[Elias Nordling]

Target: Leningrad är den tredje och sista delen i Barbarossa-trilogin där övriga två spel är The Arduous Beginning och Objective: Kiev, som i sin tur bygger på Battle for Moscow. Mer om systemet kan ni läsa där. I stället för att skriva samma sak som jag just skrivit fast på svenska får ni här i stället en gratis förhandstitt på innehållet i nästa småspelsartikel i Battles Magazine:

The Army Group North game in the Barbarossa trio faces stiffer competition than the rest, in that there is already a couple of pretty good games on the German advance on Leningrad that offers fast playing time and a small footprint. For example, there is the old SPI game Leningrad, reprinted by Decision games,  that is a bit bigger but still a pretty small and fast playing game. There is also the game Drive on Leningrad from Panzerschreck Magazine that I reviewed in Battles #3. Drive on Leningrad is a really clever little game,  that has an even smaller map than this game has. So, how does Target: Leningrad stack up against the competition?

Rules-wise, the game is almost identical to the previous two. No special rules for the first turn, this game's major piece of chrome is the Baltic Fleet. It sets up in Leningrad, provides a one column shift on the odds table and can be attacked by the Luftwaffe. It can rebase to another port, but in doing so, it has to roll to see if it takes damage. As we shall see, doing that would be a really stupid move by the Soviets.



The victory conditions are similar to the other games, but here's something very unusual for a Victory Point Game: an important piece of errata. As before, if the Soviets control two cities, they win, if the Germans control all cities, they win. One Soviet city is a draw. The rules say if the Soviets control Leningrad and hold a corridor for it open, it is a draw, but it should be a Soviet win. As the German player, be prepared to embrace defeat, because the chances for a win are really slim, and beyond your control. Here's why.

To capture all cities for the win, the Germans, of course, have to capture Leningrad. Now, Leningrad can only be attacked from three hexsides, and with the forces at disposal, the best they can get is 30 attack points. The Soviets will probably have the Leningrad militia and a full strength army for 13 points. That's 2:1. The Soviets have a defensive shift for the major city and another for the Baltic fleet. Further, the fleet negates all retreats. The Germans have 2 attacker shifts from a late arriving air unit.

So, 2:1 it is. Since there are no DE results at this column, and since the Soviets ignore all retreats, the best the Germans can hope for is to cause a step loss. But wait! There's a special rule for the Leningrad Militia which says it can replace a step loss even it Leningrad is isolated. So, even if the Germans manage to cause a step loss, it will be taken on the militia and replaced right away.

There are only two ways the Germans can break this deadlock. One is to make sure the Soviets don't get a full strength army into Leningrad, the other is to sink the Baltic Fleet.



For the first to happen, The Germans would have to isolate Leningrad by turn 3, 3 weeks into Barbarossa. Way WAY ahead of history, and only possible if the Soviets screw up badly. There is actually another way for the Germans, and that is to consciously avoid killing the two Soviet frontier armies. Without an army to replace, the Soviets would have to wait until they start arriving by reinforcement, giving the Germans more time (but still nothing like the time they took historically).

But even if this piece of metagaming doesn't make you cringe, the Soviets can plan for that, setting up so that the Germans would either have to kill his armies or be slowed down so that the Soviets have time to put a reinforcing army in Leningrad. Further, since the Germans need a 4:1 to get  a chance at a defender eliminated result, even a 3-strength corps stacked with the Leningrad Militia is enough to hold off the Germans with an intact fleet. And there's absolutely nothing the Germans can do to keep one of those out of Leningrad.

So the only way for the Germans to win is to sink the Baltic Fleet. You do that by sending the air units against it. You have one air unit that hits on a roll of 1, and for the last three turns you get another air unit that hits on a 1-2. The fleet takes two hits. After the first hit, the fleet no longer provides a defensive shift (so if the Soviets somehow screwed up and failed to get a full strength army into Leningrad, the Germans will get a potshot at the 4:1 column) but still negates retreats.

So, essentially the game comes down to trying to score two hits on seven rolls with a 1 to hit and three with a 1-2 to hit, and then try to get a favorable combat result. I haven't done the exact math, but I can tell you the chances for this are slim. And does it sound like much fun when just about everything else that happens on the map is irrelevant?

And, I don't know about you, but to me this whole decision tree sounds entirely unlike the Leningrad campaign. The fleet wasn't decisive in averting the capture of Leningrad, and the Germans didn't go hell-bent on sinking it.

On the other hand, if you play like a draw is a German minor victory, you get an entirely different game. As the Germans, the goal then becomes to isolate Leningrad. The Soviets will still have to take the measures to secure Leningrad, and then do his best to keep the line of communications open. He will have to try to delay the Germans as much as he can and at the same time conserve strength to succeed with this. The outcome is not certain. It looks and plays like the real Leningrad campaign.

With the fudged victory conditions, the game works pretty well, but the game still feels a bit strained, chained to the scale made for the other games in the series but not necessarily the best to show this campaign. Its competitor Drive on Leningrad from Minden Games has its own problem in that it requires the Soviet player to know the perfect setup if he wants to avoid a German victory, but even so, Drive on Leningrad is my primary choice for a Really Small Wargame on the Leningrad campaign.