Russia is quite popular......

at least with wargamers!

Well, I hadn't quite realised the amount of current Russian Front activity when I outlined my Plan B campaign approach. I understand that Flames of War's next release is Barbarossa and that PSC released Battlegroup Barbarossa earlier on this year. I'm not sure if this means I'm on trend or slightly behind the times. Never mind. 

Today's Russian front news is that Norm Smith is releasing a campaign system for his Tigers at Minsk rules and, not only that, he has prepared a brilliant trailer for it.....

I must admit this made me smile, lots!

My current progress with Plan B is that I now have some painted German troops, not yet completely finished but well on the way. It will shortly be time to order the infantry.

My campaign will be a solo ladder, so far consisting of four areas to be contested:

Frontier battles	Soviet Mechanised counter attack	Closing the pockets	Exploitation
3. River crossing 5. Bridgehead 15. Fortified defence	6. Flank attack 10. Late arrivals 18. Counter attack	14. Static defence 19. Blow from the rear 30. Last stand	4. Take the high ground 27. Disordered defence 26. Triple line

The references are to the One Hour Wargames Scenarios. In each one the red army is, surprisingly, the Red Army! The idea is that one scenario is selected (at random) in the frontier battles box. If the Germans win they move onto the Soviet Mechanised Counterattack box. If they lose, they have another go at another scenario. This way, the Germans get three goes at moving out of the first box, if they fail all three they lose.

As with all ladder campaigns the idea is for the Germans to get to the fourth box and defeat the Red Army. Similarly, the Red Army works to push the Germans back to the frontier. 

One idea I'm playing with is the use of specific rules for each part of the ladder. For example, the frontier battles box could have an option for one or more Red Army units to be NKVD. Later, there could be an option for Red Army militia units or German exhaustion.

Given the random selection of scenarios in each box plus random army selections in the scenarios and, potentially, some further special rules this will give a real challenge and a unique sense of the campaign. To get in the mood I'm re-reading Robert Kershaw's War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-42.