Full disclosure: This is replicating a post I made on the BoardGameGeek entry for this game. Since I value the community here also I thought I’d cross-post it.
I want to write something similar to my “First Impressions” post on North Africa, though once again I don’t consider myself sufficiently qualified or experienced with the game to write a true review. Instead I will focus on a collection of thoughts that will hopefully be helpful to those browsing the game on BGG and looking for a more serious description.
Introduction
Welcome to the Eastern Front! A theater that consumed far more manpower than all other fronts of WW2 combined and where the German military was ultimately broken at enormous cost. The Eastern Front is usually a significant part of any Axis&Allies global game, but it never seems to play out in a way that resembles history particularly well. Now we have a game zoomed in on one of the most pivotal battles of that theater with a commitment to a more historical depiction.
I continue to be thrilled that Renegade has continued this new theater-level Axis&Allies series with the second title in 2 years, and I’m also thrilled that Matt Hyra continues to be the primary consistent design influence. I wish him and all those working with him continued success on this line.
Components
The map for Stalingrad of two pieces that, uniquely, are not simply joined to make a larger area; rather one map covers the region surrounding and west of Stalingrad, and one depicts the city itself. There are 3 territories on the region map that connect into specific territories on the city map and allow units to flow in and out. It’s a pretty creative take on how to show both the significant fighting in and around the city at the same time. The overall color palette of the map is very “Eastern Front” with lots of tan, brown, dark red, and some white/gray. All the territory color-coding does serve a purpose, but it can look a little garish in how saturated it is. I’m somewhat neutral on the final look, but similar to North Africa I love how generously sized the regions are. The map is also criss-crossed by red rail/road lines and has marked entry points. All of this is functional, though the rail/road lines are a little too bright for me personally and visually conflict with the region lines, especially considering I haven’t seen them used much yet in actual gameplay (unlike the prominent and much more heavily-used coast road in North Africa).
I did think after seeing early announcements that the unit piece count for Stalingrad seemed low, but I now I think that has to do with using the pieces more efficiently with only 2 powers in the game vs. other games with multiple powers each needing a set of pieces. It still feels like a pretty large-scale amount of fighting. In general, the pieces are the standard sculpts with a few exceptions I’ll note below. Surprisingly the game also comes with a small but functional amount of paper money, which I think is a nice touch. Though I hope it is a very cheap addition as it’s not necessary and many folks will probably not use it. I’m pretty sure Stalingrad comes with the same bag of green/gray stacking chips that North Africa did. The cards are a very heavy and stiff cardstock; they seem quite durable. Not sure if they can be sleeved, or if you would even want to.
So let’s talk about the newer pieces.
The Germans get a STUGIII piece, functioning as a sort of mobile anti-tank gun. It moves 2 similar to a tank, but attacks at only a 2 and defends at a 3 at a cost of 5 (tanks are 3/3 in this game and cost 6). Most importantly it has “targeted fire” which works similarly to North Africa where the opposing player must remove a tank as casualty per hit. Overall it’s fine, the Soviets will have plenty of tanks in this scenario so it will get to use its ability and the Axis player gets to spend time on the defensive as well. It’s also nice to see these historically important vehicles represented, as the STGIII was the single-most produced German AFV of the war. The main annoyance comes from them looking incredibly similar to the tanks, especially in the black color. They also feels a little unnecessary; it feels like they could have been replaced at some ratio with tanks and the game would feel basically the same.
The Soviets get a unit representing the Katyusha Rocket Launcher, which is a much more unique unit. They are very cheap at only 2, with no combat value at all. However, their special ability is that once per turn if not in combat they can fire into adjacent regions (or farther if firing inside the city) trying to roll a 1 to score a hit which is removed prior to normal combat, sort of like a long-range heavy artillery unit. I like the basic idea, but I dislike how they feel in practice; rather than a shock unit that is focused on saturation bombardments as part of major offensives, it becomes a sort of weird sniper unit. Considering the game already differentiates assaults from ongoing battles, it felt like a missed opportunity not to let Katyushas have a niche role in supporting major offensives (aka Assaults in game terms) but be not very useful otherwise. The sculpt is very cool though.
Lastly, there are Axis Minor infantry/artillery in a kind of lemon-yellow color. When it was announced that Minor Axis units would be included there was a lot of excitement, followed by some minor community disappointment (get it) when they were fully revealed. The infantry function identically to the German infantry, except they don’t benefit from the Force Multiplier ability that German infantry get when they move onto the city board. This means they should generally be left on the region board to guard the flanks, which of course is exactly how they were used historically. There is really no reason to ever buy new ones. The Axis Minor artillery functions the exact same as German artillery and is for flavor only. I do miss the ability of the D10 combat system in North Africa to differentiate different national units with different combat values, but considering the Stalingrad design is trying to maintain a simpler rules overhead sticking with a D6 system makes sense.
Last but not least, I hate to even mention it but the MRSP jump was unfortunate. For those who don’t remember, Stalingrad was originally going to be a $60 MRSP game and it still feels like a $60 game component-wise to players with my kind of memory. It was pushed up to $80 for various legitimate reasons and I can understand why, but it’s tough to get over just how hard inflation has been hitting the board game industry the last few years (including before and after the tariff concerns). I’m still struggling to reset my brain around some of these new costs. At least all of the components here feel top notch with no corners cut, so there is that; it does feel like Renegade is committed to producing a premium product.
Rules
Much has been said about North Africa being surprisingly complex (from an Axis&Allies viewpoint anyways), and Stalingrad was pitched early on by the designer as a simpler game. From that perspective, mission accomplished; Stalingrad does a nice job keeping a lot of historical flavor while also maintaining a much reduced rules overhead.
The flow of a game turn is 14 steps long, each step described on a deck of cards that can be methodically flipped through to walk you through the game turn sequence. The rulebook does a pretty nice job overall; I could quibble on a few wordings, but on the whole it’s a lot easier to learn (32 pages for Stalingrad to 40 pages for North Africa, meaning it’s missing 8 pages of hard rules).
At its core, Stalingrad borrows from the original Axis&Allies D-Day combat system where battles last a single round, both sides are forced to attack each turn, and where stacking limits are present to prevent too much concentration of force in a small area. No stacks of 50 Soviet infantry guarding Moscow here… instead each space is limited to 8 units. No retreating is allowed either, once committed to a battle units stay until they win or die. Supply rules are back but are more abstracted in that you track supply lines from sources. Supply tokens are present but are only spent to allow out of supply units to temporarily fight as if in supply, there are no trucks to move them so you have to use valuable bombers to do so. Otherwise out of supply units fight at a -1 to all combat values. Rivers and fortified zones boost defense combat power by +1s. The river rule is neat, but the fortified zone rule does cause the odd quirk that battles over fortified zones tend to be actually bloodier and more quickly resolved than otherwise; I would have preferred if the defenders could have ignored one hit or something. It’s also awkward because both sides are forced to attack/defend each turn, so the side originally defending the fortification is forced to attack the other player while they get the bonus.
There are some nifty rules around rivers freezing and bad weather grounding air units. The city fighting functions basically the same as on the region map, but with the addition of “ambush” sites that represent snipers. Infantry can hang out in these ambush sites and shoot at enemy units with impunity while being quite hard to remove. The Volga river is also represented, as well as the tenuous Soviet supply lines across it into the city. Ferries can carry infantry reinforcements across but can also be bombed and sunk, which can also disrupt Soviet supply until they are replaced. The Germans do get one important and badly needed “force multiplier” advantage when moving into the city; the German infantry and mechanized infantry units are doubled in quantity, though they must cut back down to half again if they move back out to the regional board. To emphasize the smaller scale of the city board, artillery firing anti-aircraft and Soviet rocket launchers can reach the whole board from anywhere (which becomes quite perilous for Axis aircraft especially).
The major historic Soviet counter-attack on the flanks is handled via a system of cards depicting units that the Soviet player starts collecting on Turn 3, and provides flexibility for when the Soviet player launches the attack; they are rewarded for launching the attack later, at the risk of losing more ground in the meantime. When they do launch the offensive they reveal the cards and gain a significant number of free units which are placed on the Axis flanks automatically. They are then able to cut off the Axis supply lines if able, achieving the historic result, or otherwise attempt to secure the Soviet victory conditions. Only a few turns after the Soviet offensive begins can the Axis player finally spend their collected RPs and bring on reinforcements (which could be as late as turn 10).
Similar to North Africa, there are two scenarios included; one that covers the full turn limit (“Race to Stalingrad”) and a shorter scenario that picks up about half-way through the length of the longer one, right as Operation Uranus is launched (aptly titled “Operation Uranus”). My assumption is that the shorter Operation Uranus was intended for competitive tournament play and was probably better play-tested for balance, similar to the Operation Torch scenario for North Africa.
Gameplay and Balance Observations
By the summer of 1942 the United States had entered the war and meaningfully large amounts of US war material were starting to flow to the allies. Combined with the significantly larger Allied manpower reserves Germany’s fate was sealed, but a successful Case Blue offensive to secure Stalingrad and the Caucasus oilfields at least had the potential to significantly help the Axis war effort while hindering the Soviet war effort. In reality, the offensive was a failure; German resources became over-stretched, the Soviets were stronger than anticipated, Hitler muddled the strategic direction of the offensive and then his inflexibility doomed it when things went wrong. However the campaign does fit several elements that tend to make great Axis & Allies games: A strong Axis opening position, an Allied player buying time for greater forces to come to bear, and the potential for a very dramatic and tense finish. The added wrinkle of the German counter-offensive rules (modeled after Operation Winter Storm, historically the failed German offensive to relieve the Stalingrad pocket) adds yet another back-and-forth potential to the narrative.
It’s interesting that the victory conditions for the Axis presume Hitler’s obsession with Stalingrad itself, with total victory being the Germans completely occupying the city and major victory being retaining only a supplied foothold in the city. The Axis player is hobbled by Hitler’s inflexibility in not allowing any kind of strategic withdrawal, and the limited number of RP points available are almost all on the city map forcing the Axis player to push hard. The Soviet objectives are much more straightforward, defending the city and pushing the Axis back at a regional level.
On a positive note: the game captures the core excitement of the campaign, the push into Stalingrad itself and the bitter street fighting. The Germans start with a moderate but important force advantage and are highly incentivized to attack hard into the city. They need to take advantage of initial Soviet command inflexibility, while being careful to minimize casualties due to receiving nearly no replacements the bulk of the game. The Soviets are incentivized to strongly defend the city, but with a flexible defense that buys time and utilizes reinforcements smartly. All while prepping for the significant mid-game offensive that both players know is coming. While the game certainly feels a little scripted in terms of how it’s intended to play out, it’s still Axis & Allies which mean there are a multitude of small choices to make and battles to roll out that may or may not turn out how you wanted or needed them to.
On a negative note: So far in my limited play I am disappointed in the balance and experience of the larger “Race to Stalingrad” scenario. My bias is that I’m personally buying and playing these theater games for the full campaign experience rather than the shorter scenario. I accept that there is more potential for divergence in the outcome of these longer scenarios but I find that part of the enjoyment of seeing how the game plays out. Therefore I am not commenting on the balance or experience of the “Operation Uranus” scenario (yet). However when I play the “Race to Stalingrad” scenario, my experience is that the game is heavily balanced against the Axis forces to a level that greatly reduces my enjoyment of the game. This is worthy of an entirely separate post, but ultimately it comes down to the high-attrition combat system heavily punishing the Axis forces.
Soviet forces are not actually that inferior at set-up; at the start of the game the Axis have 74 units to the Soviet 70, and the Soviets will quickly add significant reinforcements even just over the first few turns, including a steady flow of free valuable tank and artillery units from the Stalingrad factories; a nice historic touch but feeling very punishing for the Axis player. The Axis forces have a more advantageous concentration of force and more expensive units on average at set-up. However by the time the Axis have pushed into the city and started capturing RP locations they will have suffered significant losses, while the Soviets have amassed an enormous amount of additional units on their Operation Uranus cards. By the time the Germans do get to start spending RPs (probably turn 9 or 10) they will likely be in dire straits while the Soviets will have brought on hundreds of RP of additional units by that point.
I understand that very smart and careful German play combined with lucky German die rolls can swing the game in their favor and even result in a victory, but I’m confident in saying that will not be most people’s experience. It’s a stark contrast to 1940 Global. 1940 Global, using the standard set-up, is normally considered fairly evenly balanced between newer players and only becomes very favorable to the Axis between more experienced and skilled players. Stalingrad feels the opposite; right out the gate the Axis player has to play basically perfectly AND hope for good dice. Otherwise, the lack of Axis replacements combined with strong Soviet replacements means their position will rapidly spiral out of control. I haven’t seen a game yet where the Soviets ever felt truly pressured or where the German position didn’t look hopeless by the 6th or 7th turn (of a 14 turn game). A single bad set of dice can set into motion a rapid collapse of a section of the Axis front with no chance of recovery.
What I’m trying to say is that not only does the game feel unbalanced against the Axis, the resulting “fun factor” is impacted. There are only 20 RP on the board total (4 on the region board, 16 on the city board) and the Axis player actually has to actively garrison regions to collect that amount with their rapidly dwindling forces being increasingly exposed. Soviet Rocket launchers and ambush sites add even more attrition against Axis forces. All that to collect a measly amount of Axis RP that will not be able to be spent until near the end of the game. Steadily losing units as the Axis player while not buying any replacements for the bulk of the game doesn’t feel fun or even particularly like an Axis and Allies game. While for the Soviet player, the historic feeling of being backed against the river with forces barely holding on just isn’t there; the Axis forces are simply too weak by mid-game to re-create that feeling. There should be tension around when the Soviet player decides to launch the Operation Uranus offensive based on how desperate their game situation is, but I’ve yet to see it.
The fact that the early community consensus is universally concerned that the balance is heavily against the Axis has me worried. A few apologists have stated that Axis players just need to “git gud” and learn better techniques. There is probably something to this, and I’ve noticed my Axis play significantly improving with a little experience. The problem is I feel like I’m over the bulk of the learning curve as the Axis and it’s still not even close to even. At this point the Axis in my opinion the Axis need significantly larger starting forces. This could be secured with a bid, and that may be something to experiment with, but it’s so obvious that it’s unfortunate to me that this couldn’t have been better accounted for by simply adding another stack or 2 of Axis units to the starting setup.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In the end I’m still going to recommend this game. If you want to play one of the new theater games but dislike the rules complexity of North Africa, Stalingrad is still a solid choice. I’m hopeful that the community cracks more of the code of the “Race for Stalingrad” scenario for the Axis and/or that a bid system becomes normal to achieve better balance. The shorter scenario may be amazing, and there is tons of wonderful historical flavor here. Let’s be honest, a lot of us are just using these games as an excuse to play with toy soldiers and this game more than checks that box. I simply think in terms of tension and balance the North Africa game did a better job at capturing the historical feeling of a campaign hanging in the balance.
One last reflection. I would have loved to have seen a larger region board that included the Caucasus front and covered the full scope of Case Blue, with perhaps a smaller Stalingrad board. I get the logistical advantage of producing 2 boards of the same size but I would have loved to see a larger scale game on the strategic level and a smaller scope city battle myself. I also slightly worry that having gotten this game we won’t get another Eastern Front theater game.
If you read all this, thanks, it ended up being a lot longer than I expected. I still want to explore the balance concerns in more detail but I’ll have to save that for a later post!
I want to close by saying thanks to Matt Hyra as designer and Renegade games. This recent renaissance of Axis and Allies has been wonderful to participate in and I’m fully on board for future games in this series. These games are a difficult design challenge and I appreciate all the work involved in bringing them to my table.