How to plan and execute the largest military campaign in history? Find it out in 1-3.5 player, 90 minutes logistic take on Barbarossa.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
FUNDED!
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 09:34:05 AM
Hello Everyone,
HOORAY! Thank you very much for your help funding 1941. Race to Moscow! We are very excited to be hired to do the job of delivering you another great game! Let us now unfold what we have prepared for the next part of the Campaign.
We will soon announce a number of game upgrades. And it will be you, who would decide what would be the next funding goal. Each upgrade will have a cost attached, both in collected funds as well as in social media interactions. Every day a new set of posts will be made available to you for sharing and earning those social media interaction points.
Similarly, every day we will announce how much additional money has been added to the budget, from which you’d spent on the upgrades. The choice of the upgrades will be made via pools, run at 1941: Race to Moscow Boardgamegeek.com forum.
We hope that this ‘mini game’ will not only be fun and engaging but also help promote the game.
Which one you like most? :)
The money is added to the upgrade budet with each pledge but you really need to start working on the social media side if you want those secure those upgrades.
Please like, share and retweet these posts at your social media channels:
Every interaction counts. You can also mark your friends when sharing these posts, to let them join our joint effort! :) Tomorrow we will announce how many interactions were scored.
Have fun and let’s promote this project together!
Solo Game
Your most common question was: ‘How this game works solo?’ To provide you some answers, Waldek Gumienny has started a solo session report - please click the image below for details.
So, now the operation starts!
OPERATION TYPHOON: HITLER ATTEMPTS TO CAPTURE MOSCOW BEFORE THE WINTER
By September 1941, the Wehrmacht was within sight of Leningrad in the north, while to the south German and Romanian divisions had swept across the north shores of the Black Sea, threatening Ukraine and Crimea’s vital petrochemical and agricultural production. Army Group Center, under Field Marshal von Bock, had advanced as far as Smolensk, taking 610,000 prisoners and destroying 5,700 soviet tanks in the process. Moscow was only 400 km away. On September 6, Hitler issued Führer Directive 35, which called for the destruction of Soviet armies opposite Army Group Center, to be followed by the pursuit of Soviet forces along the Moscow axis. On 9 September, Army High Command instructed Bock to prepare an operational order for the assault on Moscow code-named Operation Typhoon which was to begin before the end of that month.
By 29 September, as German forward elements were now only within 150 km of the outskirts of Moscow, Bock estimated that the city could be taken in 3 to 4 weeks, before the onset of the winter. The Smolensk-Vitebsk area had noon temperatures below freezing, even during average winters. In a speech in Berlin, Hitler declared enthusiastically: "Behind our troops there already lies a territory twice the size of the German Reich when I came to power in 1933. Today I declare, without reservation, that the enemy in the east has been struck down and will never rise again!"
Bock’s intention was to employ the 2nd, 4th, and 9th Armies, supported by Panzer Armies 2, 3, and 4 while air cover would be provided by the Luftwaffe's Luftflotte 2. The combined force numbered almost of 2 million men, 1,700 tanks, and 14,000 guns. Plans called for a double-pincer movement against the Soviet Western and Reserve fronts near Vyazma, while a second force would move to capture Bryansk to the south.
The Red Army worked in haste on a series of defensive lines. The first of these stretched between Rzhev, Vyazma, and Bryansk, while a second, double-line was built between Kalinin and Kaluga dubbed the “Mozhaisk defense line”. To protect Moscow, the citizens were drafted to construct three more lines of fortifications around the city itself. On October 10, Stalin recalled Marshal Georgy Zhukov from Leningrad and appointed him to take command of the defense of the capital and the Western Front. Zhukov deployed his 90,000 remaining men at key points in the line at Volokolamsk, Mozhaisk, Maloyaroslavets, and Kaluga. A quarter of a million civilians, mostly women, began to dig anti-tank ditches. The capital was placed under martial law with the standing order: “Moscow will be defended to the last!”
From October 7, cold rain and the first snow turned roads into muddy quagmires, German supply lines were having even more difficulty getting supplies to the front. As German troops moved deeper into the Soviet Union, supply lines became longer. Stalin gave instructions that when forced to withdraw, the Red Army should destroy anything that could be of use to the enemy. The muddy season of that year began in mid-October and was more severe than any other muddy season experienced in World War I or World War II. Nonetheless, the dual encirclement of Soviet forces around Vyazma and Bryansk yielded some of the largest Soviet casualties since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa: some 650,000 prisoners were taken: the Soviet armies facing Bock's Army Group Center had lost their numerical superiority. Nearly three million Soviet troops had been captured at this point since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. After the capture of Orel on October 8 by Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group, General Jodl reported to Hitler: “We have finally and without any exaggeration won the war!”
The Germans were at the gates. On 16th October, the Soviet government began to evacuate across the Ural mountains to Kuibyshev. Party officials jammed the roads and railway stations while offices and factories emptied out; the general public joined the exodus in an atmosphere of chaos and terror. Stalin didn’t leave the city. On the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Red Revolution on November 7, Stalin attended the annual military parade on the Red Square, despite the threat of Luftwaffe attack. Stalin made a speech where he stated: "If they want a war of extermination they shall have one!" With November, the mud soon turned into ice, as temperatures now dropped to -28°C, everything was about to change.
At the beginning of December 1941, 6th Panzer Division was but 24 km from the Kremlin when a new sudden drop in temperature to -35° C., coupled with a surprise attack by Siberian troops, smashed its drive on the capital. Scandinavian cyclones that rolled down over Soviet Union through November and December brought winter's snows to Russia weeks earlier than the normal end-of-the-first-week-in-December date. Damp overcast skies filled with mists and snow flurries prevented peak efficiency by the Luftwaffe.
Hitler hadn’t picked the best moment for an invasion of gigantic Soviet Union: The winter of 1941/42 was the second coldest in the history of recordings on Soviet territory, and the coldest in the 20th century. During three months air temperature was 5-7º C below normal. At Kalinin and Yachroma near Moscow, temperature dropped down to -50º C. Still lacking winter equipment, the Germans had to halt their offensives. Paralyzed by cold, the German troops could not aim their rifle fire, bolt mechanisms jammed or strikers shattered in the bitter winter weather. Machine guns became encrusted with ice, recoil liquid froze in guns, ammunition supply failed. Mortar shells detonated in deep snow with a hollow, harmless thud, and mines were no longer reliable. Hitler had neither expected nor planned for a winter war!
The mighty Wehrmacht had reached its high watermark and now for the first time in World War II the German war machine was stopped. Between the abandonment of the Mozhaisk Line on October 27, and the resumption of OKH offensive operations on November 15, the Soviet defenders of Moscow received more than 200,000 reinforcements from newly raised levies, reorganized remnants, and from divisions transferred from the Far East. German intelligence had woefully under-estimated the massive number of reserve forces that could be raised from the Soviet interior.
By December 5, 58 fresh Russian divisions that had been transferred from the Far East Front to Moscow launched a huge counterattack. These units were equipped for winter warfare, with padded jackets and white camouflage suits. The operational goals were to strike into the enemy operational rear and envelop or destroy the German armies spearheading the attack on Moscow. A thrust deeper into the German rear might induce a collapse of Army Group Center. The Soviet counter attack was supported by a large propaganda campaign: German troops were constantly reminded by leaflets of the Napoléon Grande Armée of 1812, the snow and deadly cold to which they were unaccustomed, the danger of a slow agonizing death by freezing far away from their homeland, and the resurrection of the victorious Red Army.
With the Luftwaffe grounded by the incredibly harsh winter conditions and the reserves completely spent, the damage dealt by the Red Army's counter-offensive was devastating, resulting in massive German losses in men and materiel. All along the front near Moscow German troops fell back, destroying whatever equipment they could not salvage: 800 tanks, 983 artillery pieces, 473 heavy mortars, and 800 antitank guns were destroyed or abandoned during December alone. By 13 December, German forces had retreated more than 80km from Moscow. Soviet forces composed of ski troops, cavalry, and sleigh-mounted infantry succeeded in cutting off the 6th Panzer Division which was the rear guard of LVI Panzer Corps. Partisan detachments, mostly remnants of the Red Army units destroyed during the German summer invasion, were organized by officers of NKVD frontier troops, and operated behind enemy lines.
The reverses suffered at Moscow lowered the morale of both German officers and men who felt that lack of preparation for winter warfare was the cause of their defeat. Failing to achieve his objective, on 18 December, Bock was relieved of his command of Army Group Center. Hitler also sacked three of the six army commanders involved in Operation Typhoon (Guderian, Hoepner, and Strauss), and four of the 22 corps commanders. The myth of Wehrmacht's invincibility had been shattered, the Red Army and the Soviet Union had survived, testament to the tenacity of their defenders and the success of their mobilization capabilities, rather than the products of mere fortune (the famous Russian winter). Casualties for the Battle of Moscow are estimated at 248,000 to 400,000 German losses vs Soviet losses as high as 650,000 to 1,280,000. It was in front of Moscow, in December 1941, that the tide of the war had turned.
Written by Dr. Eric G. L. Pinzelli
Again, thank you for your generous support. Happy gaming!
Michał & PHALANX Team
How to Play?
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 02:32:48 PM
Hello Everyone,
Thanks to your great support we are just about to reach the funding goal. That in turn means that one day you will be facing a challenge of commanding an Army Group advancing through the barren ground of the East Front... In offer to help you with the task we've prepared a player guide. For your eyes only.
Two weeks ago Waldek Gumienny has been hosted by unparalleled crew of On Table Top. He spent a whole day in the studio, shooting a video material for the campaign. And now we can share with you a complete Let’s Play video containing a full 1941 Race to Moscow gaming session. Enjoy!
And if you would like to know more about 1941 Race to Moscow design and development, please watch this interview with Waldek.
And what about the game rules - are they accessible and intuitive? You can check this in the Rules video provided you by the best rule interpreter in the hobby - Ben Harsh!
With such support you shouldn’t have any problems setting up and playing the game. Your biggest concern will be the campaign plan and it's execution in front of the enemy, not the pesky game rules ;)
And talking about the plans…
PLANS FOR OPERATION BARBAROSSA
AXIS
German over-confidence and belief in their inherent military superiority after spectacularly defeating Poland, France, the B.E.F and most of Western Europe, was at its peak in the fall of 1940 when Hitler rejected Stalin’s demands for joining the three major Axis powers. Blitzkrieg warfare had proven its effectiveness in each instance, and against a perceived weakened Red Army, there was little reason for doubting that it would not end up with the same results. German high command was certain that the war would once again be short and decisive. So far, the Soviet Union had supported the German war efforts, supplying raw materials such as oil, rubber, cotton, iron and phosphates. In November of 1940, Hitler took the fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union by surprise in the next spring, the revival of the 1936 Anti-Cominterm Pact would follow.
All this planning was unexpectedly delayed however: After invading Egypt, on 28 October 1940 the Italians had also invaded Greece from recently-annexed Albania. Italian severe setbacks in both theaters prompted Hitler to intervene in the Balkans and Crete throughout the spring of 1941, delaying the deployment of the troops for the future Eastern Front. The elite Fallschirmjäger had suffered heavy losses in May to capture Crete during Operation Mercury, preventing future major airborne operations. This delay was to prove fatal in not achieving German objectives in the Soviet Union before the winter set in. Hitler would later blame Mussolini’s “idiotic Greek campaign” for his own failed Eastern campaign.
General Erich Marcks presented his concept on 5 August 1940, with operations on two theaters: a north wing would march against Moscow, and the south push would take Kiev, with the A-A line (Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, to Astrakhan at the mouth of the River Volga on the Caspian Sea) as final strategic objectives. The entire operation was expected to last from 9 to 17 weeks at most. German domination would then stretch from the Arctic Ocean to the Caspian Sea. German high command assumed that the majority of the Red Army supplies and the main part of the agricultural and population potential of the Soviet Union existed in the lands that lay to the west of this proposed A-A line. The Soviet war effort would collapse in a few weeks, this huge space would then turn into the agricultural breadbasket of the Third Reich. A “permanent war” beyond the Ural mountains would serve to toughen generations of future German soldiers. This would bring the bulk of the Soviet population and its economic and industrial potential under German control. There was no intention on pushing further East at this stage. Siberia would be used for displaced Slavs described as “sub-humans”, while the Luftwaffe would ensure the destruction of the remaining soviet industrial potential, crushing all resistance, preventing any recovery.
The Lossberg Study (September 1940) prepared by the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ) under General Alfred Jodl required three army groups instead of two envisioned in the previous Marcks plan. On December 18, 1940, Hitler issued the Fürher’s Directive 21 for a new battle plan code-named Operation Barbarossa. Germany’s invasion of Russia was to be the largest surprise attack in military history. The German forces were split into three army groups, each with a specific objective. Army Group North, under General Wilhelm von Leeb, was to head through the Baltic States and take Leningrad. Army Group South, under General Gerd von Rundstedt, would attack through Ukraine towards Kiev and seize the Donbas industrial region. Between them, Army Group Centre's (under General Fedor von Bock) objective was Minsk, and then Moscow itself.
On 22 June 1941, over three and a half million German and other Axis troops attacked along a 2,900 km front. A total of 153 divisions (about 80% of the German Army) were committed to the campaign. Seventeen panzer divisions, formed into four Panzer Groups, formed the vanguard with 3,500 tanks. They were supported by the Luftwaffe’s 2,700 aircraft. Germans’ strength was further increased by more than 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history. German achievement of surprise on the 22nd of June took the Soviet leadership completely by surprise and caught the Red Army in an unprepared and partially demobilized state leading to devastating soviet losses during the initial phase of the war between the two totalitarian states.
SOVIET PLANS TO COUNTER GERMAN AGGRESSION DURING THE SPRING OF 1941
Although some analysts such as Viktor Suvorov (a pseudonym for former Soviet staff officer Vladimir Rezun) pointed out in 1985 that Stalin had planned to attack Germany from behind while Hitler was fighting against the capitalists nations, this controversial assumption is not supported by a majority of historians in the West who believe that Soviet strategy was defensive and essentially passive in face of the German threat. In June 1941, the Red Army was not totally prepared for a defensive war, and even less for taking the offensive against the Wehrmacht at the peak of its power and supremacy. As Franz Halder, chief of the German general staff, declared when talking about the planning involved for Operation Barbarossa, “After all, we cannot expect them to do us the favor of attacking!”
In early 1941, trade with Germany that had increased rapidly since the summer of the previous year was a cornerstone of soviet policy. The soviet support was meant to appease Hitler and to gain time to rebuild the Red Army. The Kremlin was fooled into believing that Hitler would continue to cooperate with the Soviet Union as long as the Reich was busy fighting against the British Empire increasingly supported by the U.S.A. The German Foreign Office was even pushing for a strengthening of bilateral economic relations while German industry continued to deliver equipment, machines for the Soviet war industry, and even weapons such as the unfinished 17,000 tons cruiser Lützow (April 1940) and other weaponry. For all these reasons, Stalin, although “pathologically distrustful”, amazingly trusted Hitler and simply refused to believe that Hitler would break the non-aggression pact. Consequently, head of Soviet military intelligence Filipp Ivanovich Golikov, suppressed or altered intelligence reporting that did not meet the Soviet autocrat’s misconceptions who, on the other hand, had also no reason to trust either Churchill or Roosevelt when they tried to alert him. The TASS communiqué of June 13, 1941 denied that there was any imminent threat of a German invasion.
The Red Army was partially mobilized in the months prior Operation Barbarossa and had begun to concentrate the troops along the new western frontier with the Third Reich acquired in 1939-40. In 1941, construction was still in progress upon the Molotov line (often in full view of the Germans) which would encompass the new border. By the time of the start of the invasion, fewer than 1,000 positions had been completed and equipped. These “fortified regions” had 1,700 guns and 9,800 machine guns. Since 1939 conscription had been reintroduced. Roughly 800,000 reservists were also called up during this period. By 1940, the Red Army was 4 million strong. In early 1941 that number rose to 5,4 million, but soldiers lacked equipment, few were properly trained or experienced in combat. Soviet pilots and tank or gun crews lacked the training and combat experience of the Wehrmacht, while the 1937-38 purges had decimated the Red Army command. State Frontiers Defense Plan 1941, intended as a sheer demonstration of force, saw the deployment of 186 divisions and 11,000 tanks at the borders as first strategic echelon (completed early June 1941).
Since the purges, at the strategic level, the concept of the operation in depth had been replaced by a rigid insistence on frontier defense: invading forces had to be met at the border and repulsed by an immediate counter-offensive, spearheaded by the second strategic echelon, before carrying the war into enemy territory. Stalin, like Hitler, seemed to have been preparing for a short offensive war. German observers were certainly not impressed by the massing of Soviet forces at the border. When Stalin finally realized that their might be a German offensive after all, the dictator ordered his commanders to avoid any provocations to not give to Hitler any excuse for an invasion. When his worst fear turned to reality, it seems that Stalin was so shocked by news of the invasion, and devastated by the potential consequences of not having anticipated it, that quite understandably he suffered some sort of a breakdown, and for a few days could no longer function as supreme leader of the USSR.
Written by Dr. Eric G. L. Pinzelli
To be able to challenge these plans in the heat of battle we still need to collect the last 10% of our funding goal. Please help us with this by sharing the campaign link (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phalanxgames/1941-race-to-moscow) on your personal channels and to your gaming friends. This really helps to enlarge the reach in this, so crowded, gaming world. Thank you very much!
Happy gaming!
Michał & PHALANX Team
PS. Our friends and frequent backers, Fort Circle Games, have their first game on Kickstarter ending on Thursday. The game is called The Shores of Tripoli, a short (45-60 minute) card-driven game on the First Barbary War between the United States and the Pirates of Tripoli. Please click here for details. You should check it out!
The Special One
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 01:00:17 PM
Hello Everyone,
With the first day of our campaign almost over, we are very happy to see that it is funded in 75%. This game will be very expensive to manufacture, that is why our funding goal is so high. But it seems that we are going to reach it in the next few days - thank you for that!
Early this year, during the Freedom! Kickstarter campaign, we have been writing about ‘labour of love project’ - that was Vangelis Bagiartakis’ game about the most important siege in history of modern Greece. And today 1941. Race to Moscow - is just the same case: another project that is very special for us - it is our in-house design made by Waldek Gumienny, one of the three founders of PHALANX. He was working for years to bring you this unique game about ‘41 Eastern Front campaign - a game that shows the real problems of that theatre of operations. Something that you won’t find in any other wargame on this topic.
And here you will find his story, written as a Designer’s Diary post - please click the image below:
Can you imagine that the first prototype review of 1941. Race to Moscow was posted at Boardgamegeek.com 4 years ago? Here it is the link to this article:
We had a great time reading this nowadays (thank you, Wojciech!), seeing the progress of this project and of our company... But this is all possible only due to your presence and support.
Help Needed!
The campaign is running well, but there are many ways to introduce more people here, for example by dominating the Kicktraq page, a very popular site for Kickstarter stalkers. ;)
There is a real history behind this game, and we would like to introduce you to Dr. Eric G. L. PINZELLI, who provides great history capsules for our Kickstarter campaigns. This time Eric will be with us to give you the most important - and the most interesting - facts about the Barbarossa campaign. Let’s start with…
WHY DID OPERATION BARBAROSSA TAKE PLACE?
Why would Nazi Germany open a second front in the early summer of 1941 while stile fighting against the British Empire? Why replicate the experience of WW1, when Imperial Germany had to fight on multiple fronts and had been defeated?
With the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 23, 1939) that ensured a 10-year economical-military cooperation between the two continental superpowers and delimited their respective spheres of influence, allowing Adolf Hitler to expand his plans for European domination, it seemed for a while that the two totalitarian states could co-exist. Joachim von Ribbentrop, who considered Britain to be Germany’s most dangerous enemy, would advocate keeping good relations with the Soviet Union and oppose any aggression against this new ally. In the fall of 1940, there were even talks of the Soviet Union joining the Tripartite Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan, but Stalin’s growing demands in November were rejected by Hitler who became more and more suspicious. Consequently, by December 5, 1940, the plans to invade the Soviet Union, originally drawn up by General Erich Marcks, were approved, with a date set for May 1941.
In the second volume of Mein Kampf (1926), Hitler had clearly defined his vision of lebensraum with the colonization of Central and Eastern Europe and the destruction of Bolshevism. He had envisaged settling Germans as the “master race” in western Russia, while deporting most of the Russians to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labor (a form of “social Darwinism”) for the exploitation of land and resources. According to Albert Speer (information gathered during his 1945 captivity), Germany’s need for oil, the vital necessity of seizing the Caucasus oil field, had also been one of the prime motive for the invasion. It was not without precedent: During World War One, General Erich Ludendorff had planned to capture the Baku oil fields before being beaten to it by the British in August 1918.
The Soviet army had performed so poorly at the Battle of Lake Khasan (July – August 1938), during the invasion of Poland (Sept. 1939 – Oct. 1939), and in the Winter War against the Finns (Nov. 1939- March 1940), that military analysts worldwide considered the Red Army incompetent. The massive purges of skilled officers in the late 1930s (launched June 1937) to combat a misperceived threat from foreign agents had gravely undermined and weakened the Red Army. After the swift victories against Poland and France in 1939-1940, Hitler and the German high command were over-confident; the Fuhrer was persuaded the Wehrmacht could destroy the Soviet power and state “with one single blow”.
German preparations for the invasion didn’t go unnoticed from the Soviet intelligence, but Stalin didn’t believe that they were planning to attack. At the time, he considered the capitalist powers as his main opponents and also was the whole time in touch with the Germans, who reassured him that there wasn’t any plan for attack and everything else was just a conspiracy led by Great Britain. The largest land invasion in History, code-named “Barbarossa” was about to begin…
Happy gaming!
Michał & PHALANX Team
PS. And speaking about Freedom!, we have just received the game from the printing house. Soon the shipping starts! It looks lovely! :)
