Last week, I finished my first campaign playthrough of Ted Racier's The Dark Valley. I've seen this one described as a mini-monster, and it certainly feels that way based on the counter density at times, but in truth this plays much faster than some of the other mini-monsters that I've had out on my table before.
I'm on a mission to play all three of Ted Racier's Dark Games, and this was entry number two on my list. I've already worked my way through the Dark Summer (Normandy 1944), recorded in two parts (here and here). For this AAR, I've honed in on the German invasion of the Soviet Union with the original game in the series, The Dark Valley; this game covers the entirety of the conflict on the Eastern Front for 1941-1945 (bar the fighting north of Leningrad on the Finnish front). For what it's worth mentioning, this AAR is also for the deluxe edition of The Dark Valley. Eventually, when I have a little more space, I'll break out the Dark Sands, covering the fighting in North Africa from 1940-1943.
This time around, I've decided to deviate from my usual AAR format. With so many units on either side of the board in The Dark Valley, I figured it futile to try and dedicate a granular review of the campaign at the scale that I wanted. So, instead of trying to go into a detailed review of each and every sector with every roll of the die, I decided on an alternative method. At game start, I selected three units per side to follow for the duration of the campaign, one German and Soviet unit apiece for each of the three main fronts (North, Center, and South). On the Northern Front, I selected the German 1st Panzer Division and the Soviet 22nd NKVD Division; for the Central Front, I selected the German 10th Motorized Division and the Soviet 51st Army (arriving turn 2 as a reinforcement); and along the Southern Front, I selected the Slovak Corps for the Axis and the Soviet 18th Mechanized Corps. It is these six units that I will cover below in detail, with broader background for the entire campaign provided as a backdrop.
While The Dark Valley is loosely part of a similar series with The Dark Summer, it plays very differently. The time scale and rules governing combat, supply, weather, and so on are very different (in part because of the difference of scale and time-covered). That being said, the games are based on an established system that uses a chit-pull activation mechanic. In short, even for a game that was easy to learn, I found the gameplay wildly different in The Dark Valley.
Anyway, onto the AAR.
Let those Panzers roll ...
*****
June 1941
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| A view of the reinforcements schedule (Black Units are SS, Red units are Soviet Guards). |
The campaign opened with a surprise German combat round and move action. All along the line, the Germans launched attacks against the Soviets. From Memel in the north to the Caucasus Mountains, four German Panzer HQs coordinated precision strikes against the Russian positions: 1st Panzer Army in the South, 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armies in the Center, and 4th Panzer Army in the North.
The image above gives a view of the field at campaign start. The Soviets fielded a front line held by rifle divisions along a fortified border with the Germans. Punching through the Baltics and into Ukraine was easy, but breaking through the forests north of Brest-Litovsk was a tough nut to crack for German Army Group Center in June.
The 10th Motorized wasn't too hard-pressed to break through the Soviets' hard crust defense on turn one, though. Outside Warsaw and in support of two Panzer Divisions, the 10th Motorized Division walloped and overran the 13th Russian Rifle Division. In Lithuania, the 1st Panzer Division sped out of Memel with the Totenkopf and 8th Panzer Divisions. At the head of four more divisions, the 1st led a lighting strike to take Riga. In the path of fate and fortune, the 22nd NKVD Division found itself surprised and on the defense in Riga as the Germans of 4th Panzer Army approached. The 22nd held the line, but only barely. Charged with holding the city, the commander of the 22nd ordered a counter-assault by the Mech. Corp assigned to defend the city against the approaching German tanks, including the 1st Panzer Division. It's a disastrous affair. In short order, the German tanks and supporting infantry managed to eliminate the bulk of the Soviet armor. With no armor left, and only the 22nd to hold the city, there was no escape route left for the Russian divisions assigned to defend Lithuania and the western half of Latvia.
In Ukraine, the 18th Mechanized Corps displaced from its assembly area to Vinnitsa. South of the Pripyat Marshes, the Soviets began a heavy concentration of the mobile forces to fend off against the 1st Panzer Army.
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| Southern Front, June 1941 |
At the end of June, the Soviets fell back to a line of defense in central Latvia, central Belarus, and central Ukraine. The Slovaks still held the line in the Caucasus in Hungary and the 51st was just being mustered to arms in Smolensk.
July 1941
In Latvia, the 10th Motorized Division briefly advanced north into command range of 4th Panzer Army to skirt around the hastily-raised Soviet roadblocks outside of Minsk. On the road to Dvinsk, the 10th Motorized joined advance armor units in routing the 21st Mechanized Corps.
Not too far away, the 1st Panzer Division persisted in its assaults against the 22nd NKVD. In their dogged defense of the city, the Soviets of the 22nd dealt a death blow to the 36th Motorized Division assigned to 4th Panzer Army. Their defense was short-lived, though, and the 1st Panzer made short work of them in little time. With that, the first of my six units was annihilated!
With Minsk taken in short order, the Soviets along the central front continued their retreat to the eastern reaches of the Pripyat Marshes. The city of Gomel was the anchor for the Soviet defense at this point. From Gomel, reinforcements could arrive at the eastern border of the marshes and either rush north to reinforce the central front or south to Kiev, demarking the 2nd line of defense for the southern front. With Minsk gone, the central approach to Gomel was threatened at Orsha-Mogilev. As the 10th skirted north over the Drina river with 3rd Panzer Army, seven frontline divisions with 2nd Panzer Army moved on to take Orsha and threaten Mogilev.
This was the position that the 51st Army encountered when it entered the line just north of Mogilev, on the outskirts of Orsha, saving the embattled 16th Army from being overrun. With the 51st in line, the Germans of 2nd Panzer Army couldn't drive onto Smolensk. For that, they had to rely on the armor in 3rd Panzer Army (led by the 10th Motorized Division) to take it from above, via Vitebsk.
Farther north, 4th Panzer Army charged out of Riga north on the road to Tallinn with the goal to cut off the defenders at Pskov on the way to Leningrad. The 6th Panzer lead the charge, with the main force close behind by route of Tartu. While the 6th suffered heavy losses in its attempt to cut off the Estonian capitol, the 1st Panzer Division similarly suffered unfortunate losses by trying to bash its way through the 1st Mechanized Corps holding Tartu. While the 1st managed to overrun a supporting rifle division thanks to the close support of the Totenkopf division, the Soviet Mechanized troops hanged tough and refused to give their ground.
While the Soviets managed to ward off the worst of the calamities in the Baltics and Belarus, they struck disaster in Ukraine, and partly of their own design. The 1st Panzer Army up until this point had not managed to pull off any large-scale encirclements. A handful of rifle divisions were caught between the advancing armor and the follow-up infantry from the Caucasus, including the Slovak Expeditionary troops, but thanks to a heavy concentration of armored units, including the 18th Mechanized Corps, in and around Vinnitsa, the Germans had not yet achieved any catastrophic breakthroughs for the Soviets. Stalin's demands for immediate counterattacks, however, created a gap in the Soviet line just south of the city. And in response, 1st Panzer Army flooded in and around the city and made it all the way to the outskirts of Kiev. In short order, without so much as a shot being fired, the 18th Mechanized Corps found a stream of retreating units flooding into the city, panic-stricken and defeated with not so much as a casualty to show for it among them. In short order, the 1st Panzer Army encircled one army, seven mechanized corps, and six rifle divisions to boot between Vinnitsa and Kiev. Thus, with the coming of August, the 18th Mechanized Corps found itself trapped in a bottle, with not so much as a shell expended in anger, by them or against them.
August:
Following the 1st Panzer Army's breakthrough out and around Vinnitsa, Stavka relocated its HQ out of Gomel and moved to Kiev to rally what forces were left to muster there. The 18th Mechanized still held its ground, but there was little chance for escape. Directly to their front, the 18th faced the 5th SS and 11th Panzer Divisions. All the while, more mobile reinforcements and infantry corps slipped through the armored cordon to the gates of Kiev.
In the center, Zhukov's HQ held the Smolensk line. 10th Motorized Division's advance out of Orsha was a non-starter though, not as long as the 51st and compliment held the flank at Mogilev that could strike 2nd Panzer Army's underbelly. The 51st security was itself, perilous, though. Extended at the far edge of the line north of Gomel, the 51st was itself only safe from isolation thanks to the short-term supply lag facing the advance units of 2nd Panzer Army. This prevented the immediate breakout from Orsha and advance to overwhelm Zhukov.
Farther south, the Slovaks trudged farther into Ukraine as the mechanized spearhead for 1st Panzer Army pushed past Kiev, which the last few Soviets held despite eventual futility. With mopping up duties all along the route of their advance, the Slovaks made slow progress toward the front.
In the Baltics, 1st Panzer Division reached the gulf of Finland, and skirting around Tallinn, isolated the 48th Army holding the city. The Soviets meanwhile worked to consolidate their defense at Narva on the shores of Lake Peipus. The 1st Airforce (German) out of Riga, smashed the 10th Mechanized Corps in Narva. This opened the route to Leningrad and the Northern Soviets' last line of defense. Wasting no time, the 1st Panzer Division (still bloodied) charged ahead, closely followed by the Totenkopf and 8th Panzer Divisions).
September:
With the end of summer came poorer weather, and with that an ease up in German operations. In the South, the Slovaks were still assigned to mopping-up duties and contained break-out attempts from a group of trapped rifle divisions outside of Cernauti. Once they had liquidated the Cernauti pocket, the Slovaks and compliment moved to contain a second pocket of five rifle divisions trapped outside of Uman. The 1st Panzer Army all the meanwhile pressed onto the Dniepr.
In the center, the 10th Motorized partook in an assault on Vitebsk, declared a fortified city by Zhukov. Supported by armor, cutting off the Soviets' 5th Airborne Corps, the assaulting infantry and motorized units quickly overwhelmed and annihilated the 54th Army in the City, which was almost wholly surrounded by this point. With the road open, 3rd Panzer Army capitalized on the loss of the 54th and made an end-around run for Smolensk, nearly trapping Zhukov's army group in the process. Along the Minsk-Smolensk road, the position had nearly become untenable for the Soviets at this juncture.
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| September: The Germans apply pressure on Smolensk |
With Smolensk nearly lost, the 51st Army fell back on Bryansk, unravelling the linkage between the Center and Southern fronts. With the 51st out of position, Gomel was threatened, and with Gomel, the lynchpin holding the Pripyat Marshes as a knife in the side of the German Advance. And with the Pripyat positions undone, all rifle units within it were in danger of being cut off and surrounded. Worse, though, was the danger thus posed to Kiev. With the Pripyat at risk, the northern approaches to the city were evacuated, followed shortly thereafter by the city itself. The position was made simply untenable.
The 10th Motorized capitalized on the unravelling of the Soviet line from Smolensk to the Dnieper. With the Soviet armies fleeing east, the 10th launched flank assaults on the units making helter-skelter still west of Smolensk.
To the north, in an around Leningrad, the action was less dramatic, yet more consequential. 4th Panzer Army amassed armor and infantry against the Russians defending south of Leningrad to begin erecting a cordon around the city. 1st Panzer Division supported the assault with what tanks it could still field, but the Soviets dug in hard and refused to fallback and further. It was a bloody affair without gain.
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| The ruins of Vitebsk. (At least so I think/recall. It took me a while to do some digging and find this image, and now I cannot recall if this is indeed Vitebsk or some other Soviet-era city from the war. In any case, you are welcome to do your own fact-checking.) |
October
If there is any indication that the German blitzkrieg of Operation Barbarossa had ground to a halt, it came with the onset of October.
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| The Southern Front |
To the south, the 1st Panzer Army pressed onto the Dnieper. By the end of the month, they had a hold of all cities and towns on its west bank. Stavka took up residence in Kharkov to direct counterattacks all along the southern front. The Slovaks, for their part, were assigned to support the Romanians and the crossings of the Dnieper from Kherson. The rest of the Axis minors (the Italians and Hungarians, held crossings to the north, while the Army's armored spearhead pushed east toward Stalino.
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| The Northern Front |
Far to the North, the situation was quite different. 4th Panzer Army had reached the far extent of its advance. While the Soviets weathered attacks from the 1st Panzer Division and a dozen other supporting units, they refused to give up any ground. In turn, the 1st Panzer Division held the line as the Soviets regrouped and counterattacked as more and more reinforcing units arrived from the east. Against four Soviet Armies and the first Guards units to arrive at the front, the 1st Panzer Division dug itself in for a long slug-fest.
Only in the center was there any hope of immediate victory. Zhukov was fighting with finger nails, whitened knuckles, and little more than that against the combined power of the German's 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armies. Moscow was devoid of a garrison. Every available unit had been rushed west to hold the open road on the way to the Soviet Capitol. 10th Motorized, for its part, helped displace the Soviet 31st Army with lead elements of 3rd Panzer Army. Moving north, it took up positions above Vyazma to turn the last Russian flank on the road to Moscow. The going was tough, though, with mud and poor weather conditions straining the mobile capabilities of the German Panzer Armies.
November
November brought with it the last serious attempts to break the Soviets' backs all along the front. The 51st Army suffered the burdened of the 2nd Panzer Army's attention with the onset of the cold. The German 8th Air preceded ground assaults with a major, coordinated bombardment against the river line just north of Bryansk. The air attacks devastated the 51st's positions, but still the army held. Thanks to the not-too-soon arrival of emergency armor reserves out of Orel and the presence of localized close air support, the 51st weathered initial attacks by newly arrived German armor assigned to the 2nd Panzer Army. Against the odds, the 51st held. Their valiant efforts were not sustainable though. Without additional armor reserves, the 51st held its ground against a renewed assault supported by now veteran German units, and this time, the attackers met with success. The 51st Army perished to the man north of Bryansk and was entirely overrun.
Just north of the 51st's last stand, the German 10th Motorized Division helped secure Vyazma and moved to strike at Zhukov's HQ, stationed at Mozhaisk. Much to their chagrin, though, the Soviet final line of defense in the center held in front of the town, halting the advance of the German 3rd Panzer Army.
Farther south, the Slovaks supported the Romanian efforts to cross the Dnieper from Kherson. Along with four reserve divisions and the 29th Infantry Corps, the Slovaks were all the Romanians had in support. They were the spearhead charged with taking Crimea while the 1st Panzer Army worked the river farther north. Despite their best efforts though, the Romanians made no headway on the road to Sevastopol.
To the far north, the 1st Panzer Division helped extend the cordon around Leningrad by knocking the 21st Army out of position. Progress was otherwise slow going, however, and proved unlikely to change.
December
Can you see where this is going? Notice the writing on the wall?
With the onset of December, the Germans were 1-2 victory points shy of the total needed to maintain their offensive into Russia. Otherwise, come January, it would be game over. Making the most of their efforts, 1st Panzer Army struck across the Dnieper forming a thin bridgehead and to the north, 3rd Panzer Army did its best to circumvent the Soviet roadblocks on the road west of Moscow. Outside Leningrad, there was little more than the Germans could do than to butt heads with the mass of armies to their front.
1st Panzer Division, battered and understrength, saw no further action. To the very south as well, the Slovaks held their part of the river without pressing farther east. Only the 1st Panzer Army made what headway they could, but even that was not without its cost. Stavka's gradual grasp on their defensive line allowed for a counterattack that hurled the Germans back across the river for loss, and with it one of their VP cities.
And on the road outside of Moscow, 3rd Panzer Army suffered an even worse setback, sealing the coffin for this run of the Dark Valley. Still with 10th Motorized Division at the front of the line, 3rd Panzer Army bore the brunt of a massive counter attack in the winter snows just outside of Vyazma. Led by the fresh and newly arrived 4th Shock Army, the Soviets attacked the Germans on four sides and wiped them out in their hastily constructed defenses. Seven Russian armies, scattered rifle divisions, and fresh Siberian reserves cut down the last of the 10th Motorized Division's defenders.
Thus, the Germans rang in the new year far behind the line of advance they needed to achieve to stay in the war. As a result, the entire campaign that I had hoped to play through ended with December 1941. An immediate and total Russian victory. No battle at the gates of Moscow. The Soviets weathered this invasion with reserves to spare.
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| "What's the point of fighting? I much prefer the fire in a hearth as opposed to over my head. Let's go home." |
To conclude this post, I've included the above image which I stumbled upon by accident and which I quite like. It shows combatants from the Italian CSIR and German 1st Mountain Division in Stalino in 1941. Stalino is quite a ways east of the Dnieper, which I never reached in this game. It's at least notable for this game since upon review of the map at game end, I noticed the 1st Mountain Division right alongside the Italian CSIR. Funny how that worked out.
At any rate, it's safe to say, the Soviets put up a far better defense of their front in this game. Either that, or I'm just dogsh*t on the offensive in this game, which may very well be. And by way of conclusion, I can also announce that of the six units initially covered, only one survived the first year of the Great Patriotic War: the Slovak Expeditionary Army Group! I have a peculiar fascination with the Slovaks in the 2nd World War, but I'll safe that for future posts. Anyway, I'm not quite sure what I'll be posting on next. Very likely it will be a Blast from the Past, so stay tuned.
And as a final tidbit, I like to reflect on why we never hear the names Stalino or Voroshilovgrad anymore (which are near to each other on the map). Give those two cities a Google. I wonder if the names will ever be changed again. I don't have a stake in that decision one way or the other. It's just interesting to consider, given the world from which I'm writing these days.
