FIRESTORM: PONYRI STATION!

It's been a month since I posted anything.  Truth be told it's also been a month since I've played or painted anything, too.  That said, I have been scheming ways to game and I think I've come up with a winner.

Battlefront have their excellent "Firestorm" campaign games which can be operational or strategic games all on their own.  (You can download the Firestorm: Bagration 1944 rules for free using the FOW app).

I always loved this super-simple approach to having a campaign of linked games, where each game "matters" and impacts the next series of games.  The "Firestorm" approach also allows you to introduce theatre troops into the mix of regular forces as higher-level support.  I also very much like this concept of cross-attaching Corps or Army level troops to accomplish your mission.  (The US Army calls this "task organization")

Many of my long-time readers know my affinity for the Kursk battles, specifically the northern pincer and the drive on Ponyri Station.  Using the incredible book "Objective: Ponyri" [click] (and no, I did NOT pay that much) I was able to pinpoint the Soviet defensive positions sitting in front of the German 292nd and 86th Infantry Divisions.  The ground looks very similar today as it did in 1943, which is pretty cool.  Anyways, I threw together a map of the Ponryi area from the 292nd and 86th jumping off points all the way to Ponyri Station, 1st May Collective, and Hill 253.

The boxes in the map are all based off of Soviet Battalion-level defensive positions or German objectives for the Kursk assault.  Right now I'm still working with the rules to determine the play sequence and any special rules (you know, like, how to win, etc.  small details...).

The crosses and stars are the supply points for both forces.  The players each get to place a number of attack arrows from a friendly controlled zone into an enemy zone and that will trigger a battle.  Winner of the battle wins control of the zone.

Primary objective zones like Ponyri Station, 1 May, and Hill 253.3 will be worth considerably more points than other objectives.  At the end of 6 turns, the player with the most VPs wins.

The fun part will be determining what the "Firestorm" forces are, which the controlling player can allocate to a battle prior to it starting.  This is neat because an otherwise "balanced" game can have some serious hardware added as reinforcements.  I like Corps assets like rocket artillery, heavy tank destroyers or heavy tanks, reinforcing infantry, and reconnaissance units.

Some of the rules I'm toying with are the Soviets cannot have any until the Germans reach a certain point on the battlefield.

Additionally, the Germans should be cognizant of their losses as by the time they reached Ponyri they had to commit reserves to feed into the fight.

Anyways, I'd like to play Flames of War for the battles since you can use all of the cool toys and complete a game in about 3 hours, but any game really would work like Battlegroup: Kursk, Crossfire, Fistful of TOWS, etc.

Stay tuned!  Some Napoleonic gaming coming up this weekend!