Barbarossa June 1941 - SSG RRP œ26.99
             (Strategy wargame for PC, ST and Amiga)

              ST version reviewed by Piotr Tyminski

Will you pay œ 17.00 for an unboxed game coming on two disks with
a typed manual (and a pretty thin one)?  Well, I did, and here's
what I got in return.

You must've seen it advertised in ST FORMAT and ST REVIEW over
last couple of months so in case you've wondered what kind of game
it was, here's a closer look.

"Barbarossa June 1941" is a strategy wargame written by Ken
Wright, whose name should sound familiar to all strategy freaks
(remember "Blitzkrieg" + "May 1940" under the label of
Impressions? It was him, then).

As the name suggests it's a simulation of a German invasion of the
Soviet Union in 1941 (how smart I am, eh?). The game comes in two
versions; one of them labelled as above and that's where you take
part of Hitler (eer...  or should I rather say "you command the
German army"?), while the other disk is labelled "Great Patriotic
War" and lets you check if you could do any better than the
Soviets originally did.

Generally, the way you control the game is very similar to the
system developed for "Blitzkrieg" although you do get a feeling
that it was improved in a significant way.

Basically, you issue orders to your subordinates, i.e.  army
commanders, giving them brief destination points (or attack
line/defence line - that's how the manual calls them) and then,
theoretically, you can leave the guys to manage things on their
own.  What is good about the game is that your army commanders do
act in a very intelligent way.  Having basic guidelines given by
you, the Supreme Genius, they roll their tanks across the map but
are wise enough to ensure their armoured fist doesn't get stuck in
the mountains (they'd rather send infantry divisions there), they
do care about supply lines and do not tend to charge madly against
overwhelming odds.  They also seem to (or does it only seem so to
me?) wisely keep one or two divisions slightly behind the front
line to have some immediate support ready when necessary.  They
will adjust their strategy to local conditions in the most
reasonable way although it may seem, at a first glimpse, that they
do stupid things (once I played the Russian part and was really
mad with Vatutin, commanding a strong tank force, for delaying the
blow which I had invented and giving the Germans enough time to
escape encirclement; I then made an effort to carefully check for
his supply routes, fatigue factor and morale of the troops and
then to compare them with the nearest German opposition - well he
was right in the end:  it was stupid to attack at the time I
wanted him to do).  Don't worry though; you can always take direct
command of each army and then play around to your heart's content
with all the cannon fodder available, i.e.  forcing your exhausted
and undersupplied infantry to charge against the enemy's fresh
armoured divisions.

You must manage your resources in a reasonable way, too. There's a
wise thing like strategic reserve, where all your newly arrived
troops come (if you are playing the German part these are probably
all the divisions they manage to scratch around occupied Europe).
These are full strength units, but morale may vary, so it's a good
idea to let them stay in reserve for some time to get their morale
boosted (unless your whole front is about to collapse - then you
may just keep on sending all raw conscripts to dig foxholes in
Stalingrad, it's up to you). Some of your units which suffered
heavy casualties are from time to time merged with nearby troops
and some of them are sent back to strategic reserve for
reinforcements and training. Although not more than six units of
the same army may appear on screen at the same time you may assign
whatever number of fresh divisions to them from your strategic
reserve and they will be used wisely by your army commanders when
the right time comes (i.e. when Guderian gets 70% of his army
wiped out, he will be happy to pick up fresh reinforcements from
the reserve, if you were wise enough to assign some to him). You
must not forget that your reinforcements are coming from the west
(or east, depending what side you play) and it may take some time
for the new units to arrive to their appropriate armies, all
depending on the distances they have to travel before reaching
their destination.  There's also a helpful screen listing all your
reserve units along with their assignments so you do not just end
up with having Hoepner reinforced with seven armoured divisions,
and the poor Hungarian Corps nearly wiped out with no prospects
for fresh blood.

There's enough information available to make your decisions wiser;
you can always have the current orders of your armies displayed on
the screen as neat arrows (especially when you want to check if
your commanders follow the guidelines set by you), you can even
compare strengths, morale and supply routes of opposing armies,
provided your enemies are close enough to make some espionage
possible.

Keeping an eye on supplies is very important. Although you do not
control them in a direct way (you just keep on using supplies
automatically when attacking, defending, etc.) you must keep
enemies away from major towns and crossroads to enable ammo and
fuel to regularly reach your troops.

Keeping your armies well fed is so vital that it is sometimes
better to change your objectives in order to cut off the enemy
from their supply bases.  This may prove efficient on the long
run, i.e.  you may reach your objectives anyway when your enemies
get cut off and their morale collapses due to lack of supplies.

The manual is quite good and explains everything in a informative
way giving also some general advice how to make war not love.
Graphics are better than in "Blitzkrieg" (if I can speak about
graphics in pure strategy games) just nice sets of roads, forests,
plains, etc.

According to the manual "Barbarossa" is the first game in a series
of WW2 simulations so hopefully more similar programs should
follow. Artificial intelligence of the computer opponent is of
high standard and with three levels of difficulty anyone can play.
Obviously it's not that complex as THREE-SIXTY releases for PCs
("Utah Beach" or "Vielikyie Luki") but these are just the very
best wargames in the galaxy, worth buying a PC just to play them.

I do hope Mr Wright will keep on producing more simulations of
"Barbarossa" quality.  In case he does I will not mind parting
with another œ 17.00 to play them.