Battle of North Kursk

Always been fascinated by the battle of Kursk, but the Northern part is generally ‘the boring bit’, a classic ‘unstoppable force meets immovable object’. I thought some sort of area movement affair might cut it, and lo and behold Kuro Neko deliver.

Like most Japanese products it looks wonderful. The rulebook English is a little idiosyncratic, and not one for rules lawyers, but far from opaque.

It is basically Storm over Ponyri, and is not a detailed simulation by any means, but it captures the flavour of this mighty clash and forces you into the sorts of tough decisions that might have faced the protagonists. The front line is pretty static, but there is plenty of action in terms of when and how you attack, how you juggle a limited number of cards, and when you deliver your ‘Powerful Breaking’ (sic) and ‘Combined Arms’ cards which allow you to attack AND move and potentially get a breakthrough. The use of 2D6 for attacks sometimes gives wild results in what is mainly a grinding affair. It’s a slugfest, but it feels dynamic

The other masterstroke is that it includes both the initial German assault, and the Soviet counterstroke (Operation Kutuzov). The Germans can go hell-for-leather to take sudden victory areas early, but that will leave them bloodied when the Russian return the favour. But the Germans are tough on the defensive, and suddenly it is Ivan banging his head against fixed defenses.

There are some neat optionals around command and control, and the card play has some subtle effects including engineers, German 88s, heavy artillery and partisans, as well as the air battle. The engine could probably cope with more detail, and I can think of a dozen things I’d like to try.

I rolled the dice on this one with little information, and I am so glad I did. Classic.

The rules are crazy! Like "you cannot do [i]X[/i] unless you really want to, in which case you can do [i]X[/i]" kind of crazy!

The way combat is resolved, as well as combat factors being additive, sometimes makes it very dangerous to stack a lot of units in the same area when defending.

Interesting variation on the venerable "Storm Over Somewhere or Other" genre.

Initial ranking!

1 Campaign. Turn=4 Days.