'Defiant Russia' Historical Deployment
By Bruce Young
September 2006

Like many wargames, Defiant Russia gives you a limited range of options in the initial set-up of units. This lets the players try out their individual strategies without straying too far from the historical possibilities. But I also like to see the actual historical deployment so play can start from an accurate depiction as possible. Here is my interpretation with added notes.

Overall View

The first item that comes to mind is the choices of corps and armies to include in the counter mix. Obviously, no attempt could be made to include every one present at the start of the campaign, so choices had to be made about which ones to include or leave out to ensure game balance. For the most part, the units included in the setup are a very accurate depiction of the initial forces with a few added and subtracted.

Secondly, almost all of the types of units (German infantry corps, Soviet armies, etc.) have only one or two different ratings. One could argue that these could have been individually tailored to more accurately represent the actual capabilities of the individual units, but at the scale of Defiant Russia, ratings would change 1 point up or down at the most and would pretty much even out in the end.

Axis Deployment

One aspect of the German deployment is the definitions of the Army Group areas. The boundary between Army Group North (AGN) and Army Group Central (AGC) is accurate, but the stacking limitations force a few units to be set up further behind the front line than was the actual case. Any affect from this pretty much disappears after the initial turn, but does create some ahistorical set-ups. The ACG/AGS (Army Group South) dividing line causes a few more problems. It can be argued that it should be one hex further north than the map’s depiction, but this doesn’t create any great difficulties either, just a few tweaks and shoves to line up the units correctly in respect to each other and a few units stacked further back than they should be.

As far as the order of battle goes, only a few corps are missing or inconsistent with the rearward units chosen as Turn 2 reinforcements. The 27th Corps is missing from AGN’s initial deployment and doesn’t appear until Turn 4 even though it was a front line unit. The 32nd Corps is missing from AGC while the 53rd Corps is present in the initial setup although it started out as far back behind the front as the 42nd which is a Turn 2 reinforcement. Also missing are some administrative corps that were used as amalgamations of security divisions, but this is not really a problem since partisans/rear-area security is covered by other rules in this system.

The Romanian force is where the real exceptions stand out. It appears that the 4th, 7th and 1st Romanian corps have been combined with the listed Romanian units to produce the counter mix. This may have been done to reflect the lesser strength of a Romanian corps vs. a German one or as a counter saver instead of including three more counters and reducing the ratings to 2-3.

Soviet Deployment

The Military District (MD) area definitions seem to be a little off on the map. The Western MD’s northern boundary should be displaced another hex southward and the southern boundary two hexes, basically splitting the western edge of the Pripet Marshes evenly between the Western MD and the Kiev MD. This would allow for more accuracy in the deployment.

The unit choices for the Soviets are more involved than the Axis units. This is to be expected since the Soviets fielded a large number of administrative units in a wide variety of conditions at the start of the campaign. The infantry armies line up pretty well with the historical order of battle, although the odd definition of the Western MD causes some displacement of units. The 18th Army and the ICA (Independent Coastal Army) units are exceptions though. The 18th started the campaign as a headquarters-only shell army and didn’t become filled out and operational until late July, so this would be more appropriate as a Turn 2 reinforcement. The inclusion of the ICA has thrown me for a loop though. I can only find reference to it as a mid-war unit involved in the attacks to retake the Crimea. Perhaps its designation could be changed to the 51st Army which was raised in the Sevastopol area during August and become an additional reinforcement.

The cavalry and mechanized corps designations are trickier. The Soviets started out with 3 cavalry corps in the Western theater with one (6th) deployed in the Western MD, one (5th) in the Kiev MD and one (2nd) in the Odessa MD. The game shows the 1st Cavalry Corps in the Baltic MD and the 2nd 1st Cavalry Corps in the Odessa MD. So, I’m assuming that the 1st CC unit is a combination of the Western and Kiev MD’s cavalry assets and put it as far away from the front line as possible to let the Soviet player do what he will with it. The 1st Mechanized Corps started out in the Leningrad region, yet is included in the Baltic Mechanized Corps deployment. Consequently, I’ve moved it as far eastward as possible in the rules. The 4th Mechanized Corps should be in the Kiev MD near 6th Army so I’ve moved it as far south as possible.

Historical Deployment Chart

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