Gary Grigsby's War In The East

[Roobenator]

So is anyone playing this? For the past month I've been learning to play this Hex Autism Simulator.

Finally, after 4-5 restarts on the Grand Campaign, it's September and I'm 3 hexes away from Moscow. This has been at the price of Leningrad front, as I transferred the Northern Panzer Group to back up my encirclements in the centre. Panzer and motorized units are 30% in fuel and can't into any large scale encirclements anymore. This is especially true in the Southern Army Group, where the soviets have concentrated large forces and I've lost the initiative. Rostov and the Crimea are currently out of my reach.

Waiting for the mud and following frost, which will probably wreck my fucking shit up and freeze my aryan infantry in their short underwear and summer clothing. Am I screwed?

A great game tho.

 

[Malakal]

I heard a lot about this game but never tried it myself, seems a bit too big in scale for me.

That having said how is victory decided? Victory points? Is there any strategic layer at all? As in industrial and resource.

Because fairly sure that IRL going for Moscow wouldn't achieve much at all. Case Blue seemed more sensible to me - grab the Caucasus and the oil resources and at the same time fix your issues while denying the enemy. Getting Moscow just gives you a major infrastructure hub denied to the enemy, which is good but hardly decisive.

 

[Roobenator]

There are victory points. There is a complex strategic layer with detailed production interface of indivicual vehicles and weapons. I'm just not quite there yet as how to operate it. I guess oil and supply production is also there somewhere. But as you know, supply lines are a target for micromanagement, with the Germans trying to repair/convert railway lines.

Taking the stretched supply lines into account, Caucasus seems pretty far. Taking Moscow and Leningrad and stabilizing those fronts seem like the thing to do before advancing to the Caucasus. The impact of taking out the capital can't be underestimated here, I guess

You should try it out. The learning curve is pretty steep, but when you somewhat get a hang of it, it's a very rewarding game. After this deep a strategy game, I'm afraid there's no going back to HoI 3

 

[Dayyālu]

It's still 81 bucks?

It's still 81 bucks.

I've read quite a bit on it, but again, 80 bucks for a grog game (I don't waste that amount of money in a year for games) it's a tad too much. It looks great from LPs and the like, though.

How's War in the West? I've read it's even better.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I tried it once and it was clunky and jerky and slow as shit. Not my kind of game.

 

[not an artichoke]

It's great if you enjoy this sort of thing, and I do. But I haven't had the time lately to devote to it. Took me a good 1-2 years of playing and following strategies on the Matrix forums to feel like I had a decent idea what I was doing. I also feel like the metagaming required to play competitively online detracts to a certain extent.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I'd love to play it but can't justify the price tag. Especially after I got burned with War in the Pacific.

 

[not an artichoke]

Eh. It's worth the price if you're the kind of person who enjoys grognard simulationist board games on a computer, and if you're one you know it. You will invest more hours just learning how to play than most people spend in games they pay $60 for.

 

[panzertoter]

War in the Pacific is much better imho.

 

[Roobenator]

I had to go the extra length with the price, because honestly there isn't anything like WitE in the market atm. If by principle you won't throw in the cash, that's fine too I guess. FYI the last update was somewhere in september 2016 and the game was released in 2010.

haven't played WitW or WitP for that matter, but the air warfare micromanagement doesn't appeal to me at all (Which to my knowledge is emphasized in WitW). The 1944 western front is pretty boring. Allied superior firepower and slow advance doesn't make a game nearly as interesting as the gigantic encirclement battles of the Eastern front.

Clunky and jerky? Try the latest patch

 

[Dayyālu]

I'd love to play it but can't justify the price tag. Especially after I got burned with War in the Pacific.

Explain. I've read some massive LPs of War in the Pacific and it looked far worse than War in the East: like, War in the Pacific felt like the devs went full sperg and started rivet counting ALL THE WEAPONS ALL THE AIRPLANES ALL THE AMMUNITION but instead got a mess of incoherent mechanics that barely held together and guaranteed wildly a-historical results (starting with Pearl Harbour itself).

War in the East, depite all the ToE autism fun, looked at least more realistic.

 

[Malakal]

Both Pacific and West conflicts are extremely one sided or at least should be.

I mean USA had over 100 carriers by 1945 so difference in power is extreme. Guess the initial campaign could play more reasonably but any realistic portrayal of Japan vs USA will end with USA victorious. Japan hoped that USA will simply give up at a certain point so yeah.

West is even worse as it starts in 1944 and then Germany is totally fucked.

War in the East seems like the best area. Sure, everything favors USSR from the start but their incompetence and the surprise factor can even out the situation a bit. It makes for a better game.

 

[newtmonkey]

I have had this in my Steam wishlist for the longest time, but am hesitant to pull the trigger (though I've come close during the last couple sales). I just don't know if I can put enough time into this to enjoy it. I'm happy to see this thread though, and will follow it.

 

[Art Vandelay]

War in the east is a reasonably short, as opposed to war in the pacific ,which takes years (literally) to complete. Witp is a better game tho,so pick your poison.

 

[Beowulf]

I have had this in my Steam wishlist for the longest time, but am hesitant to pull the trigger (though I've come close during the last couple sales). I just don't know if I can put enough time into this to enjoy it. I'm happy to see this thread though, and will follow it.

There are two scenario packs for WitE, that offer more limited in scope, and thus more manageable for those time-starved players, gameplay.

The game tries hard to be a simulation, tracking technology development, individual equipment refits, weapons and vehicles down to a single one; but on the other hand that system is prone to be "gamefied". Just head over to the matrix forums and read about keeping encircled russian divisions
alive for long periods of time, so the spirits of brave, but dead soviet soldiers cannot pass through the frontlines and form new divisions in Siberia (there was a game mechanic to prevent construction of more soviet division than it was historically plausible, so they put a hard cap on divison number).

But it's heaps of fun in PBEM if you were/are into hex and counter strategies focusing more on planning the operations, rather than immediate tactical decisions.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I'd love to play it but can't justify the price tag. Especially after I got burned with War in the Pacific.

Explain. I've read some massive LPs of War in the Pacific and it looked far worse than War in the East: like, War in the Pacific felt like the devs went full sperg and started rivet counting ALL THE WEAPONS ALL THE AIRPLANES ALL THE AMMUNITION but instead got a mess of incoherent mechanics that barely held together and guaranteed wildly a-historical results (starting with Pearl Harbour itself).

War in the East, depite all the ToE autism fun, looked at least more realistic.

Well that exactly. The old Pacific War by Grigsby was detailed and had a clunky UI but it was usable and playable and I had a blast with it. So I had a massive boner when War in the Pacific was announced. Somehow they made the game worse.

 

[Lone Wolf]

There's too much granulated detail for people to keep track of, realistically.

WitP is a worse culprit in this regard than WitE. In the end, I spent more time with the old WIR (War in Russia), because the scale kept sessions manageable. Playing the first turn of WITE/WITP is something you've got to plan your day around.

 

[Agame]

I have played 100s of hours of WitE over the years, for the Eastern Front its the best game ever made, period. But playing it properly is a lifestyle. It will devour all your gaming time.

I have two MP games going and it sucks up all of my free time, and when Im not playing a turn Im thinking about and planning the next one.

As mentioned playing another human is the best way to experience it, but it can be brutally difficult as most of the guys playing it now are veteran WitE'ers.

And the game is well supported still as it is currently still being patched and balanced even after all these years.

 

[KoolNoodles]

War in the East is great, but it's "Ok I made the coffee let's spend an entire week reading the manual" great.

 

[Comte]

WITE is definitely the easiest to game to get into and play out of Grigsby's modern titles. Also it's more exciting then War in the West which I found incredibly boring. The best thing in WITW is the weather system they made the air model a lot more complicated the game feels like an air campaign simulator with a ground combat engine tacked on. Also in War in the West the Axis is always on the defensive while the Allies are always on the offense which also make the game more one sided.

War in the East multiplayer does require some meta knowledge to play at a high level of efficiency. I don't really have time for multiplayer right now due due to family, work, etc. I mostly just play around against the AI or I play the smaller scenarios if I am reading about a campaign and I want to see what forces were on hand for both sides. The AI settings have to be tweaked to present a challenge because just using the normal settings gives you a pretty easy game.

All that being said this is the best operational game on the Eastern Front you can buy right now. They are currently working on WITE 2 which will be more complicated as they are adding in the air system and supply depot system from War in the West. This will satisfy the bolt counter players but will probably make the game even longer to play which will probably turn off some people.

 

[golgo21]

Can I play as the soviets?muh deep battles/maskirovka etc.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Both Pacific and West conflicts are extremely one sided or at least should be.

I mean USA had over 100 carriers by 1945 so difference in power is extreme. Guess the initial campaign could play more reasonably but any realistic portrayal of Japan vs USA will end with USA victorious. Japan hoped that USA will simply give up at a certain point so yeah.

West is even worse as it starts in 1944 and then Germany is totally fucked.

Can still be great fun to make it happen. For example games like CC where the scope is limited.

Western Front is also not such a clear cut affair as it may seem. I really recommend you a book: "The Struggle For Europe" by Chester Wilmot

The first chapters in this 700 page war porno are a very detailed listing of the German forces on the West front prior to 1944. And what I didn't know before I read this book is that the Wehrmacht had ca 60 divisions in France, while the initial supply potential of the allies was maybe 25 or so.

They also had some experienced, well equipped Panzer divisions for the planned counter attack on D-Day. That means Hitler was very confident that he could decisively defeat the Allies. And the initial battle was not going too well, it was only because the Germans held back Montgomery for too long, while the Americans outflanked them. If Hitlker had not paralyzed the OKW the disaster at Falaise should have never developed. Otherwise the Allies would have faced a million men against them with good equipment during most of the battle of France, not been able to march to the German border with relative ease.

If you factor in that that quality of the German units was not nearly as good as the Allies, the decisive weakness was of course air power. German wunderweapons had already reached the front in the form of the best tanks at this time, which were totaly superior to the Allied tanks. But the panzers were eventually not able to do much in daylight because they were shot to pieces by 1,000s of fighter bombers. Thats why the entire operations of the German Wehrmacht in France took place at night, resulting in many accidents and mental stress, an impossible situation.

But to get back to the original topic, the situation was not so simple as it may appear with hinsight, and if the Wehrmacht had been handled better, and Luftwaffe would have been allocated more logically (for example not in the pointless mini-Blitz) it could have achieved much more.

 

[Cholo]

If you factor in that that quality of the German units was not nearly as good as the Allies, the decisive weakness was of course air power. German wunderweapons had already reached the front in the form of the best tanks at this time, which were totaly superior to the Allied tanks. But the panzers were eventually not able to do much in daylight because they were shot to pieces by 1,000s of fighter bombers. Thats why the entire operations of the German Wehrmacht in France took place at night, resulting in many accidents and mental stress, an impossible situation.

 

[commie]

I'd love to play it but can't justify the price tag. Especially after I got burned with War in the Pacific.

I bought a shady key for it from G2A for 20 euro. Did the job and I don't regret it. Great game, but damn if it doesn't require reassessing what you're used to since logistic planning is crucial(as it should be of course, but most strategy/war games tend to abstract it so you don't really need to think about it outside of keeping units in supply range). Got raped time and again, just by trying to play it like a normal wargame(or even HOI). Even WIR or the older Second Front were much more simplified.

Can I play as the soviets?muh deep battles/maskirovka etc.

I started playing as the Soviets recently as it gives me time to read the manual while the AI destroys my units at the start of 41. It's actually 'easier' in a way to start with Soviets as you actually have less to do in 1941, besides trying to escape with what you can and set up defensive lines. The whole logistics setup isn't quite as crucial or daunting since you are on the defense and can set up static lines in the rear. Give you time to trial and error a bit since many of your units will die regardless.

 

[golgo21]

what about later?can you play as soviets in 1943-1945 battles?can i bring the glory of communism to the westen allies?