Field manual

First steps

A campaign starts on 22 June 1941 and has no end date: it goes on until a side wins, and you stop when you wish. At speed 1 a day passes in 48 seconds, so a month takes about 24 minutes of running clock (12 minutes at speed 3, 6 minutes at speed 5, the fastest), plus the time you spend paused. Nothing you do while paused costs time.

Your commanders

The war is fought by divisions on 15 km hexes, and a chain of command moves them: the theatre command picks the main effort, the army groups and armies share out the front, and each corps places its divisions, concentrates them where the odds are good, and pursues a beaten enemy. You make their plans possible: the depots, their green trucks and the links that feed them.

The Command tab shows every formation, its order and why it was given; an order toward a city means the push goes there, and that is where the depots are needed. An attack goes in on its day with whatever its divisions and the depots hold, and stalls when its crates run out, whatever the commander wanted.

Each command that means to attack or to hold has an intent: a marker on the map, over the place it asks its crates in (the middle of its divisions, or the place it holds), swords for an attack and a shield for a defence. It asks 5 crates a division, in the depots within two hexes that feed a division. The marker's ring is how far they hold them, crimson when an attack's crates will come after its day (Late), with the days to go below; a crimson dot counts its divisions with no crate or out of reach (In trouble). From the tactical zoom its radius is dashed and an attack's arrow runs to its ringed objective; closer in, the crates read 24/40. A click on the marker opens its sheet, and the Command tab gives each command its intent and each division its five places.

A click on a command's headquarters on the map, or on its name in a division's sheet, opens the command's card, to read only: what its intent asks of its depots and what they hold (the crates held over those asked, the share covered, the days to its day), its strength, its troubles, its order with the figures of its reason, where its headquarters stands, the depots of its radius with their crates, and its divisions, a row each with its five places and its strength. An enemy command shows its strength as a band and how many divisions it has, never its order or its crates.

A division you want to move yourself you take: select it and press K or Take in the command bar. Its sheet shows a lock and its corps' name (a click on the name opens the corps' card) while its corps commands it, with its order to read; the bar has its orders (Hold, Cancel, Move and, in a battle, Break off) in their places but off, under a small lock. Its corps leaves it out and it takes your orders until you give it back (Give back, the same key); a game with the generals off has every division taken.

The command bar, at the bottom of the map, opens whenever one of your divisions is selected: the division's kind and its five places, Take (K) for a division its corps commands,Hold (G), Cancel (X), Move (M),Break off for an attacker or Fall back for a defender (I, there while a division is in a battle, and off under the lock for one its corps commands, like Hold, Cancel and Move), Center (C) and Give back (K), and along its foot the division's order: its icon (march, assault, hold), where it goes, the hours it takes (a clock), and what stops it as an icon with its number: a battle, or the speed it keeps with no crate. With several divisions selected it shows the group: how many, their crates together over their places, what they use a day, the orders they share, and Take and Give back with how many each is for. Move begins Move mode: the route and its hours, or the odds on an enemy hex, follow the pointer, and a click gives the order, a march or an attack where the enemy holds the hex; the mode ends with it (hold Shift to give another), and Esc or the right click leaves it. The right click gives no order. Pointing at a hex for a moment shows its terrain, its owner and its road level; the map outlines the hex under the pointer only with a tool or Move mode on.

Supply

Supply moves in crates. A depot keeps them: 10 at level 1, 20 at level 2, 40 at level 3. A depot has green trucks, up to 2, 4 or 6 by its level, and each takes one crate at a time to a division of its reach: 6, 10 or 15 hexes of paved road. Dirt roads and the country off the road cost more of that reach, and a division is served by every depot that reaches it, the nearest first. You give a depot more green trucks, or take some off, from the side's pool of free trucks (the depot's card). Nothing refills a depot but its links, and the factories its trucks collect from: the crates it holds are what it has.

A depot's green trucks serve the structures near it too, as a chore, not a decision: each takes a crate to an engineer park or a barracks of its reach, up to the structure's fill target and counting what is already on its way, and drives empty to a factory of its reach to bring a crate home into the depot, while the depot has room under its own fill target. Depots and ports are not served this way (links feed them). A structure is served by one depot only, the nearest by road (the lowest id on a tie), read again every hour; it waits when that depot is empty. Each depot keeps a list of what its trucks serve: the divisions of its reach, the structures it serves and the factories it collects from. An idle truck takes the first row with a need, and a row below waits while a row above has one; the divisions are first at the start, a structure that is new to the list goes to the bottom, and you move rows up and down. A park with works in line or a barracks forming that is under its fill target and that no depot serves and no link feeds is unfed. The links (the yellow trucks, the trains and the ships) stay for the long hauls and for whatever you want by hand: the links out of one stock send in your order, each what it can before the next (new links go last), or by equal shares, a vehicle each in turn. A train or a ship waits for its full load either way: in order, the links after it wait with it, so that the stock builds up for it; by equal shares, it keeps its turn until it is full, and the next link goes after. A truck going to a structure that the enemy takes turns back with its crate.

A factory that a depot collects from lists the collection among its links out, a row of its own, Collection and the depot's name, at the top at first. While the depot has room under its fill target, counting what is on its way, and a green truck, the links below the collection wait, even when its trucks are busy elsewhere: the factory's crates wait for a truck, and a factory that is full stops making them. A depot with no room or no truck holds nothing back. Move the row down and the links above it take their crates first, and a truck is sent only for what they leave; by equal shares the collection takes its turn like a link, one truck, one crate, and a row that cannot take is skipped. A link that cannot take its turn, because it has no vehicle free or its end is full, does not hold the links below it. The depot's list says when its trucks are free to come; the factory's order says who takes a crate when several want one. A truck already on its way keeps its crate.

On the screen: a depot's card has a Service section, its list a row each (the divisions with their count and free places, a structure or a factory with its crates against its fill target or its buffer), a Waits chip on a row that waits behind one above, and ▲ ▼ to move it; its name opens the structure's card. Pick a depot and the map draws a dashed green line to each structure it serves and each factory it collects; pick a structure and it draws the line from its depot. A structure's card says Served by its depot, or Unfed in crimson, with a crimson ring round it on the map and an alert on the Crates tile (a click goes to the next, the right click opens the Network's structures, which say who serves each). Feed on an unfed structure's card shows, while you point at it, the road link it would make, dashed on the map from the nearest depot or factory that holds a crate, with its hexes and hours, and a click orders it with one truck, as the link tool would. A depot, a factory or an entry with two rows out lists them in the order they send, ▲ ▼ moving one, and the two buttons In order and Equal shares choose how they share what it holds; a factory's Collection row shows its depot's crates against its fill target, a Waits chip when the depot's trucks are taken by rows above the factory in its list and Full when the depot has no room; a link below it has the same Waits chip while the collection holds it back. The Links section opens by itself from two rows out.

The Network tab lists it all: your crates (held over what your structures store, in from the entries and the factories, eaten, lost at the entries, built, back), a chart of the crates held over thirty days, and four tables with the trouble first: the structures (the chips filter them by kind), the links (give a link trucks, trains or ships, or take them off), the works (move one up the line, or cancel it) and the vehicles (the pools, and the trucks your depots and parks keep). A tile's right click in the top bar opens its list.

A division has places for 5 crates, its reserve, and uses them from the one it has open: up to 0.5 a day at rest, 1 marching, 2.4 in battle. With no crate it moves at 25% of its speed, whatever its strength. The unit card says how strong it is, and the Logistics map draws the depots, by level, with their links and reach.

A division has one strength, from 0 to 100, and it fights with exactly that. It wears down a little by itself, 10 points a day at rest and 20 on the march, and in a battle by the odds: the side they are against loses faster. Only its crates give it back: each one 20 points, at most 2 an hour, in a battle too, so a division with crates loses little in an even fight and recovers after it. Out of battle with no crate it falls to 25 and stays there; in battle it can fall lower. An attacker whose strength falls under its break point (30 unless its orders say otherwise) stops, a defender falls back one hex, and a division under 5 is destroyed.

Building has its own tools, in the bar on the map's left: a depot, an engineer park or a barracks (4 crates each, with a dirt spur to the road), a factory (15, only beside a city; the keys 1 to 4 pick a structure), a road (1 crate a hex for dirt, 2 to pave it) and a railway (2 a hex). The crates come from an engineer park's storage, one at a time, on its brown trucks (up to 2, 4 or 6 by its level, from the same pool of trucks): there is no building time, a work is as far along as its crates that have arrived, a road or a railway usable hex by hex. The works wait in one line, the park's card moves one up, and a work is cancelled from its card: one that has received crates gives half of those it has not turned into a finished hex or structure back, fetched from its site by the brown trucks. A structure off the road waits for its spur: the brown trucks lay the road to it first (“Awaiting road”), and its own crates leave when the last step is laid; cancelling the structure cancels its spur too, the steps already laid staying. A depot's or a park's card orders its next level (5 crates, then 10) and, on the coast, a port (8).

A barracks forms a division out of the crates it holds, one an hour: infantry (30 crates) at level 1, motorized (45) at level 2, armoured (60) at level 3, one at a time; it comes out beside the barracks with 5 crates and your posts command it, and a formation cancelled gives half its crates back. A factory makes 0.25, 0.5 or 1 crates a day into a small buffer of its own (4, 6 or 8), which its links take away, or that the green trucks of the depot that serves it collect; a full buffer stops it. Neither has green trucks. A factory starts links and ends none; a barracks takes links in and may start one, to send its crates away before it comes down.

Taking down is a work too, in the same line: Dismantle in the bar takes a structure down with a click (the pointer says what comes back), or a stretch of road or railway from a hex to a hex, and a depot's or a park's card dismantles it or lowers its level. Half of what it cost comes back, rounded down: a structure 2, a level 2 or 5, a port 4, a paved hex of road 1 (it goes back to dirt), a hex of railway 1. A structure first empties: its crates leave through its links out, its green trucks or its building, and nothing comes in (“No exit” when nothing can carry them away); then the brown trucks of another park drive there empty and bring the crates back one each, a park fetching only while it has room. The structure goes, or its level drops, the moment the last truck loads its crate there; the trucks are still on the road home with them. It can be cancelled while it empties, not once a truck has been sent. The last engineer park stays, and so does a source depot that is the last thing anchoring your supply (below). A road or a railway is taken down hex by hex as a brown truck reaches it, and the work ends with its last hex; the links that ran on it find another way or stop.

A depot on a hex the enemy takes is lowered a level and emptied (its crates burnt); a level 1 depot is destroyed. A division on a hex its side does not hold is reached through the hex beside it. Some depots are a side's source: a unit with no path through its own territory to one is encircled. A land entry, or a port that ships bring crates to, anchors the ground in the same way; a source can be dismantled while another of these remains, not when it is the only one (“Only source”).

Combat and encirclement

Your commanders attack. Battles last hours or days: each side's power counts its strength and the weather, against the defender's terrain, rivers, city, fortifications and entrenchment. Armor hits harder in the open and weaker into forest, marsh, mountains and cities. Attacking from several sides adds a flank bonus.

A division in a battle shows it at the top of its sheet: the odds big, attacker first (2.0 : 1 favors the attacker; the same figure everywhere, 10 : 1+ past ten), with their trend and a bar of how the two powers share; who fights whom, our divisions with their crates and strength, the enemy's with the band of their strength (their crates are never seen); the ground and the number of sides the attack comes from; and below, how long the battle goes on against how long the crates last, on one scale of three days. When the crates run out first the figure goes crimson: a division with no crate no longer refits, and moves at a quarter of its speed.

On the map the battle's sign sits on the edge between the two counters, with the odds beside it from the tactical zoom. Its ring and the arrows of your attacks, the faint ones of the divisions not selected too, have the same three colours for the same odds: green from 1.5 (about four attacks in five win), brass from 1, crimson under; an arrow tells the odds of the whole assault on its hex. Pointing at the sign shows its card: the odds in that colour, the hours, our divisions with their crates and strength, the enemy's with a band of their strength. A cyan edge round a selected division shows how far it can march in a day (several divisions: the slowest's). I breaks off an attack, or makes a defender fall back: the command bar and the battle's box have the same button.

A defender whose strength falls under its break point retreats to a free hex of its own, in order or in rout by the strength it leaves with; with nowhere to go it is destroyed. An attacker under its own breaks off. Up to 3 units of a side share a hex. A unit that stays put digs in: after about four days a dug-in line defends twice as well. A march from a dug-in position starts after the digging is given up, at most about seven hours, which the order's hours include; an assault goes in at once.

Your divisions see 70 km around them, armour and motorised ones 105 km in open ground; your depots and cities the ground around them. Owning the ground is not watching it: an enemy column in an empty stretch of your desert goes unseen.

A unit with no path through its own territory to a source depot is encircled: it is cut off from its side's supply, and the 1941 Red Army's pockets broke up within weeks. Closing a ring and then reducing the pocket is how the Axis destroyed whole armies.

Weather and winter

The weather changes by zone — North, Center and South, shown in the top bar. Rain slows the roads; in October the rasputitsa turns them to mud, and the troops crawl. From November snow and frost freeze the ground again.

German units without winter equipment lose strength in the frost and fight, in attack and defence alike, at 60% of their power in frost and 80% in snow, less so as the equipment arrives. The Red Army is equipped for the winter: the cold is its ally.

Victory

Cities are worth victory points (VP) to whoever holds them: Moscow 25, Leningrad 20, Kiev 10, Kharkov 8, Stalingrad 8, Rostov 6, and more. The Axis starts with 16 of the 193 on the map.

• A side wins when it holds every victory point on the map, the 193 of them: the attacker by taking them all, the defender by taking back whatever it lost.
• A side left with no combat units loses immediately.
• There is no end date and no draw: the campaign goes on until one of these happens, and you stop when you wish.

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