Putin's War: Reclaiming the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe
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' Reclaiming the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe PUTINS WAR: RECLAIMinG THE SOVIET EMPirE in EAstErn EuroPE CONTENTS 1.0 Introduction 2.0 Components 3.0 Set Up & Hex Control 4.0 How to Win 5.0 Turn Sequence 6.0 Stacking & Fog of War 7.0 Reinforcements & Regrouping Note: To remove the rules from this (a.k.a. “line”) unit in the game represents magazine, carefully and slowly peel 8.0 Movement one corps or army sized formation. The them from the subscription card they are “elite” special forces units are regiments, attached to by peeling from the top and brigades, or divisions. The combat support then the bottom meeting in the middle. 9.0 Combat aircraft units represent various numbers The card is not intended to be removed. of sorties needed to accomplish certain 10.0 Charts & Tables These rules use the following color system: missions over the timeframe of a turn. Red for critical points such as errata and exceptions, Blue for examples of play. 1.3 Seating & Sides The Russian player should sit off the map’s long eastern edge, while the Allied player sits CreDITS 1.0 INTRODUCTION opposite him. The “Allied player” is termed that because another of the underlying assumptions of the game is that the Polish Foreign Ministry’s Design & Development: Ty Bomba 1.1 In General recently revealed desire to finally create Putin’s War: Reclaiming the Soviet Empire the “Intermarium alliance” is fulfilled. When Playtesters: Ty Bomba, Christopher in Eastern Europe (PW) is a strategic-level, originally proposed by Jozef Pilsudski in 1919, Cummins, Eric R. Harvey, Joseph two-player wargame of low-intermediate that was to have been an alliance of all the Miranda, Joe Youst, James Lawlor complexity that covers the campaign that countries bordering on western Russia between could occur if the Russian dictator decides to the Black and Baltic Seas, to have been put in give up his strategy of incremental “opaque” place by them in lieu of depending on Western Counter Graphics: Eric R. Harvey warfare and instead simply try for a big win. Europe and the US for their security. Our The game’s sub-systems are crafted to present assumption, then, is that effort finally, and at Map Graphics: Joe Youst a supreme-commander’s-eye-view of such the last minute, succeeds due to the region’s a war. It’s therefore almost fully strategic in growing fear of Russian resurgence. Of course, its perspective, with only the most pastel of Pilsudski was never able to make the idea Production: Lisé Patterson operational and tactical undertones added come to fruition in his own time; you’ll now & Callie Cummins to enhance its tone and texture in those decide if it can work in the early 21st century. regards. Putin’s War takes two experienced © 2017 Decision Games players only about two hours to complete, 1.4 No Nuclear War Rules and it’s adaptable for solitaire play. Another idea behind this design is that Putin hopes to regain the 1989 western borders Bakersfield, CA. 1.2 Scales of the Soviet Union in a single blitz-like Each hex on the map represents 55 miles (90 conventional campaign. He wants to reclaim Made & Printed in the USA. km) from side to opposite side. Each full turn territory, not expand the Chernobyl irradiated of play represents one-tenth of a month, or zone. He’d therefore be hoping a victorious approximately three days. Every “regular” one-month war would prevent any of the MODERN WAR 29 | MAy – jUN 2017 R1 MW29-M_Putins War Rules_V4F.indd 1 2/13/17 4:41 PM PUTIN'S WAR: Reclaiming the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe nuclear powers of “old Europe” (or the US), from reaching for the atomic 2.4 Sample Regular Unit button. Given that rationale, we haven’t included any rules for nuclear This unit is a Russian regular (line) unit. Its nationality is shown weapons use. However, we’ve used the blank counters we had available both by its background color and a three-letter abbreviation. It to give you the requisite mushroom cloud markers—in convenient contains two “strength steps” (or simply “steps”). Thus, when a tactical and strategic sizes. So, if you feel you must, deploy them into two-step unit suffers its first loss in combat, either offensively or play as you like, using any mutually acceptable nuclear war rules, either defensively, it’s flipped in place and may continue operating until from other games that came with them or of your own devising. it suffers a second loss. For more details on that process, and the further significance of strength steps, see sections 7.0 and 9.0. 1.5 General System Approach At the broadest level, this design takes as its reference model the campaigns that opened World War I in 1914. That is, what we’re FRONT modeling here are relatively huge ground forces that haven’t been Organizational Size Full Strength side fully engaged in all-out war in almost three-quarters of a century. As such, they’re bold, naïve as to what to expect, and over-armed in BACK that they have more firepower available than they properly know how Type to handle. There’s also a cyberwar going on in the deep background and a social media war going on in the far foreground. All of that is accounted for by the large uncertainties built into the airpower, Nationality Identity movement, and Significant Ethnic Russian Population (SERP) rules. Further, the overall military system is divided into three classes: The static militias, the motorized-mechanized line units, and the super- Combat Factor elite special forces. The player who best manages to maintain a viable and moving relationship among all of those forces will win. Note that, in order to make the step-strength of the unit more immediately recognizable, the unit has a small black hexagon 2.0 COMPONENTS on its upper-left corner on its full-strength side. Units without this hexagon symbol have no reduced strength side. 2.1 In General The components to a complete game of PW include these rules, 2.5 Organizational Sizes the map, and the sheet of extra-large die-cut counters. XXXX Army 2.2 The Game Map XXX Corps The game map shows the militarily significant terrain within the former X Brigade western borderlands of the fallen Soviet Union when portrayed at this III Regiment scale. The hexagonal (hex) grid printed over it regulates the placement II Battalion and movement of units across it. A unit is considered to be in only one OC Operational Command hex at any one time. Each hex contains natural and/or manmade features that affect movement and combat. Each hex on the map has a unique 2.6 Sample Special Forces Unit four-digit identification number printed within it. They’re provided to help The unit shown below is a Russian Special Forces (SF) type unit. you find referenced places more quickly. For example, the “victory city” of Organizational Size Kaliningrad is in hex 1718. They also allow you to record unit positions if a match has to be interrupted and taken down before it can be completed. Map Errata: Movement and combat shifts were modified after Type the map was printed, ignore the terrain costs and combat shifts on the legend use the Terrain Effects Chart provided in 10.3. Nationality Identity 2.3 Unit Counters Most of the counters (also referred to as “units” and “unit counters”) Support Factor represent combat formations that would be on hand for the war modeled here. Additional counters are provided as informational markers Note: Step strength does not apply to SF units. and memory aids. After reading through these rules, punch out the counters. Trimming the “dog ears” from their corners with a fingernail 2.7 Sample Garrison Unit Type clipper will facilitate easier handling and stacking during play. Note: The game includes a Putin counter which serves no Combat Factor actual purpose other than to stare at you menacingly as you play, or to be used as some sort of mnemonic. Note that garrison units are printed in Russian colors on one side and in a generalized Allied color on the other. See 3.6 for details on that aspect of their use. Every garrison unit has one strength step. R2 MODERN WAR 29 | MAy – jUN 2017 MW29-M_Putins War Rules_V4F.indd 2 2/13/17 4:41 PM Reclaiming the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe Counter Errata: Garrison units are incorrectly blank on the reverse side. Included with the game is a set of adhesive labels. The should be placed on the back of the 24 garrison counters in the upper right hand side of the counter sheet. Combat Support Special Forces 2.8 Nationality Aircraft There are 15 nationalities represented in the game. There are identified by the abbreviations (listed below), unique background colors, and their national flags shown in their unit symbols. BEL: Belorussian (light orange) CZR: Czech Republic (light brown) Infantry Tank/Armored EST: Estonian (light gray green) FIN: Finnish (medium gray) GER: German (dark gray) 2.11 Combat Factors & Support Factors & Step Strength HUN: Hungarian (bright orange) The large combat or support factors printed along the bottom edges LAT: Latvian (dark green) of regular and SF units (respectively) are the measures of each LTH: Lithuanian (medium green) unit’s ability to conduct or support offensive and defensive combat MOL: Moldovan (bright green) operations. Their uses are explained in detail in section 9.0. POL: Polish (white) ROM: Romanian (yellow) 2.12 Movement Factors RUS: Russian (red) Unlike most wargames, the units’ movement factors aren’t printed SLO: Slovakian (brown) on the counters.