Please join John Madison, Greg Sarnecki, and Todd Jahnke in playtesting Symphony of Destruction at Winterfest 2027.
Horsemen is an operational-level game of ground combat in World War Two. Players generally control one army, or Soviet front, and decide their own sequence of play, within which one maneuver unit (usually a division) at a time assembles a force and conducts its three action points to move, fight, rebuild losses, pull supply from longer distance, etc. Forces can spend more or fewer action points to attack and have a variety of options, from advanced guard actions while moving, through 1-Up and 2-Up divisional attacks, to massive, slow, ammunition-intensive, multi-division hammer blows. Command is critical in Horsemen, as forces lose action points for being out of command, oversight from higher is required to do deliberate engagements and arrange air support, and orders are helpful in managing battles and destroying bridges. Initiative in Horsemen is player-determined too: if you can spare forces to put into reserve, spare command rating for combat orders, mass supply sufficient to support operations, and lure your opponent into over-extending his forces, you can seize the initiative and ride the wave until they do the same to you.
We will be playing Symphony of Destruction in a late-1941, grand campaign scenario all week. The maps will be approximately East of Lake Peipus and North from the Valdai Hills, so the tables will be very accessible, with only four map sheets. The scenario will begin as the German offensive finally grinds to a halt: the lunge to Tikhvin. Play will be quick because weather will be poor and both sides will be pretty beaten-up at the start. The Soviets will be gradually gaining the initiative, making decisions about where to focus for the Winter counteroffensive and when to launch it. We will happily run multiple tables, if there is enough interest.
The Red Army is an evolving organization during this scenario. Soviet 'Siberian' divisions will appear, a series of rifle divisions at full, and sometimes enhanced, strength with good efficiency that show what the Red Army could have been had it been left in peace for another year. The pre-war Western rifle divisions are gradually disbanding or converting to war structures while a flood of emergency rifle divisions and brigades is washing toward the line. Soviet tank brigades, regiments, and battalions (mostly enablers but some brigade maneuver units) all swirl at the front to support the rifle forces while rocket battalions and regiments provide "Rocket Terror" for the Soviets instead of the Germans.
The Wermacht is a bloodied version of its Summer glory in this scenario. Most of the original panzer and motorized divisions are gone South but a few different divisions came North to partially replace them. The infantry is not nearly full-strength but is still very capable of defending strongly and can attack usefully with the help of the still excellent artillery. A strange mixture of reinforcements are arriving: veteran divisions from the West, mobilized school units, Luftwaffe and SS units, and the Spanish division, for example.
10K playtested a new air system this month and it works well. We will tune it before Winterfest and it will deliver appropriate results at the cost of five to ten minutes in the busiest game turns. In this scenario, both sides have modest air power that the weather will further reduce in potency, but the rules work efficiently and the results will be reasonable.
10K intends the maps for this playtest to be final, production ready versions.
After years of tuning and re-conceptions, the Horsemen system rules are in very playable condition. From last year, we simplified contested hexes, zones of control, engineering, and supply considerably, for example. A host of minor changes addressed edge cases, slightly simplified action point options, combined fallout and fatigue into one function, and otherwise tightened things up.
Please, join us. If you haven't played before, we'll be glad to show you our game. If you have played before, join us to see the improvements. We plan to be publishing Symphony by early 2028; this is no longer an experiment. This could be your new, favorite game system!
Feel free to email us at info@10kgames.com or to post your questions or preferences here. We will try to accomodate requests for side or role, "I'd like to play Leningrad Front" for example.