CoW – Stalingrad explains why the German war machine ground to a halt on the banks of the Volga, every bit as eloquently as titles that cost five times as much and take thirty times as long to play.
#Cauldrons of war stalingrad plus#
Mix in momentum killers like exhaustion, attrition, and extreme weather, plus a new variable that keeps tabs on the unhappiness of Axis partners like Italy, Romania, and Slovakia, and the result is a wargame in which the enemy is sometimes the least of your troubles. The busier a portion of the front, the more likely it is that you will need to supplement this ‘free’ replenishment with CP-sapping resupply by truck, cart or transport plane. Between turns, a few lucky armies are resupplied by rail automatically (the rail infrastructure in the area and the rail capability of the Group overseeing the op determines exactly how many). Naturally, supply issues hamper your Ozymandian schemes just as much as CP limits do. Every action from shelling and aerial bombardment to assault and entrenchment, costs Command Points to initiate and your fund of these is always meagre.
Progress on particular tracks is represented by a percentage figure and involves battering, encircling, and – ultimately – eliminating enemy forces using the army- and corps-sized units you’ve assigned to the op. The map hides a network of operational tracks that the player uses to move closer to Victory Locations like Rostov, Stalingrad, Sevastopol and Baku. The system is, bar a few new mechanisms and order types, identical to the one used in CoW – Barbarossa. Because Maestro Cinetik restrict order issuing with a mind-focusing Command Points system and refrain from smothering their map with hundreds of hexagons and counters, it’s possible to play the two-pronged Wehrmacht push towards the Volga and the Caucasian oilfields from start to finish in a single evening. I know of no other computer wargame that condenses Case Blue as ingeniously or entertainingly as CoW – Stalingrad. We should probably pack up and go home.” at regular intervals. It’s impossible to play the game’s absorbing 35-turn centrepiece as the Germans without thinking “This is madness. In Maestro Cinetik’s latest, General Winter is a sadistic Schweinhund, the Bolsheviks are fast learners, and the steppes eat Panzers, half-tracks, and trucks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Any room on the list of classic WW2 what-ifs for another noodle warmer? To old favourites like “What if America’s carriers had been present at Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941?”, “What if Goering had kept pounding British airfields in September, 1940 rather than switching to cities?” and “What if Vera Lynn hadn’t slain that cyborg assassin sent to kill Churchill?” I’d like to add “What if Hitler had been an avid wargamer?”įor this what-if to have any chance of altering the course of the war, you need to accept a crucial subsidiary what-if – not only was the Austrian house painter a grog, he had access to wargames as tough and honest as Cauldrons of War – Stalingrad.
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