Skip to main content

Quick Looks: SCS Autumn for Barbarossa


Standard Combat Series (SCS) by MMP should probably be known as Vanilla Combat Series since in today’s wargame market its throwback simple jack of all trades system. There is no command and control system, no supply, no moral, just move and attack, and then move again if your units have wheels.




Other than being fairly simple the system has a reputation for high movement rates and a really bloody CRT, both are evident in Autumn for Barbarossa. A tank division could almost move right across the length of the half sheet map and back in turn, assuming it moved again in the exploitation phase.





In most WW2 wargames you want to outnumber the defending forces by 3:1 to get good odds on your attack role. This is apparently based on lots of research and has become ubiquitous in game CRTs. Unlike A Victory Lost, or a Kevin Zucker game Autumn for Barbarrossa’s CRT kills units on any result. For the Ruski 1:1 ratio is worth a punt given your replacement rates.




That’s the system, not much there but it knows what it is. SCS is for simple panzer pushing. Swinging your best units around the map jabbing your opponent in the ribs and pushing your luck with the CRT. Its quick playing and ultra violent, on the east front this is quite evocative. 



Smolensk 41 has an argument for being the pivotal battle of WW2. The Nazi’s best change of KO’ing Russia was probably in 41 and this was when they stalled out. The two sides start off lined up Dvina Dnepr rivers with the Germans having the superior troop quality in their panzer regiments. Its quite easy to break out and run riot across central Russia, but then Hitler will withdraw 90% of their mechanised forces halfway through the game and the Russian reinforcements pour in. Clinging on to those vp towns is actually quite difficult, as is assaulting Smolensk itself. 



I didn’t expect to like Autumn for Barbarossa as much as I did. I find the lack of serious command and control or supply rules a bit disappointing but this game makes up for it with a good map situation. A good road network with choke points and plenty of marshes hexes makes this a surprisingly good map to joust tanks over. Equally the steady flow of Russian reinforcements forces the German player to be sensible with their forces, if they exploit the movement and overstretch they will get caught in pockets and liquidated. 

Once the German panzers were withdrawn a Russian counter attack was easy


On balance I slightly prefer A Victory Lost having played that title immediately before this. SCS has a better CRT and feels less gamey, but the chit pull and more restrictive terrain effects chart give AVL a little more colour. MMP released Autumn for Barbarossa as a trimmed down version of their forth coming OCS Smolensk. I'm undecided at this point as to whether I need another Smolensk game though.


Comments

  1. Fast and bloody East Front action what's not to love? Sign me up.

    'We Drive east...'

    Cheers,

    Pete.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. there is definitely a soviet beast in this one.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Quick Looks: Cimean War Battles - Tchernaya River

 A quick one today I traded off Across the Narva by Revolution Games (should post something on this) for an oldish (2000) copy of an S&T magazine. The mag came with two battles reprinted from the 1978 Quad game on the Crimean War. The full Quad also contained Inkerman and Balaklava, this magazine version just has Tchernaya River and Alma. Initial setup Early SPI games (and actually GDW and AH come to think of it) of the 70s tend to have lots of rules you already know. I go, U go, movement, fire, melee, rally, and most of the rules are standard. Command and control rules and friction of war arrived a lot later. To couter this I have added a simple house rule. For each division (units are brigates and regiments, about 2-8 per division) roll. On a 1 in 6 movement is halved unless the unit can charge, in which case it must charge the nearest enemy.  A simple easy to apply rule for generating those light brigade charges. You could also easily convert this to a chit pull game by division

Quick Looks; Red Star / White Eagle

I generally hate it when people describe designs or ideas in games as dated, because many of the most innovative games  are older than I am. Equally it implies there is something innately good about new designs, which I don't think there is. Dune is arguably the best multiplayer 'war' boardgame and the 70s basic DnD is in my view still the best RPG. I wasn't born until the late 80s and didn't discover these things to the mid 2000s so this isn't nostalgia doing my thinking, its just that some old ideas are better than new ones, despite our apparent 'progress'. Back when Roger B MacGowan did cool art house covers But having said all this Red Star / White Eagle is a dated game design. And this matters if you are looking at popping £70 on a new reprint of it from Compass Games. I am a wary cheapskate so I picked up a second hand copy with a trashed box of ebay for £20. It was worth it, but only just. Poles have just been creamed on the south we

Wilderness War is probably the best CDG (review)

One attribute of a good war game is that it opens up rather than narrows down the more you play it. Each time you play you see there is more strategic depth than you thought there was. When I first started playing Wilderness War, a card driven wargame design (CDG) on the French Indian War by Volko Runke, I thought it was simply a case of the British building a large kill stack and marching it up the Hudson and the French trying to get enough victory points (vps) from raiding to win before the inevitable. The outcome would likely be decided by card play and who got the reinforcement cards when they needed them. The game is afoot.  Four games later I have realised that this is not the case. Yes the British will sometimes win by marching a big army up the Hudson and sieging out Montreal, but a lot of the time things will play out quite differently. Maybe the French strike first, perhaps the British realise that going up the Hudson is going to be a slog try another route. Ei