1920: Nest of Eagles is published by PHALANX and designed by Jaroslaw Flis. As a Pole I obviously have a particular attachment to this subject, but even setting that aside, the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 is one of the most dramatic and least gamed campaigns of the twentieth century. Hundreds of thousands of men on both sides, huge armies marching across war-torn Europe, devastating cavalry raids, and desperate defenders barely holding their ground. The map stretches from Kyiv and Smolensk in the east all the way to Warsaw and Cracow in the west, and the question at the center of it is simple: does the Red Army crush Poland and open the road into Europe, or do the Poles pull off the victory that history remembers as a miracle?
Mechanically this is an intermediate complexity, hex-and-counter, strategic-level game for two players, with a three-player variant included. The design brings in several genuinely fresh ideas: lines of friction replacing the usual zones of control, reaction movement, and morale advantage, all of them shaped to reproduce the very specific strategic problems facing each commander across three separate theaters of war. Both sides get numerous unique and special units, and the torn loyalties of the Ukrainians, who fought on both sides of the front, are built into the design rather than glossed over. Four short scenarios introduce the mechanics step by step, which makes the learning curve much gentler than the map size might suggest.
Below I am presenting the game components, giving also a quick overview of the rules and key design features:
Enjoy the material!