WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.

The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).

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marcpennington
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WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Post by marcpennington »

I'm curious whether it's working as intended that mud effects European hexes under historical weather during the spring and October. I had assumed the placement of the European weather zone (extending along the southern edge of the map through the Crimea and into the Caucauses) had been meant to reflect that rasputitsa conditions were not a factor in the much drier south, as well as that Germans carried out offensive operations in these areas during the times of rasputitsa conditions elsewhere in the front---- for example Sevastapool and Kerch in Spring 42, and the tail end of the Caucauses offensive in October 42. Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe especially seems a bit absurd---- read Vasily Grossman's description of "combat" there in October 42 in Life and Fate, involving, notably caravans of camels carrying water to the front lines.

Again, the placement of the European weather zone would seem to be a deliberate attempt to take account the variation in climate in the extreme south--- just wondering if unintended mud conditions had slipped into the code at some point.
Mehring
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RE: WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Post by Mehring »

The weather system is a bit of an over generalised fudge.
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PeeDeeAitch
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RE: WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Post by PeeDeeAitch »

Mmmmm, fudge.
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Tarhunnas
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RE: WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Post by Tarhunnas »

Vassily Grossman, but that is a novel! That is like using War and Peace as a source for Napoleonic combat!
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marcpennington
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RE: WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Post by marcpennington »

Given that Vasily Grossman (unlike Tolstoy) was actually present at the events, I think most of Life and Fate (at least as regards its generalized descriptions of combat and historical figures) can be treated as as close to the unvarnished and uncensored "truth" as we're likely to ever get on the Soviet side... Most of his anecdotes and descriptions at Stalingrad come directly out of his war-time notebooks that were supressed at the time and finally published a few years ago. And come on, you just can't make stuff up like the drunken commisar of the 64th Army calling the comissar of the 62nd to repeatedly tell him how much he loved him, man... :)

At the very least I think there's more insight on the daily life of the Red Army in a typical chapter of Grossman as there are in the entirety of Catherine Merridale's (much over-rated) Ivan's War. Even Glantz in one of his historiographical essays treats the fictionalized accounts like Grossman's as one of the key sources on the actuality of the Red Army, given lacunae in the available historical record.
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Panama
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RE: WAD? Rasputitsa on the Kalmyk Steppe?

Post by Panama »

6 inches precip eastern part. 16 inches precip western part. Most of the rain falls in summer with July being wetter than other months. True for most of the area from Kalmyk and south to the mountains. Much is semi arid. Wetter as you go west. Dryer as you go east. Wasn't nearly as cold that as it was farther north. But then that's a no brainer since it's 'south'.

Don't see the mud being such a big problem south. Soil makeup has a lot to do with the mud in Russia. When it gets wet the soil is mud. [:D][:D]
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