The Prokhorovka! game maps – comments?

I have done four posts on the game maps for the upcoming Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) module Prokhorovka!. I have not been involved in the developing the game, but found the effort worthwhile and interesting. What I was hoping to get back from those posts were comments on the game maps themselves, what was done right and well, and more importantly, what was not done right or needed to be corrected. So far, I have not gotten any comments on the game maps. I have provided some of my own to the designers, and in the case of the Storozhevoye map, it was re-worked before I posted it. 

So anyhow, for the sake of our game designers, could we get some comments please.

Previous posts:

Andreyevka Map for the game Prokhorovka! | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Stalinskii Map for the game Prokhorovka! | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Oktyabrskii Map for the game Prokhorovka! | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Storozhevoye Map for the game Prokhorovka! | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

 

Other references:

Advancing Fire

PROKHOROVKA! (advancingfire.com)

Did the LSSAH have 3 panzer panzer companies, 4 panzer companies or two panzer battalions in July 1943? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

 

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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2 Comments

  1. My only comment is the general mantra: “form should follow function.”

    If the game map facilitates applying the game rules then it is good to go!

  2. We cannot make any statements on the game, without having touched the board game itself. From my experience most games usually fail to translate the laws of war into their mechanics and rulesets or are guilty of drawing their information from a pool that is often based on wrong conclusions. That is, weighting the different arms of a fighting force incorrectly and not understanding combat power (or their effects). Not even armoured warfare is portrayed correctly, which most games seem to have a strong emphasize on.
    If the game is merely constrained to this tight view of WW2, then it cannot be a good WW2 game in the first place. These are snapshots from typical engagements and the significance of these armoured clashes is notoriously overstated, without portraying how the war was actually conducted. Territorial gains occured by fighting the “sods” in the foxholes, accompanied by armour in a supplemetary role (i.e. their function was often that of armoured buses feeding new troops into the assault). Airfields were captured and thus air forces deprived of organizational space. Many people who show interest in WW2 often think that success must have been a consequence of “knightly” tank clashes or air vs air duels, but here the picture was quite one dimensional. Factoring in resources and institutions, the product of these engagements is hardly surprising, from Prokhorovka to the Valley of tears.
    Evaluating maps is usually the least of the concerns, and I do not know in what way this game deals with “what ifs” or of its actual scale.

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