How realistic is TOAW 3?

[PenCapChew]

Hello all. I recently purchased The Operational Art Of War 3 in search of nice operational campaigns, especially on the east front in WW2. I never owned this game before, so I don't have any prior knowledge on how things worked in previous versions. My wargaming experience has only incorporated World In Flames, RGW 41-44, and Battles In Normandy.) I have skimmed the rulebook, and have gotten a general idea on how things play out. I have toyed with 3 scenarios mainly, being The Road the Moscow 1, Fire in the east, and Soviet Union 1941. RTM1 is a 10km, 1 day/turn scale, FITE is 10 km, 3.5 day/turn scale, and Soviet Union 1941 is 50 km, 1 week/turn scale. I love the opening "punch" of Operation Barbarossa and having been seeking to emulate these encirclement and deep thrusts battles. For example, I play both sides as they were played as historically to see if I can duplicate the German effort. For example, the capture Minsk is one of the first things I go for in the game. It historicaly took 6 days, and in game terms, RTM1 (6 turns), FITE (2 turns), and Soviet Union 1941 (1 turn). I can do it in RTM, not so sure in FITE, and I fail miserable in SU 41 (i know this game scale is corps but i can never seem to push the armored thrusts to Minsk).

So I ask all with the wisdom, experience, and clarity on the matter.....how realistic do you think TOAW is with all the standard scenarios it came with (in particular the east front ones?)

[Industrial]

that largely depends on the scenarios, some are good, others are better [;)]

if you are looking for the ultimate Barbarossa feeling try Drang nach Osten (doesn't come with the game, downloadable here: http://www.the-strategist.net/RD/scenarii/display_scenario.php?Id=479) which runs up to Feb 1942.

As this scenario concentrates on the opening phase of Barbarossa it can model far more details than Fire in the East, which has to make several compromises, but on the other hand manages to simulate the entire war in the east.

[Dave Ferguson]

I too am interested in the eastern front WW2 and wonder if there is a 'ideal' scale for front wide scenarios such as Barbarossa. Do you go for 10km hexes and half week turns or 20km and 1 week turns, or would 15km be a reasonable compromise? I have tried those monster scenarios but just don't have the time to handle the huge amounts of units.

Getting to Minsk in a week seems to be a sort of Litmus test and designers have come up with various ploys to help the germans get there. I am not sure it is all that important in a scenario depicting a whole campaign.

Dave

[PenCapChew]

Industrial, what do you think about the Road to moscow scenarios? I am playing the first one and rather enjoy the 1 day scale. I actually feel I can rush deep into Russian territory and capture Minsk in a week. I did take a look at Drang Nach Osten..it looks imtimidating yet enticing at the same time

[Dave Ferguson]

DNO is several hours per turn but if you have the time why not go for it. It seems to me that you need to have a working knowledge of TOAW otherwise you are going to waste dozens of hours only to find you made a basic error several turns ago. This especially applies to the germans. I think I would go for one of the Barbarossa scenarios first.

Dave

[Industrial]

I haven't played the Road to Moscow scenarios yet, so can't comment on their quality. But I have played a few games of DnO and it truely is one of the best scenarios there is. It is true that DNO requires some time to play (I am a perfectionist, so a turn 01 DnO easily takes me 10-20h to do [:D] ) and it is also true that you'll probably fail miserably as the germans during your first few attempts to storm the SU, but you'll learn a lot from this scenario. And from my own experience I can honestly say that it has all the potential, from a SU managing to stop the Wehrmacht dead cold by turn 10, to a german capture of Moscow before the mud sets in! Most other Barbarossa scenarios fail in modeling the soviet strength, they are so fixed on modeling the german advances that you'll often have little problems of plowing through the soviets, even if you are playing a pro. DNO is differet, here a good soviet defence can change history, and thats why I like (love ) this scenario so much [8D]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Dave Ferguson

I too am interested in the eastern front WW2 and wonder if there is a 'ideal' scale for front wide scenarios such as Barbarossa. Do you go for 10km hexes and half week turns or 20km and 1 week turns, or would 15km be a reasonable compromise?

I think the 20km scale is probably about right for this campaign, as that leaves it large but manageable. Unfortunately all the scenarios I've looked at at that scale have gamebreaking problems- i.e. they followed the TOAW manual's recommendation of 20-30% formation supply for the Soviets, making it impossible for them to recover from the initial period of dislocation.

[TOCarroll]

Industrial, how many games of DNO did you have to play to achieve greatness [&o]? I read in the forum that Barbaross 41 was a cakewalk (it is, took 2 games to learn how [:D]). And that Operation Barbarossa is not as bad, but that the soviets can be consistantly beaten. (Stillworking on that one - 10 scenarios & I can usually wil, but I take a real drubbing sometimes [8|]). I'd like to have a go at DNO, but wonder about the learning curve.
 
Tom OC

[Menschenfresser]

My suggestion is to play the Germans first if you've never played the scenario before. Personally, I think it's much harder to win as the Soviets against someone who vaguely knows what they are doing with the Germans. The learning curve with the Germans has two main aspects. While your troops are all massed near the border, speed is the key. Getting out from behind those initial Soviet defenders and on the open road. After that, it becomes a game of force allocation. You can really get caught with your pants down if you don't devote enough resources to a particular task. And some times you can get caught if you've committed too much to one area/road/bridge (for example, if you've sent five panzer divisions toward one bridge, and the Soviets manage to hold it longer than expected). The question you'll ask yourself a million times during this scenario is: "Do I go around or through?"
 
I'm not even sure it is possible to win with the Soviets against a good German player (i.e. someone like Kraut). The Soviet side seems to be a game of buying time vs saving units. If you want to win, you have to eventually build a cohesive line and hold it. But you can't just run everything east from T1. There's a line and I think it is a very fine one.

[Industrial]

Well, I think I've played close to 10 games of DnO so far, all got aborted before running the entire length because it was obvious at some point that either the germans got totally bogged down or that the soviets simply had nothing left to protect moscow.

What's indeed really important in this scenario is not only your tactical skill, but especially strategical thinking, you really have to know where you want to be 5-10 turns from now, and not just 1-2 turns. If you focus too much on tactical advantages you tend to throw to many regiments at encirceled soviet forces, killing them for sure, but having to few units advancing, and that often ends in you getting bogged down 5 turns from now because you simply dont have the wight up front needed to blow away the roadblock the soviets will throw at you.

And I somehow disagree with Menschenfresser, I think that it's easier to play the soviets in this scenario, because you simply get so many units, and so many replacements, you can afford to make some mistakes, and time is always on your side. Not so for the germans, they can't afforf to lose much time as every turn a soviet factory isn't overrun means one turn of increased soviet production. Every turn you lose because your advances are too slow gives the soviets one additional turn to strengthen their newest defence line. And the german replacements are nothing compared to the soviets replacements, having a 1:3 loss penalty is simply not enough, the germans have to do much better to fight of the nummerous soviet divisions that will pop up, and that is almost only doable by large scale encircelments.

I do agree that it's a completely different game for the soviets if the german side is played by a competent TOAW grognard, than you are really in trouble. I've played a few games as the soviets (about 5 vs different opponents) and in only one game I was really in trouble, that was vs JAMiAM. To bad that game got aborted early on at turn 4 or so due to real life interferring, just to give you an overview of how different those games can go:

at the end of Axis turn 03 / beginning of the soviet turn 04 JAMiAM had:

captured Riga and penetrated past the Dvina river in force
reached the Velikaya River south of Lake Peipus, pushing for Velikiye Luki
had breached the gap between Orsha and Vitebsk and thereby opened the way towards Smolensk
crossed the Dnepr River south of Orsha in strength
reached the Stalin Line in full strength

in one of my earlier DnOs, but already with some erperience from earlier games, I:

was still struggeling to capture Riga
had just penetrated the Dvina river but not pushed very far ahead
had just taken Minsk and was still almost 200km away from the Vitebsk/Orsha gap
hadn't even reached the Berezina river west of the Dnepr river
hadn't even reached teh Stalin line yet

I got progressively better from game to game, but even now I struggle with recreating JAMiAMs early successes, and my first few games of DnO were a complete disaster I'd rather not talk about [:D]

To make it short: if the german player is average and the soviet player not really tarrible, he should be able to quickly stop the german advances and build a coherent front line which he'll than be able to simply pump reinforcements into whereever it seems to get weaker, this is a almost 99% foolprove way to really frustrate the germans. If the soviet player is too coward as to risk an early defence (maybe becasue of bad experiences with other scenarios) and runs, the germans will make some advances and later grind to a halt, because however weak the soviets are on the offensive, on the defence they are a tough nut to crack!

If the german player really knows what he's doing, it'll be a really tough time for the soviets, because than you can't just retreat at your leisure, you will be smashed from your positions and really have to run, and there will be many tears, lots of blood spilled and many sad letters for the relatives to be written [:)]