Blitzkrieg Commander: Breakthrough on the Dnieper

A couple friends came over last week to try out Blitzkrieg Commander, a WWII tabletop wargame rule set that I picked up last month but hadn't yet tried out. Up until now we'd been playing Crossfire with my 10mm WWII figures. Crossfire is a fun game, but the game sort of assumes that each group will house rules the hell out of it. And although I'm working on some house rules for Crossfire, they're not yet complete--so we've had only marginal amounts of fun with the game, owing to its half-finished nature.

I had high hopes for Blitzkrieg Commander, and it didn't disappoint. The rules are quick and intuitive--just tell the players how to issue orders, explain the few modifiers that the game uses, and you're off and running!

We played an "Exploitation" scenario taken from the main rulebook. I set the game in October 1943 as part of the Red Army's crossing of the Dnieper River. For our game, the Russians had already penetrated the main German line, so the German players would be commanding reserve units that weren't properly deployed for the coming assault.

Here's a look at my kitchen table just before the game started. We were playing "deep," so the Soviets entered on the closest short table edge and had to push through several layers of German defenses.


Here's the Soviet assault force: 6 T-34/76s (each with 1 infantry squad riding) plus an SU-122 with a few more infantry squads on the other flank. The BA-10 armored car is one of the two command units.


The Germans were deployed in several different areas of the board, which prevented them from mustering a solid counterattack initially.


In addition to scattered infantry and MG squads, the Germans had 2 Tiger I tanks, 1 Panzer IV tank and 1 Sturmpanzer Brummbar.


Plus a PaK-4o anti-tank gun! It was dug-in behind some hedges and drew first blood once the game got underway.
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And thus the game began! The Russians had to capture as much territory as possible, and they started off by moving forward toward the small village in this photo. Both Red Army command units gave lackluster performances in these opening turns, giving the Germans time to pull back some troops and open fire with their PaK-40. The first kill was a T-34.

The Soviets dumped their tank riders in this small village and attempted to drive straight through to continue the assault. Unfortunately the Brummbar was close enough to provide a serious roadblock to this plan.


On the other flank, the infantry pushed through another small village but spent waaay too much time attacking a dug-in MG unit. Because of this, they weren't able to keep up with the rest of the assault, and they didn't do too much damage. Note the smoking T-34 and SU-122 in the background.

After several turns, the German players had the bright idea to move their Tigers up into the fray. They actually drove right up and parked atop the central hill, thus threatening a huge area with their guns. This maneuver proved to be the deathblow for the Soviets, as their 4 remaining T-34s spent the rest of the game trying desperately to stay away from the Tigers.

Both the German and Soviet infantry units chewed each other to pieces in the urban areas, but not before the German infantry, armed with panzerfausts, drove several T-34s back into range of the Tigers. The final play came as the Tigers plunged into the woods in pursuit of the two remaining T-34s. The Soviet player (me) conceded the game after this photo.

All in all, we found Blitzkrieg Commander to be a very satisfying game. In retrospect, I should have given the Soviet side a lot more points; the rulebook suggested that the attacker have double the points as the defender. The scenario as I set it up didn't have quite that disparity.

The possibility of failing a command role at a critical time made for some very exciting play. We also liked that the turns weren't fixed; players could issue a bunch of orders, or fail after just one or two, thereby ending their turn.

We didn't include artillery or air support in our game, as we were just trying out the rules and didn't want to further complicate our learning session. But for our next game, I think we'll do a straight point build and see how the game plays that way.

Why I'm Avoiding Flames of War

Collecting and playing with 10mm-scale WWII miniatures represents a fairly conscious decision on my part to avoid Flames of War, the very successful WWII miniatures game by Battlefront Miniatures.

While I'm not hostile to FOW, I'm most definitely not interested in playing a "branded" wargame. I played Warhammer 40k for many years, and I still enjoy Privateer Press' Warmachine—but these products have one thing on common: they both a ruleset and a miniatures company rolled into one. As such, there's a strong impetus to use brand-specific miniatures to play each game, especially at the tournament level. Said miniatures are, on average, a few bucks more expensive than their generic counterparts.

I dropped $50 on my 10mm collection and ended up with enough to field both sides of a decent-sized game. Plus, my existing collection of plastic prepainted tanks ensures that I'll pretty much never have to purchase a pewter tank ever again, which is great because I have zero interest in painting tanks and armored vehicles. My mantra for WWII gaming is this: Paint a little, play a lot. I've spent the last couple of weeks getting my two armies in shape, and at some point very soon, that effort will be over. Then, it's time to game.

Which brings me to my next qualm: FOW operates at an odd scale. Every game I've watched has suffered from the "Warhammer 40k syndrome," with miniatures packed onto every square inch of table space, leaving very little room for realistic fire and maneuver simulations. Every battle group looks like the Red Army, with troopers lined up base-to-base, everyone surging forward in one big clump. As near as I can tell, it's battalion-level play on a play area that might better support company-level duels. Granted, this makes for a very attractive tabletop, especially if both armies are painted, but I only see limited options in such setups. Scaling down to 10mm really opens up a lot more space on a standard 4/6 table.

I'd much rather buy my miniatures from a company that specializes in miniatures, and then buy rules from a dedicated game publishing company.