Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa

[spelk]

Welcome to Grogheads Vic!

The Community Project sounds like a resource DC players can finally expand their scenarios with their own custom content and put as much history inspired detail into it as their time affords!

[Zulu1966]

Will buy this day one but really disappointed the game will only cover the first six months ... there was talk long ago that it would be the full war but I guess that proved to be too ambitious.

[JasonPratt]

I'm okay with just doing operations. If I want the full war, and also insanity, there is at least one game for that already.

Besides, modders can do the whole war.  :D

Playing the Russian side you are Stalin. And yes you could very well be ordering the NKVD to kill a great general.... if he's not performing fast enough.

I got the impression from the description that you're playing more of an operational commander or subcommander on either side, not Hitler or Stalin: you have peers you need to play nice with, and superiors you have to placate or get a 9mm retirement package, with a strong secondary goal of gaining enough prestige to shape the overall operational effort. That isn't Hitler or Stalin level.

[Barthheart]

I'm okay with just doing operations. If I want the full war, and also insanity, there is at least one game for that already.

Besides, modders can do the whole war.  :D

Playing the Russian side you are Stalin. And yes you could very well be ordering the NKVD to kill a great general.... if he's not performing fast enough.

I got the impression from the description that you're playing more of an operational commander or subcommander on either side, not Hitler or Stalin: you have peers you need to play nice with, and superiors you have to placate or get a 9mm retirement package, with a strong secondary goal of gaining enough prestige to shape the overall operational effort. That isn't Hitler or Stalin level.

Nope. On the German side you play F.M.  Franz Hadler. On the Russian side you play Stalin himself. This is on purpose. It means each side plays differently and from a different perspective.

As Hadler you have to put up with Hitler interfering and others above you getting in your way of running the theatre. You also have to keep you underlings in line and make sure they are doing the most with what you give them.

As Stalin you have absolute control.... of a bunch of boot lickers and back stabbers. You have to "motivate" one group while keeping the other group from taking you out... AND fight the Germans at the same time.

[Ubercat]

I think it's actually Halder.

[Barthheart]

Yeah bad typist...

[JasonPratt]

Played from the Soviet side the game presents you with a different but equally challenging set of problems. You have to figure out how to get a brain-dead, incompetent, and terrified officer corps to do something (anything) while navigating around Stalin's episodes of paranoia.  Less than ten years before the game begins the functional part of the Soviet officer corps had been purged, and the consequences of that purge are still very much in evidence in 1941.  You survive in the Red Army by towing the party line and not being too prominent or conspicuous: showing too much competence or initiative was a one-way ticket to Lubyanka prison or the Gulag.  In that environment, the natural inclination of a Red Army general with any hope of life expectancy is to do nothing.   When he isn't descending into paranoia, Stalin can nudge the Red Army into action by dispatching Zhukov or Khrushchev to keep things under control or restore order.  When playing the game from the Soviet side a player will find himself in a constant war with inertia.

Nope. On the German side you play F.M.  Franz Hadler. On the Russian side you play Stalin himself. This is on purpose. It means each side plays differently and from a different perspective.

As Hadler you have to put up with Hitler interfering and others above you getting in your way of running the theatre. You also have to keep you underlings in line and make sure they are doing the most with what you give them.

As Stalin you have absolute control.... of a bunch of boot lickers and back stabbers. You have to "motivate" one group while keeping the other group from taking you out... AND fight the Germans at the same time.

If you play as Stalin, better be careful on your level of "Paranoia"! It could affect your decisions in many ways!

    Swap sides and play the part of a ruthless Soviet dictator, backed into a corner, armed only with a rusty knife. Is your pathological urge to win enough to overcome your inner demons and redeem yourself by stopping the world's most professional, undefeated, army from kicking down the gates of Moscow? Recall who left those gates unlocked in the first place?

    Be prepared to shoot your Marshals. Fling your troubleshooters from one crisis to the next. Hope that they don't get delayed enroute. Ruthlessly feed your Conscript armies into the meat grinder, trading time and space, desperately holding on for Rasputitsa and the depths of winter. Prioritise one Front over others. Gather your Siberians and push back hard.

:-\

I guess I misread Phillipe? Matrix's manual excerpt and descriptions say Stalin is the player character, like Bart says.

[JasonPratt]

I can certainly see why playing Stalin himself would make playing the Soviet side a lot different, and maybe that was a necessary design choice since Barbarossa Soviet generals wouldn't be much like players (aside from Zukhov and maybe one or two others), and it would suck to be assassinated randomly by Stalin after investing in hours of play, or worse be wiped by Stalin for any success!

Still, while I appreciate the issues and the distinction in playstyle, I do hope they think of a way to let the Soviet player play at the German player's level of command. If they can ahistorically allow sides to adhere to the Geneva convention as an option, it seems at least a little feasible to allow players to be Zukhov or someone a step lower who's ahistorically playing like Zukhov.


Anyway, can't wait for the DARs!  >:D O0

[JasonPratt]

Heck, the Matrix promotional page is practically a DAR snapshot already.  O0

Grey Dawn. Murky ersatz coffee not doing it's job. Bustling headquarters. Oberleutnants pinning army dispositions on the wall map. Markers relentlessly pushing eastwards. It's a big map. Ostland. A nagging, slow burning, realisation of just how big it is. Bottom corner of the map flapping in the draft. Bolshevik cold overwhelming a proper Germanic wood fire.

Sipping mud. Pondering army realignments. Squinting suspiciously at the growing pile of reports on your desk. Staffers spiking ever more teleprints and summaries. In competition with a second pile. Requests. Arbitrations. Judgements. Something to do in between incessant phone calls. Berlin demanding you drop everything. The Führer has called a conference. Again. Colonel Rattus Facius, currently in dispute with your Quartermaster General, is impatiently waiting for you next door, striding up and down in his black, SS, leather boots, demanding that you intervene.

People. Strongly defined personalities. Under pressure. Fighting a war. Fighting for their own corner and agenda. Equally capable of helping or hindering. Decisions. Delegation.

AND CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHY THE HECK F.M VON BOCK WANTS TO SANCTION THE 10th PANZER DIVISION?

Because you ordered them to make a hasty attack, 30 km's southwest of Smolensk, low on fuel, in poor visibility with limited reconnaissance. Because they unexpectedly ran into three dug in Soviet Divisions. Because GenLt. F. Schaal, their commander fumbled the assault, ColGen. Guderian declined to cover for him and now F.M Von Bock is on your back demanding an official sanction.

COMMAND. It's this gnarly, gritty experience of front line, Operational Command that the game seeks to capture.

[BanzaiCat]

Me, either. I reached out to hopefully procure a copy for this very purpose as this title intrigues the heck outta me!

[Barthheart]

It's a very different "feel" to wargaming that's fer sure.

I've found my self cursing at the various "players" several times as they just don't seem to want to cooperate with my grand scheme.... and then there's The Corporal.... 

[BanzaiCat]

I saw a tantalizing screenshot where you visit der Corporal and have three choices, something like fully supporting his plan, another one I can't recall, and telling him to shove off and leave control with the generals.  O0

[Barthheart]

I saw a tantalizing screenshot where you visit der Corporal and have three choices, something like fully supporting his plan, another one I can't recall, and telling him to shove off and leave control with the generals.  O0

That's right at the start of the game. It kind of sets the tone and difficulty of the game. From time to time during the campaign you'll get called on again to decide if his New Plan is better or not...

[Cyrano]

I've admired Vic's stuff since Advanced Tactics (which I still play) so this is a day-one'r for me and I'm pleased he's sticking to Barbarossa (remember, we've already got Fall: Blau from his shop).  Doug and I are deep into the 300+ turn Campaign: Waterloo game from JTS and, after the first few moves, our much smaller war has, like chess, proliferated an astonishing array of movements and turned our map into something that looks nothing at all like the last march of the Armee du Nord.  As only one example, we're fighting like dogs for a little village miles west of Mont St. Jean and I doubt either of us has 100 men anywhere near Wavre.  My point is that when you do what Vic is trying to do here opening up the decision tree to the whole war risks absurdity.  Some might find that enjoyable, I would not.

I'll confess I'm not completely sold on the RPG-like aspects of the game, but I'm very excited to have a go.

Of course it doesn't hurt that I'm in the Kursk section of Max Hastings' "Inferno"...

[BanzaiCat]

That's right at the start of the game. It kind of sets the tone and difficulty of the game.

Does that mean fully agreeing makes the game more difficult, or less?