I am becoming more and more fan of VUCA Simulations games. There are several reasons for this. What they do, is to pick up interesting topics – sometimes these will be fresh designs, sometimes new editions of great games – and then put them into incredibly beautiful and appealing graphical form. Thus I am pretty happy to share my impressions and experiences with another of their titles. Let us talk about Donnerschlag: Escape from Stalingrad!

The Game & Historical Background

Presentation of beautiful game components

From December 12 to December 23 in 1942, Unternehmen Wintergewitter was in progress. This was the code name for a relief attack by Heeresgruppe Don to free the trapped 6thArmy in Stalingrad. The Axis formations entered with 50,000 men and 250 tanks, while the strength of the Soviet formations was reported to be about three times that.

For the enterprise to have any chance of success, the troops in the encirclement had to break out and meet the advancing Axis troops. The breakout had to be precisely coordinated with the advance of the relief troops and was to commence on the code word Donnerschlag. The breakout was never ordered and the troops in Stalingrad were never able to be relieved. This sealed their fate.

Players will be recreating this episode, with the Axis side attempting to secretly establish and reach a meeting point, thus effectively freeing the 6th Army, while the Soviet will try to impede such outcome.

As for the scale of the game, one hex equals 4 km while one turn equals 2–3 days. A game lasts, at most, 8 turns. Units are mostly Brigades & Regiments for the Soviets and Romanians; Battalions & Abteilungen for the Germans. In Donnerschlag players will activate units to move and combat through the use of cards. In each turn each player will draw 5 or 6 activation cards, which they will play in an alternating fashion. Each activation card allows the activation of a subset of units.

There are no victory points in Donnerschlag. During the first four turns of the game the Axis player will secretly commit to one of the areas on the map: A, B, or C. The Axis player wins if they have units on the chosen area exactly on the 4th turn (and sometimes on the 5th turn) after they have called Donnerschlag. Otherwise the Soviet Player wins.

Set-up

After that introduction it is time to present to Dear Readers one of my sessions in picture-rich format. We start with the maps and the initial situation on the front. You will be able to see both the general, strategic view as well as some close-ups on the actual actions.

PS. Feel free to click on pictures to enlarge in the new window.

This is how the game looks like – map, space for the cards, discards, removals as well as some special chits. To the right you have Stalingrad (Soviets) where three potential areas of meeting with breakout forces are (A, B or C). To the left you see Germans and their troops taking part in relief operation.
Close up on front line. German 6th Panzer and 23th Panzer divisions ready to hit the Soviet lines. Significant second line units – Group Popescu– ready to plunge into any potential gap and exploit it.

It would probably be easy for the Germans to break initial Soviet defenses. But what then? Will they keep momentum in order to achieve the assumed victory? That would be a challenge. Let’s see!

Example Session Report

That game I again played with my long-term wargaming buddy, Marcin. We decided that I will take command of attacking Germans while he will concentrate on building the defenses and repealing the onslaught with Red Army forces. Below the after-action report of our game.

Turn 1 – the initial assault came from 23rd Panzer and One Infantry Division – I had such cards and could not do too much else. Marcin started to gradually regroup his forces.
Then the 6th Panzer went on attack, mopping up some isolated resistance points, left after main attack thrust.
One of the ways to stop the Wehrmacht advance is to put Red Army units in its path. But equally effective should be playing the card which will bring bad weather on some areas of map (like above). And navigating through snow without roads / railroads is time consuming.
Finally 6th Panzer started to put some pressure on Marcin’s forces. You cannot allow Soviets to quick guess to which meeting sector you are heading to!
Overview of some initial Turns – push in center (23rd Panzer & Group Popescu) with pressure also on left wing (6th Panzer). Significant Soviet reinforcements arriving at the second lien of defense.
Further German progress. 23rd is only 5 hexes from area C. Would this be a secret meeting spot? 6th Panzer converges from left wing to Center. The soviet brigades are everywhere but do not act in coordinated way.
End of our session. 23rd Panzer managed to reach sector C, but where under very heavy counter-attacks by Soviets and it might be soon a Pyrrhic victory for them.
Summary of our game. The front line nicely marked between opposing forces; some isolated pockets of Soviet resistance behind the German enemy lines. Wehrmacht tanks in sector C!

That was crazy game, which gave us a lot of fun and excitement. I admit, the possibility to bluff which area the German forces are heading to (A, B or C) is a great game element. This time I managed to get to the C sector and actually also secretly plan it, but I am sure, this is not always easy to achieve.

First Impressions

Playing Donnerschlag was fun – that is for sure. Let me now summarize in succinct way my experiences:

  • As mentioned above, I like the bluff mechanics on German side as they need to decide during the first four turns where the meeting point will be – and gain access there / hold it through another four turns.
  • The rulebook is beautiful, straightforward, with rules well explained; we have also some great historical background presented there.
  • Let us be honest – the historical topic is very interesting – everybody heard about Stalingrad! However, we usually focus on Soviet advances while here the key area is the relief operation.
  • Definitely one thing in which VUCA Simulations excels is the graphical representation of the game and components quality. To say they are beautiful would be understatement 🙂
  • Another aspect which one needs to take into consideration is the asymmetry of the game; Germans are all the time on the attack, Soviets on defense (well, in the end, with all the reinforcements, they might put some decent fight). It might not be such a great fun to lead Red Army as Wehrmacht constantly smashes through them.
  • When I am writing this article, a massive errata to rulebook, set-up and some components is available and game works flawlessly. But at the initial stage of the production – when I first had chance to play this title – there were multiple issues which definitely were lowering fun from the play.
  • Another factor which might not appeal to everybody is the way how the Soviet forces are activated / commanded. This is by color rather the organized unit. That allows for activation on almost whole map (this is how units are dispersed initially) but rarely possibility for bigger concentration in one space. You will need several turns to reorganize the disposition of Red Army.

The game made a positive impression on us and we had fun with it. It was thematic, rather quick and beautiful. Glad to see errata which fixed all the shortcomings. Now over to next VUCA title!