Panzergruppe Guderian is probably my favorite AH game. at least it is certainly the game i have played the most in the past decade. what appeals to me is trying to devise a good Soviet defense. the problems for the Soviets are many. all of your divisions are untested meaning you dont know what their attack and defense strengths are until they engage in combat. many of them have attack/defense strengths of 0 or 1 and few have anywhere near the combat prowess of the German Panzer Divisions or even the German Infantry Divisions. on top of that, all of the Soviet divisions only have one step. the German Panzer divisions have 6 steps and the German Infantry divisions have 4 steps. the next problem is that your infantry divisions have only 6 movement points versus 7 for the German Infantry, and your armored units have 10 movement points, which is the same as the German mechanized units, but the German mech units get a second movement phase each turn, so they effectively have 20 movement points. all in all, a competent German player will destroy many Soviet divisions every turn. the only good thing is the Soviet player has a lot of divisions to start with (i think its around 70 maybe, the Germans only have about 20), and he gets new divisions every turn. my experience with the game is a competent German player who is not unlucky should win every time. i have never been able to find a defense that really works well for the Soviets. as the Soviet player you are constantly reacting to breaches in your line or being outflanked. you are trying to pull back your divisions to keep them from getting cut off, and balancing that with not giving up too much terrain every turn. that being said, articles in the General and other publications at the time seemed to hint that the game was slightly unbalanced in favor of the Soviets. there were several defensive philosophies discussed that supposedly could slow and/or stop the Germans every time. but i say in my defense that i tried every conceivable strategy, and success still depended on getting a little (read a lot) more luck than the other guy. now of course if the German player is impatient and tries to get more out of a turn than he should, you can trap him. and you get a lot of Victory Points if you can completely kill a German division, not to mention tilting the tactical balance towards your favor. but like i said before, in my experience if the German player is competent, and doesnt overreach, but takes his time and eats up Soviet divisions like Pac Man, he will win. i have always wanted to discuss this with other players of the game. what do you guys think? is the balance in favor of the Germans? or the Soviets? or is the game as it is, as balanced as a game can be? and does anyone want to PBEM?
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 20:48:59 +0000
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