The Crossing: Ukraine, Late 1943

I can't help but feel a little uncomfortable in publicly 'gaming' Ukraine situations, while that country is presently suffering the miseries of war, but here we are in 1943.

After the recent knock-about games with a lone KV-1S and Panzer IIIM, using the Panzer boardgame system from GMT, I felt ready to play scenario 1.

This is essentially a meeting engagement with both sides ordered to capture the two bridge crossings and the ford. 

The Soviet tank company has 3 platoons, each of three T34/76 (43), plus a company commander for a total of 10 tanks. The Germans get 2 platoons, each of five PzIVG, plus a company commander for a total of 11 tanks.

The scenario is intended as an intro game, fully compatible with just using the basic rules, however I am swapping out some rules for the advanced versions, to include the gun / armour / fire process and the inclusion of command, which essentially determines the number of orders you can place and sets the distance that tanks may separate from other tanks in their platoon . 

The respective company commander tanks have a command radius of 10 hexes (1000 metres).

I have also dipped into the optional rules for vehicle bogging and will also have a go with the morale rules.

Soviet on the left, German on the right

Above - the starting positions. The Soviets have chosen to put two platoons on their left, but this leaves them with just one platoon on the right, who will be facing the greater numbers of a German five tank platoon and will need to use the local terrain to their advantage!

In the opening turn, everything on both sides are given ‘move’ orders. The forces simply need to close on the objectives and get within effective gunnery range. For the most part in this scenario, avenues of approach are fairly open, so there are dangers to both sides.

The battle quite quickly develops into two separate types of engagement. On the Soviet left, there is basically a shoot-out over open sights. 

The gun on the Soviet T34/76 when it fires at 10 hexes is classed as medium range, but at 11 hexes and above, the gun fire becomes classed as 'long' range fire and that makes things harder to hit.

The Soviets have slightly disadvantaged themselves here as one of their platoons is 10 hexes from the panzers .... but the other is 11 hexes away! That second platoon have crossed the cusp of benefitting from medium range and will now be using long range.

The more effective Pz IVG gun can claim medium range right out to 12 hexes, so the Panzer IV's have BOTH Soviet tank platoons within medium range and that gives them a 20% advantage in the chance of scoring hits when trading shots with the Soviet tank platoon that is furthest away. It is these nuances that delight.

Over on the Soviet right, their tank platoon enters the linear woods at its top end and a game of cat and mouse evolves.

The German tanks that face them have split their platoon, 3 tanks enter the lower end of the woods, while 2 tanks move along the river bank to put down fire support, but one of those tanks is immediately brewed up and left burning (see below).

Now going back to the Soviet left flank, losses climb for both sides, the Soviets lose two tanks and the crew of a third bail out (failed bail test) when their tank is hit and damaged. The Germans also lose two tanks, while another gets damage and another specifically suffers a track hit, even so, it is presently the Germans that now have more gun tubes in action!

Suddenly there is a big set-back for the Germans, their company command tank has crested a hill exposing it to fire from the Soviets at the woods edge. ‘BOOM’, a hit and a brew up! The loss of the company commander means that from now on, the Germans can only have up to half their available orders used for move orders - effectively making them less responsive on manoeuvre.

Casualties are roughly even and heavy, both sides are close to reaching their cohesion point levels, once reached, the number of things that can trigger morale tests increases .. including any movement! Things will just go downhill.

If they are to win, the Germans need to end that stalemate position in the lower woods and so they break cover from the trees to out manoeuvre the Soviets at the top end of the woods, hoping to get behind them.

The next tank lost is Soviet and their force hits their Cohesion Level, the commander knows that all offensive action is now out of the question and decides that the remnants of the company should pull back and find cover, from where they can overlook the crossing points at the river and fire …… but once you hit your cohesion level, importantly - even basic movement triggers morale tests and today, rather quickly, following failed tests, the Soviet vehicles start to hesitate and gain 'broken' status - it really is all over for them.

The game is only at the halfway point, plenty of time remains  for the battered German force to manoeuvre to control the river crossings and claim a chunky victory!

The introduction of the advanced gun / armour rules and the addition of the two optional rules, morale and bogging added extra depth to my previous play. With 15 turns to the scenario, I almost certainly could have been more thoughtful for both sides in their approach to initial contact to reduce losses.  

On the Soviet left, having one platoon at medium range, while the other was (just) at long range from the PzIV’s, meant that their effectiveness was immediately reduced by 20% and that as it turned out mattered. I could have given that platoon a 'Short Halt' order, which for that turn would have allowed them to fire with a heavy penalty (-3), but then they could move up to half allowance and that would have brought them closer for subsequent shooting. The German ‘mid range’ for their 75mm gun is a little more generous, with their guns being able to fire out to 12 hexes, which was catching both of the Soviet platoons - I like these small differences, they matter. The Soviets needed to move closer or get onto the German flank - that sounds realistic!

It should also be noted that the Germans were lucky when each of their own Bail Tests following damage were passed and so those tanks stayed in the game. The Soviets by contrast failed their one and only Bail Test, costing them a tank.

The Cohesion level is set by the scenario, being 6 for the Soviets and 7 for the Germans in this instance. That one point difference actually decided the game because both sides at the end actually had equal losses of 6 tanks, but with the Germans still not reaching their own cohesion level, they remained effective, while the Soviets didn’t. 

It is hard to do much, or at least it becomes more restrictive to do the things you need to do, once that Cohesion Level has been reached and that of course is all for the good as it starts to close the game down rather than witness both sides fighting to the last tank etc.

There are 8 scenarios in the core module, all set in the mid war. I will start to go through the module, playing the scenarios in the order that they are presented, each time bringing more of the system into play.

Scenario 2 is set in Poland 1944 and it gives another chance with a vehicle only scenario to use the basic rules. It is a meeting engagement that centres upon two forces advancing on a village. The players can bring in some of the advanced rules if they want.

Scenario 3 introduces the addition of infantry, anti-tank guns and transports and so we find ourselves being drawn into the advanced rules to deal with these new elements.

Doing a bit of re-familiarisation with the system has been enjoyable.

Resources.

A few years ago, on an earlier wave of enthusiasm for all things Panzer, I did a blog post that compared the T-34 to the Tiger tank. It is probably too long and too dry for many tastes, but I include a link for those that like these sort of things - LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2017/08/panzer-by-gmt-analysis-of-t34-v-tiger-i.html

I have another bit of web space called COMMANDERS that is a bit more snippet based than here and gets updated more regularly - LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

Converting boardgame to figures - Jena

 

Firstly, thank you to those who have recently started following the blog, your visible support is appreciated.

Following on from the last post (link below), having played the Jena - Auerstaedt scenario from the Napoleon at War boardgame, a situation occurring in that game has been lifted from the game to create a DBN figures scenario.

The below photo shows the part of the boardgame map and the included units that caught my interest.

The situation has the French on the attack, their immediate aim is to cause casualties (victory points) and capture the village of Lutzeroda, which stands in their way. It is turn 6 in the game, so the early morning fog has lifted.

The DBN rules (for figures) for napoleonic corps level battles, use armies of roughly 12 bases per side. The situation here was close to that, with three French Divisions worth of troops and also it offered an independent action from everything else occurring on the map, allowing us to easily isolate it.

The next photo (below) shows the initial sketch that I made which set the groundwork for the conversion.

There was an immediate problem. The boardgame does not have any command and control rules that causes divisions to be kept together. So even though the counters are give designations such as the 1st Infantry Brigade of Suchet's Division, the integrity of that division doesn't matter in the game and so the hierarchy of units / formations quickly becomes a bit of a mess during play, as individual units are allowed to do their fancy footwork to get them in positions that the players deems the most useful and a lot of intermixing of units goes on.

So my first attempt at creating an exact order of battle based around two or three unified named divisions failed.

Anyway, not only did this complicate matters, but it stopped being true to the situation that the boardgame had given us, as it got rid of things like the presence of guard units that had got caught up in the mix etc. 

In fact, I needn't have bothered worrying about this as DBN's command structure is from the corps level (army level for bigger games) looking straight down to a collection of individual brigades, which may group together. The thing of actual divisions within that hierarchy doesn't strictly matter in the system, rather units will start the game grouped into blocks, which I suppose in one respect is very similar to what a divisional organisation looks like and is handled abstractly here. The advantage of these blocks are that all units within the block can be activated as one force, with just a single command point and that is very efficient.

The question then became where and how should blocks exist at set-up? I decided to look for locations where two or more units from the same division existed and to then build each block around them. 

So, (a) consider their positions in the boardgame and then (b)  loosely place those units into blocks that match in our minds eye as to where the various divisions might sit.

So ..... next (below), we are able to have a simpler schematic of what is needed by putting the units present into divisional sized blocks. DBN allows a block (group) to comprise of up to 7 units, but it seems that 3 - 4 units is a typical average. 

Now the schematic fits the map without anything being forced. For example in the French centre, the game had two infantry brigades from Gazan's division, so we can take those two units, plus a couple of other nearby units and group them into a block and in design terms, think of them all as being Gazan's Division.  

It turns out that we can visualise our French force as comprising of three divisions, Suchet, Gazan and Desjardins, and so we end up with three 'blocks' of French units at the start.

In the real battle, Suchet and Gazan were is Lannes V Corps, so we may as well have him as the French commander for the sake of giving the commander a name (don't forget, the boardgame does not have command). The Prussians are a bit more fragmented as mentioned below.

And so it is time to start building up a scenario, which of course needs a map. (Below) An area was marked out on watercolour paper and the key terrain features were added in simple form. In essence the Prussian / Saxon forces were broadly on high ground, the boardgame hill is quite irregular and a little convoluted, but we can simplify it here. A contour line was penned in and a slight change to colour was used to show that higher ground. Some watercolour paint was added to give a coloured map. In the photo, the paper is still wet, so it is a little bowed. It does dry flat though.

Finally, I photographed this and ran it through Logoist 6 (Mac) to add units and text and then cropped it to get the final graphic (below), which I think serves well to represent what was going on in the boardgame. 

We have already described the French force. The Prussian force is in two parts. Hohenlohe is the commander. All units to his left are Prussian. One line infantry unit occupies Lutzeroda. All units to the right are Saxon allies. We might think of this total force being organised around two divisions(one Prussian, the other Saxon), though it is divided into more groups, as the Saxons are a little stretched to cover the frontage of the centre / right adequately (see the gaps between units in the original boardgame situation) making initial control a little more awkward (costly in command points).

DBN uses 'groups' as part of its command system. The Prussian army starts with 5 groups. There are a group of 4 units, (being physically adjacent to each other is important in defining a block) on the left flank. A lone unit is in the village and a lone light infantry unit is behind the woods. In front of the woods are 2 blocks, each of two units. 

This fragmented force will be expensive in command points to direct and so on most turns, with limited Prussian command points likely (a D6 minus 1), only the units that most urgently need command (to move) will get it.

Now we need to look at the DBN rules together with the situation in the boardgame and the official orders-of-battle to build this scenario. The following are to be taken into account;

The maths of unit numbers involved means that once an army suffers 4 units destroyed, it loses the game.

The situation on the map involved a French attack, it was a bit pedestrian to get going in the boardgame, but over several turns, the Prussians were pretty much destroyed as a fighting force. To encourage the French to take the battle to the Prussians, we shall say that if they capture the village of Lutzeroda, they instantly win.

The hill slope in the boardgame has a defensive bonus and in DBN units on the higher ground get a bonus in melee, so that all works without further tweaking. Making the hill difficult terrain would be overkill.

In the real battle, the troops under Hohenlohe had some jägers (light skirmishing infantry), so we will give one company of jäger to the Saxons. In DBN, jäger must start attached to a light infantry unit, so they will be placed touching the unit already behind the woods. In terms of points and unit numbers, this brings the armies closer together. In the figures game, this is an addition, bringing something to the party that the boardgame doesn't recognise at its scale.

In the boardgame, the Saxon infantry units have slightly lower strengths. In the DBN army lists for 1806, the Saxons allies count as Militia (just dampens them down a tad with a -1), so that deals with that.

In reality, Prussian / Saxon cavalry were excellent, so under DBN they will have the status of 'Superior', but it only kicks in when fighting against French light cavalry. This is not represented in the boardgame.

All cavalry on the table is classed as light.

In the boardgame, the French have two very powerful units, which belonged to the guard. The foot artillery on their right has strength 10 and the infantry line unit left of centre has a whopping strength 11. Here we will simply describe both of those units as elite to reflect that, which is enough to give them a leg up in the DBN game. 

The DBN army lists require that French 1806 army commanders get a +1 to their command roll (good), while the Prussians get a -1 (bad). By chance this helps represent what was happening in the boardgame as there was a numbers advantage with the French having 56 strength points Vs 37 points for the Prussians, so we can use this command differential to recognise that French advantage by other means.

In DBN, an 1806 Prussian musket armed unit has limited range to reflect the lack of skirmishers. To avoid the French sitting off and just shooting, we can put a time limit of 10 turns on the game (that might need tweaking after a play test) and say that if a winner has not been established by the end of Turn 10 .... The Prussians automatically win! 

This should encourage some French aggression and perhaps have them move early to capture Lutzeroda, but who knows? our Prussians may feel obliged to counter-attack ...... which they did in the boardgame. In DBN, the Prussian infantry get an uplift in close combat .... so the game may default along the lines of the French wanting to fire and the Prussians wanting to close and fight ..... that is if the Prussian command limitations can get them to the right place at the right time!

And so there it is. I have no doubt missed something that a first playing will pick up .... and so a play test comes next.

Today I put together (mostly unpainted) the bases that are needed specifically for this battle to be fought using the Warlord Games Epic figures that I have recently bought. However the needed smaller scale terrain (buildings and trees) which have been ordered, are still on the way to me, so for a first game, I will likely use my 28's and proxy the Austrians for the Prussian force (at least the white uniforms of the Saxon allies will be hinted at :-) ). 

Much of this preparation will be commented upon over at my Commanders site over coming days.

RESOURCES.

I have another bit of webspace called COMMANDERS that is more snippet based than here and gets updated more frequently. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

Here is a link to the previous post that covers the playing of the boardgame.

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/10/jena-auerstaedt-1806-boardgame.html

Jena - Auerstaedt 1806 (boardgame)

At the moment I am looking at the Jena-Auerstaedt battlefield, with a view to designing some scenarios for the DBN rules (figures). A trawl of the game shelves reveals 4 titles that cover the battle. Today I have pulled down the Napoleon at War Quad, as recently republished in a deluxe version by Decision Games.

As a game, I thought it would better help me to understand the flow / tempo of the battle from a top down perspective.

The battles of Jena and Auerstaedt were fought on the same day, just a few miles apart as separate actions between Napoleon’s French and the Prussians (with some Saxon allies) and so it is that our game board (below) is divided into two areas of action (Jena on left, Auerstaedt on the right).

Between the two maps you can see a pair of ‘Transition’ tracks. These allow the French (only) to move between one battlefield and the other, although that does take a few turns.

With some confusion as to French positions, the Prussians had divided their own army into two parts. Five divisions were to cross the Saale River (this force is on the Auerstaedt map), while a smaller force of 48,000 men under the command of Prince Hohenlohe was left at Jena as a rearguard to that movement.

At the start of play we get two options. Fours days earlier, Prussian and Saxon forces (8,000 men) were routed at Saalfeld. Had Prince Louis been more cautious, that force would instead have been available to Prussians on the 14th and Saxon morale would have been better. The option is to include those routed units in the game.

The second option allows the Prussian player to decide against splitting the army, resulting in the Auerstaedt map not being used.

For this playing, I have ignored both options, so as to go with a more historical based game.

Turns 1 - 3 are night turns, units move normally but cannot move adjacent to an enemy unit. The combat part of the sequence of play is ignored. The effect is that the Prussians are able to take up positions that largely contain the French on the Jena map.

Turns 4 - 5 are Fog turns, unit movement rates are halved and rounded down. Since the Prussian infantry and artillery standard rates are three movements points, they get reduced to 1 MP and this hurts them. At Jena 2/Tau (Prussian) are surrounded and destroyed. At Auerstaedt, just one division of French enter the map and hold Hassen-Hausen. A Prussian juggernaut approaches, but they are of course plodding at just 1 MP per turn!

Photo below - it is turn 6, at Auerstaedt the French division ( Gudin of Davout’s III Corps) is still alone, but Friant’s Division is about to enter play … just in time. The situation at Auerstaedt is quite delicate / nuanced as both side have low demoralisation levels, so some caution is needed by both sides.

Below - The Prussians put their initial attack in against Hassen-Hausen. They have been forced to act quickly, before they can get their artillery into support positions, in order to strike before Friant engages. The attack fails.

Photo Below - it is still turn 6, across at Jena the French are ready to push westwards towards Lutzeroda. There is a situation here that has the potential to be lifted and used at a future point in a figures game. With units representing brigades, this is a good fit and size for a basic DBN figures game. I have marked the units with a black rectangle to set the scene for a future game (watch this space).

Turn 7 - Decisive moments, the Prussian / Saxon forces at Jena are badly mauled, they take enough losses to become ‘Demoralised’. This is serious, it allows the French to start exiting the map for VP’s and in all future combats, the Prussian / Saxons will fight at a disadvantage of a 1 column shift against their favour.

Over at Auerstaedt, Morand’s Divison have arrived to support Gudin and Friant, this dampens down Prussian enthusiasm for aggression, the forces are now broadly equalised and the French are still anchored on  Hassen-Hausen.

Turn 8 - at Auerstaedt, Gudin gets trapped and loses one brigade, it is only luck that saves the other brigade!

Turn 9 - At Jena, the Prussians continue to suffer heavy losses, a tipping point has been reached and they are getting overwhelmed …. However the French have also lost units to two Exchange results.

Turn 10 - At Jena, French reinforcements continue to arrive, the Prussians face utter destruction. At Auerstaedt both sides have had an opportunity to turn the battle and failed, the stalemate continues around Hassen-Hausen.

Turn 11 - Photo below showing Auerstaedt. Here the French have had the worst if it and have now gone ‘Demoralised’.

     

Turn 12 (last turn) - The French have total dominance at Jena, but they only manage to exit 46 strength points from the map - not enough for the 125 needed for the victory points. At Auerstaedt, the Prussian take Hassen-Hausen. With the French over here demoralised, they are now on the back foot.

Victory Points;

Prussians lose 73 points of strength, the French lose 48 = no VPs

Prussians Demoralised at Jena = 1 French VP

French Demoralised at Auerstaedt = 2 Prussian VP

The French didn’t get 125 strength points off the Jena map and the Prussians didn’t keep their losses below 48 so neither of those two things give VP’s

So 2 Prussian VP’s to 1 French VP = the Prussians win a Marginal Victory.

Conclusions;

That was an enjoyable, fast paced game. The system is quite simple, more game than simulation, but it does its job in being fun, telling a story and being accessible enough to actually get to the table!

The number of requirements by both sides keeps the game varied and a good competition between both sides. 

I would like to play the scenario again as I now have a better idea of what is required from both sides.

The three concepts that I would like to test explore are; How can the French get 125 strength points off the Jena map in the scenario time available. How likely is it that the French will use the transit track to get from one battlefield to the other. How do the Austrians at Jena engage in a rearguard without getting destroyed as zones of control are sticky.

It was nice to see a situation naturally occurring on the Jena map that can be taken to the figures table. I will at least investigate the order of battle it threw up and draw up a suitable map. 

Resources;

I have another bit of web space over at COMMANDERS that is a bit more snippet base than here - LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

I recently played Marengo from this same package and did a loooong blog write-up - LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/05/marengo-june-1800-napoleon-at-war.html