Introduction

John Tiller has returned to the Eastern Front with Panzer Campaigns 3: Kharkov '42, from HPS Simulations. Like the previous series titles, Smolensk '41 and Normandy '44, the subject is a major battle of World War II. Tiller's widely anticipated third release concerns the epic disaster that befell the Red Army's Southwest Front offensive of May 1942,when more than 750,000 soldiers and some 1200 tanks lurched headlong into the Nazi Army's preparations for their offensive, Operation Frederick.

As an amateur military historian and occasional wargamer, I've watched the development of John Tiller's games for HPS Simulations with some interest, particularly the World War II titles which seem to appear just when I've read a new text. I'd just finished Fugate and Dvoretsky's Thunder on the Dnepr, and Glantz's The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front, 22 June-August 1941, when along came Smolensk '41. Saving Private Ryan's incredible opening audio montage was still echoing when I noticed Normandy '44. And I had just picked up Glantz's Kharkov, 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster when out popped John Tiller's latest game. Although I'd neglected Tiller's other titles, my curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to have a look at Panzer Campaigns 3: Kharkov '42.

The game uses the now familiar Panzer Campaigns format - turn-based play with NATO-style counters on a hex grid map, with turns typically representing two hours of time, and hexes an area one kilometer wide. Like its siblings, Kharkov '42 is an operational-level wargame using battalions, companies, and platoons. And like its siblings, Kharkov '42 uses a simple set of rules that make the game easy to learn and comprehend. In the course of reviewing this game, I played it against the AI using the game's default rules, and with the "fog of war" setting enabled. During my two-week evaluation, I tried most of the game's short (10 turn or less) scenarios, and briefly played some of the long scenarios, including a portion of the 360-turn "full campaign."

2D zoom-in screen view of the northern end of the Staryi Saltov bridgehead on 12 May 1942.

The background to the campaign began in the winter of 1941-1942, when the German army was staggered by Soviet attacks from the Black Sea to the Baltic. Hitler's seemingly invincible panzers had been halted before Moscow, and after a desperate retreat, barely managed to keep the pursuing Red Army at bay. In the Crimea, von Manstein's 11^th Army had been forced from the Kerch Peninsula, and had to abandon the seige of Sevastopol. In the north, the German line was broken at the junction of Army Groups North and Center, with fragments encircled at Kholm and Demyansk. In all, it was a humiliating string of defeats for a military that had confidently predicted total victory only a few months before.

Nazi Germany's Ostfront losses in personnel and material were enormous, the survivors exhausted, but it was worse for the Soviet side, which had suffered disproportionately. Nevertheless, both Hitler and Stalin prepared to reintensify their efforts in the spring of 1942.

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