The Eponymous Sword
In 1943, a sword was presented by Winston Churchill to Josef Stalin. It was forged at the order of King George VI as a recognition of the heroism of the people of Stalingrad. A sword forged at the order of a constitutional monarch given by a Tory to totalitarian, who claimed to represent socialist.
Strange bed fellows indeed.
In addition and perhaps more importantly, it gave its name to the Memoir '44 scenario pack for Stalingrad which played last night. We were having too much fun and it completely slipped my mind to take pictures, but we got Boomer, Ceire, Andrew and Oisin around the table and played through the Rats in a Factory scenario twice. The results were a very comfortable Soviet win (17-9), followed by an equally comfortable German win (8-17).
The Soviet Command rules, whereby the OC Soviet forces must choose his cards a turn in advance, are very frustrating and time and again as Soviet OC, I found myself trapped in a decision cycle that was just that little bit too slow.
The City Fighting rules were interesting and like all Borg rules were all the better for being seasoning, rather than a main meal. These are a deck of special cards that are played in conjunction with the normal Command cards and that all players to do special things like moving troops through sewers, bring on reinforcements, call in airstrikes or give a bonus to troops who are assaulting a built up area.
Intelligent use of two of these cards were key the first Soviet victory as they allowed the Soviet artillery to put some stick about.
A great night, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed playing games with Andrew.
I agree, that is a great scenario pack. We've played it a few times here and have always enjoyed it.
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