European delivery

Yes it does, as long as the first free move is not into a contested or hostile territory.

Per the rules… Page 16 and 17.
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@Hansolo88 Anyway to give one last anecdotal addendum if you’re still out there, I busted out my own copy of the game yesterday and gave it a run. I haven’t touched the game in about a year so I’m pretty rusty, but I still remembered the basic strategies + all the rules enough to play at least a mid-level game.

I do agree that USSR is the much easier side to play, as they won. However, the game was a decent enough toss up that I felt it could have gone in Germany’s favor if I hadn’t botched some key decisions (mostly, I failed to heed my own advice and had Germany trying to break into all 3 city entrances instead of just focusing on 1-2 in-force. This left Pitomnik underdefended, which let the Soviets surround the city early (I had captured all but two territories in the city, those being the two factories). Once Germany was cut-off, they quickly burned through their supply crates and stalled out afterwards, letting the Uranus forces walk into the city and clean things up.

I’ll play more and hope I can get a better grasp on Germany in case others come asking for advice later.

UPDATE: In a second playthrough, I was able to win a total (although it took until about turn 12 to close the game out because some Soviets kept running around in the RP territories making me play whack-a-mole). I would generally recommend the following:

All Optional Rules - OFF (basically all of them benefit the Soviets IMO). Have Germany focus on the northern flank of the city to rush towards the Tank/Artillery factories. If those can be shut-off quickly (turn 4/5/6) it shuts down USSR’s ability to effectively fight in the city. To that end, in the initial stages of the game, use Germany’s air to target the northern ferry and/or any stragglers you can find in that portion of the board. If USSR isn’t building Artillery on the river, you may also want to make a point of killing the one they start with to reduce their AA odds long-term.

@Gibsonrick81 I’m hoping to get around to it soon. Worse case, I may not have it till thanksgiving. Just because then I will have a lot more time on my hands for a few days.

@jim010 Seems to me it might just be a case of needing to try messing around with the German strategy, but again without a full game report I can’t really give super concrete advice.

One other thing you mentioned was that you’re not using air units in the city for fear of having them get shot down. That may be part of your issue as, in my opinion, Germany needs to be comfortable with the idea of gambling their air units to make decisive attacks against Soviet positions in the city during the initial attempt to break in, even if the air units get lost in the process. This is because:

A: you get more air units with winter storm later.
B: The “bad weather” mechanic in the later rounds of the game will eventually make your air units effectively worthless anyway.

So it’s a “use it before you lose it” kind of situation. In certain situations, the air units can be used to soak hits for tanks, as strange as that sounds.

@FranceNeedsMorePower Setup video is here! https://youtu.be/hn_frClhdBs

@DoManMacgee I was just going to use Italy pieces from G40.

@jim010 This game rocks. I hope you have enjoyed.