Naturelich Games

I received Memoir'44 - Eastern Front as a present from Shelak and Raven. As Memoir '44 is a boy's game Shelak and I sat together to relive the Russo-Finnish war. On December 8th 1939, Russian troops reached the Finnish city of Suomussalmi. This scenario is introductory to Memoir'44's Eastern Front expansion pack. It introduces Finnish ski troops (which we found to be particularly powerful) and a few new terrain types. We played on the map of the base game (so the landscape is a little bit white/green on the image below)...

Ready to start...

Shelak volunteered to take the Finnish side, while Naturelich headed up the Russians. And there was my first dilemma! Moscow puts a Polit Commissar at the general's side. Well, I understand things need to be under control but loosing all that flexibility made my life rather difficult. But it is for the better of our beloved Soviet Union than it is all worth it. Unfortunately we lost the battle, but first things first.

Russian troops at Hulkoniemi - Picture taken before the battle (as afterwards they were almost all gone...)

The battle started off pretty well for the Finnish. They were able to take out Russian infantry forces North of Hulkoniemi. Nothing could have been done to avoid this sacrifice. But the Russians hit back hard at General Makinen's roadblock. It did not take long before the Russian troops had cleared all enemies. But this was already too late, as the Finnish ski troops defeated more armored units near Hulkoniemi. Due to a grave tactical mistake, they were also able to defeat the Russian artillery. While the Finnish artillery remained extremely inactive during the game, the Russian forces had relied heavily on their artillery support. The Polit Commisar was slowing down the strategic decisions and helped stealing the Russian victory. The Finnish continued their advancement and were able to quickly take the field bunker. By now, it seemed pretty obivous that Russian orders were not reaching the western flank of the battle. Was this due to the Polit Commissar or simply a matter of bad luck? Well, it probably was just an instance of bad luck to compensate for the fact that every Russian shot was a direct and deadly hit. But this was not enough to win - the Finnish beat the Russians in Suomussalmi with 6 to 4.