The Forgotten Battles: The Battle for Belorussia

The Forgotten Battles (TFB) covers the key fighting between late September 1943 and April 1944 in the Army Group Center portion of the Russian front. This was a war of attrition around cities and rugged terrain in the Belorussian region of the former Soviet Union.

The major success in this sector was delivered by the Belorussian Front commander, Rokossovsky, who far outshone his neighboring Western Front commander. This leader was Sokolovsky, a protégé of Zhukov and later Soviet Chief of the General Staff. When the time came to write the official Soviet history of the war, it was not politically acceptable for Rokossovsky, who was Polish, to be seen as more effective than Sokolovsky. The result was that the success of one commander was suppressed just as vigorously as the failure of the other. The campaigns here laid the foundations for the collapse of Army Group Center the summer of 1944, but only recently has the full story of The Forgotten Battles been uncovered.

The game area covers Belorussia, eastern Poland and parts of the Baltic States, from Daugavpils and Velikiye Luki in the north to Chernigov in the south and from Brest-Litovsk and Tilsit in the west to Rzhev and Bryansk in the east. The Forgotten Battles contains scenarios for the major engagemnts: the desperate fighting around Vitebsk, the dramatic advance of the Belorussian Front through the Prypet Marsh, assaults on fortresses such as Bobruysk, Mogilev, and Orsha, and the last attempts to capture Kovel. The Soviet Partisan campaign requires constant reaction by the Axis player. The Forgotten Battles is designed by Tony Birkett, and is fully playable with The Third Winter. In fact, there is a one map-sized scenario that uses both games to cover the combined advance of the 1st Ukrainian Font and Belorussian Front. Both games can be combined for a massive gaming experience using campaign setups that start in September 1943 and January 1944.

The Soviet command and supply structure is modeled through Front HQ markers. Fronts are either in “Offensive” or “Regrouping” status, allowing for shifting axes of attack and the on/off nature of Soviet operational warfare during this time. Each Front has an assigned Air Force. The activities of Army Group South and Army Group North are represented by boundary markers that shift as the war advances off map, and the Axis player must be careful to watch his off-map flanks.

 
Additional rules added to the game include Siege Towers, the Walls of Jerusalem, and Judean leaders.  In addition to these new rules, new cards have been created in order to represent events encountered during the battle. These include “Battering Rams”, “Famine”, “Rigging the Colonnades”, and “Escape the Siege”.

Game Scale:
Game Turn: approximately 10 - 14 days
Area: approximately 1" = 300ft / 91 meters
Units: Legions

Game Inventory:
One 22 x 34" full color mapsheet
One dual-side printed countersheet (108 3/4" counters w/ 1 blank)
One dual-side printed countersheet (54 3/4" & 88 5/8" counters w/ 17 blanks)
One 12-page full color rulebook
Two dual-side printed player aid cards
One deck of 55 tactical playing cards
Four 6 sided dice (2 red & 2 blue)

Solitaire Playability: Low
Complexity Level: Low
Players: 2 (or more)
Playing Time: 2-3 hours