Korsun '44

by Peter D. Pawelek

Article Type: Review
Article Date: July 19, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Korsun '44
Category: Turn-based Operational Level Wargame
Developer: John Tiller
Publisher: HPS Simulations
Release Date:
Req. Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here

Trapped Rats Have Teeth

At the beginning of 1944, in the aftermath of Kursk, Army Group South found itself in a very bad position. It had about 56,000 troops (six divisions) concentrated along the Dnepr River about 125km southeast of Kiev. This concentration of forces posed a serious threat to the Soviets since it was poised at the hinge of the 1st and 2nd Ukranian Fronts which Zhukov was hoping to coordinate as part of a massive offensive in the south to clear all German forces from Soviet land. Zhukov proposed to eliminate this threat by a massive encirclement operation around Korsun. The encirclement was partially successful, but by early February the 30,000 German troops managed to break out of the pocket through fierce fighting in the snow, mud and rain. Korsun ’44, which is John Tiller’s sixth offering in the highly acclaimed Panzer Campaigns series, masterfully simulates these massive battles of encirclement.

Korsun '44 Splash Screen

As with all Panzer Campaigns games, Korsun ’44 is a turn-based operational level wargame played on a hexgrid with units being generally battalion-level strength in scale. The map onto which the hexgrid is superimposed can be viewed in either two dimensions or three dimensions and at two levels of zoom. Personally, I find the 3-D view in the Panzer Campaigns games to be pretty useless, and certainly not aesthetically pleasing. However, the 2-D maps are very well made and portray all the information you need to play effectively.


Hexes are 1 km across and each turn represents two hours of real time. Korsun ’44 comes with 26 scenarios, including a mammoth 240-turn campaign game that covers 40,000 square kilometers.

A portion of the map for the campaign game.

Players who are familiar with other Panzer Campaigns games will find that Korsun '44 plays quite differently than the games that cover the early years of the Russo-German conflict (Smolensk '41 and Kharkov '42). Both sides have better and more mobile armor and personnel carriers resulting in more fluid engagements, better communications technology resulting in larger command radii for headquarters units, and many more weapons systems that have ranges greater than 1 hex.

Game Interface

One of Tiller’s great strengths as a wargame designer is in providing coherent and effective user interfaces. In addition to the map view, the screen is divided to include a panel that has both unit information and hex information for the currently selected location. Units can easily be selected by clicking on their images in the hex info box, or by double-clicking on the stack in which they’re contained on the mapboard.

The unit information box contains a wealth of statistics for the selected unit: current strength (measured in individual men, guns, or vehicles), morale, fatigue, movement points remaining and state of disruption. If you play with fog-of-war (FOW) activated, you will not receive all of this information when clicking on enemy units. Instead, you will gradually receive more information about enemy units the longer you stay in contact with them.

A zoomed-in 2-D view of the map.

As with all of Tiller’s games, there are many ways to visualize various aspects of the games. Filters can be used to highlight hexes that are reachable by a selected unit, maximum weapons ranges of units, command radii of headquarters units, etc. Also, units can be colored according to their divisional attachment which can be especially useful in huge scenarios with hundreds of units to control.

The unit artwork in previous Panzer Campaigns games has varied from atrocious to mediocre. I’m happy to report, that for once, the out-of-the box artwork of Korsun '44 is not that bad. If you still have a taste for something that looks more professional, I direct your attention to third party art packs that exist for Panzer Campaigns games, including an excellent art pack designed by Ed ‘Volcano’ Williams for Korsun ’44.

Game Mechanics

In a player turn you can have your units move, fire or engage in assaults in any order you desire. Whether a unit can move or fire depends on the mode selected, either through the button bar interface or by pressing the control key while selecting a unit which forces it into direct fire mode. A unit that fires or engages in assaults will exhaust movement points for that turn; therefore, there are a limited number of events in which a unit can engage in a given turn.


Movement: Movement of units is very straightforward. A selected unit can be moved by either right-clicking on an adjacent hex or by ‘dragging and dropping’ a unit to its final destination hex. Be warned that if you use the ‘drag and drop’ technique the computer will plot the route to the final destination and it might not be optimal. In fact you can get your unit into serious trouble by doing this and if you have ‘Fog of War’ enabled, or are playing a PBEM game, you won’t be able to ‘undo’ the move.

You can also place units in travel mode (or rail mode if the unit is located on a rail line) which will greatly increase the number of movement points available to the unit at the expense of becoming considerably more vulnerable to enemy fire. It is always a good idea to deploy a unit out of travel mode a safe distance from enemy units.

Units can also expend movement points in a hex in order to build fortifications and improved positions. By doing this repeatedly, improved positions can be upgraded to trenches, which make the defending units much more difficult to assault or to be hit by direct fire. This system encourages striking while the iron is hot; if you wait too long to attack, the defender's lines will become impenetrable and a static front will develop.


Fire: In order to have units fire instead of move, you have to toggle from movement mode into firing mode. For non-artillery units, direct fire (DF) will occur at ranges of 1-2 hexes depending on visibility conditions. Artillery units can fire from much greater distances (the big guns can sometimes fire from even more than 25 hexes away) using either direct fire if the target is visible, or indirect fire if the target is being spotted by another unit from the same parent formation. Each volley of fire costs 1/3 of a unit’s movement allowance.

Calling in an airstrike.

The outcome of a given volley of fire is dependent on a large number of factors including the terrain occupied by the defender, and the state of fatigue, morale and supply of the attacker. Defending units can suffer strength losses, increases in fatigue, decreases in morale and higher susceptibility to disruption and breaking. Disruption reflects the inability to effectively command a unit due to enemy fire, and a disrupted unit can only fire at 50 percent strength. If a disrupted unit fails a morale check it will become ‘broken’, which is essentially useless since the unit greatly loses offensive and defensive capabilities and will give up large numbers of prisoners if assaulted.


Assaults: In addition to direct and indirect fire, infantry and armored units can engage in assaults. Assaulting an enemy means to physically enter the target unit’s hex in an attempt to destroy the enemy or at least force it into retreat. More than one unit can assault at a single time, and this can be coordinated over a number of hexes. As expected, assaults are risky and dangerous propositions and must be planned accordingly. Assaulting a well-defended position being held by an undisrupted unit is suicidal since attackers are much more susceptible to disruption and fatigue. Successful assaults are best executed by first softening up the target with direct and indirect fire, causing it to become disrupted or broken.


Command and Control: Command and Control play a large role in Korsun ’44. The closer a unit is to its parent HQ unit, the faster it will recover from disruption and the more likely it will be to remain in supply. To be considered ‘in command’, the parent HQ of a given unit must be within the command radius of its parent HQ which must also be in command. This system propagates itself back to a Corps or Army HQ unit (depending on the scenario), that must be supplied to be ‘in command’. This system forces the player into using his forces in an historically correct manner since they must operate within the command radius of their parent HQ units.

An Order-of-Battle screen.

Supply: Supply can be handled in a very abstract manner, where each hex on the map has an assigned supply value, or it can be treated in a more complex and explicit fashion in which actual supply dumps are placed on the map. Various optional rules allow you to choose supply rules which are of intermediate complexity between these extremes. For example, you can play with the ‘virtual supply trucks’ option which simulates the movement of supplies from sources to units using the game’s movement rules.


Optional Rules: In addition to optional rules on supply, Tiller presents a wide array of options to increase the historical authenticity of a particular scenario, although often at the expense of playability. In all, you can choose among 21 optional rules for a particular scenario.

Scenario Options dialog.

Be warned that activating some of these options can drastically alter the outcome of a game and can really affect play balance. When playing PBEM, it is essential that both sides spend time agreeing on what optional rules will be in play for a particular scenario.

Multiplayer

Although Korsun ’44 has a capable and somewhat challenging AI, this game, along with the rest of the Panzer Campaigns series, comes into its own with its multiplayer capabilities. This game can be played with a human opponent through email (PBEM), direct TCP/IP, or hotseat.

The Panzer Campaigns series was really designed with PBEM in mind, and there are many optional rules and game mechanisms that you can employ to make PBEM a very pleasant experience. The fluidity of the single player game is replaced with a rigid structure of movement, fire and assault phases. Although it changes the rhythm of play somewhat, significantly fewer turnfiles have to change hands between opponents. In addition, defensive fire can be handled by the AI, which also reduces the file turnover. Turnfiles are quite small (around 200K) and can be compressed even further (around 15K-20K) using a utility like WinZip.

Summary

With the publication of Korsun '44, the sixth game, the Panzer Campaigns series shows no signs of creakiness in its old age. John Tiller and HPS always go to the limit to provide a highly engrossing wargaming experience. The maps and orders of battle of the Panzer Campaigns games are reknowned for their accuracy and are a testament to the design team's extensive research. Also, Tiller and HPS actively support the Panzer Campaigns games through the frequent publication of patches which fix bugs as well as introduce rules enhancements.

While Korsun '44 certainly will provide you with a challenging single-player experience, the game really shines in multiplayer, especially PBEM. Turnfiles are very manageable in size and a large number of optional rules are specifically geared to making a PBEM game as enjoyable as possible.

If you're new to the Panzer Campaigns series, this may not be the best game to start with given its massive size and high unit density. Smolensk '41 or Kharkov '42 provide scenarios which cover less area and involve fewer units and may be better for the beginner to get comfortable with the game system. You may want to start out with one of those and then progress to Korsun '44. For the Panzer Campaigns veterans out there, I highly recommend Korsun '44 as a worthy and compelling addition to a venerable series.

Resources

Articles:

• 2002/07/19: Korsun '44 (Review)

Files:

• Ed "Volcano" Williams's Art Pack

Official Sites:

• Official Korsun '44 Site

Community:

• Unoffical Panzer Campaigns Home Page
• The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club Panzer Campaigns Message Board

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