I need to read more books.

Thanks Bruce, you're enteratining me and educating me about WW2.

I love the quote from Piekalkiewicz. I wonder why the Germans felt that their Russian campaign was so different.

Thanks Bruce! I've thoroughly enjoyed this series of diary entries & am just itching to buy the game & try it out for myself. I like the way you included historical excerpts - makes you feel as though you're following in the generals' footsteps.

It IS critical. It could, round about, lover the enemy CV for 50-100 (as far as I can see)

Its WORSE than that!

WitE tells you a lot - but dont hit the point. You are know that the 12,7mm hits your AT Gun - but not WHY. Is it a random roll from one random subjunit aganist an other ? Does range goes into claculation? Penetration value?..
And, least but not last, what do the loose of that MG means for your CV?

[same for the Supply! It would be easy to do it better. Just show (with colours, may be, or graphicaly?) how much Supply the selectet Unit get in the last round - and how was that number was calculatet (i.e. Base Value 120 Supply -30 Supply because range to the Railway - 50 Supply because auf nearby Enemy -20 Supply because auf Storm + 20 Supply because of leader...)]

Came to this because I was thinking about buying WITE with my “ten years a member” coupon from Slitherine/Matrix. And I have clicked all the way here only to find myself at an unexpected end like a panzer division a stone’s throw from Moscow that has run out of gas!

If you want to see the articles from Bruce about WiTE, you can scroll to the top and click on the Read the full article link - from there you can look back thru his entire series.

You can also find them on his website: http://www.wargamespace.com/category/war-in-the-east/

Thanks - v helpful! I thought all of the articles would have been linked together on this thread but obvs there are a bunch that weren’t!