Tronsoft Games

War in Russia

A short walk through your first campaign. Everything here is also in the manual, at docs/manual.pdf, in more detail.

How to begin

The title screen asks three things. Choose Barbarossa for your first campaign: it is the shortest of the three that runs its full length and it teaches the supply system quickly. Take the Axis, so that you are the one whose railheads fall behind. Leave the opposing staff on Regular. Then open the campaign.

If you have played before, the title screen offers to resume the campaign you left. Your campaign is saved automatically every week; you do not have to remember to do it.

Controls

Select a formation	Click its hex. The hexes it can reach are marked pale.
Look under a stack	Click the same hex again to step down through the counters in it.
See what is in a hex	Hover over it. A panel gives every formation there, its strength, supply and condition.
Move	With a formation selected, click a pale hex.
Undo or redo movement	Use the right-sidebar buttons, `Ctrl/Cmd+Z` to undo, or `Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z` to redo.
Attack	Click an outlined enemy hex, review the forecast, then issue or cancel the attack order.
Pan and zoom	Drag the map, use the arrow keys, or use the four pan buttons. Wheel or the Zoom − and Zoom + buttons change scale; Center map returns to the selected formation or command home.
Fit the front	Select Front line to emphasize the exact control boundary. Whole front automatically fits it to the map; North, Centre and South fit one rail sector.
Read front pressure	The Pressure overlay compares combat value within two hexes of the line: green favors you, ochre is contested, and red favors the enemy. Weakest point jumps to your lowest local ratio.
Compare sectors	Open Sector dashboard or press `D` to compare weather, combat pressure, forces, supply, rail allocation, objectives and plan markers. Focus fits any sector to the map.
Move reserves	Open Command reserves or press `V`. Plan mode balances reserves across markers and combines control, nearby friendly/enemy combat value, arrival forecast, coverage and outlook. Hold markers identify threatened or lost positions; Advance and Assault markers identify favorable, contested, outmatched or secured objectives. Preview never issues the move.
Mark an operation	Choose Advance, Assault, Hold or Erase in Operational markers, then click map hexes. The plan also appears on the strategic overview and survives saves. Press Escape to return to orders.
Allocate rail tonnage	The Staff recommendation below the three rail sliders balances formation demand, front pressure and operational markers. Review formations lists every projected change with filters and Map recall; Apply accepts the split, or retain your own.
Bookmark a view	Use Set in one of the three command-view slots to retain the current centre, zoom and overlay. Go recalls it. `Alt+1–3` recalls; add Shift to update.
Strategic overview	The small map in the right sidebar shows control, formations, objectives and the visible viewport. Click or drag within it to jump directly to another part of the front.
Overlays	Sheet, Supply, Ground held, Front line, Pressure, Sectors and Objectives are in the right control sidebar.
Sound	The Sound button and volume slider are in the right control sidebar. Both are remembered.
Command briefing	Use the Briefing button or press `?` for the in-game field reference.
Campaign record	Use the Campaign record button or press `R` to compare score, losses, strength, objectives and weekly progress. The report can be downloaded at any time.
Combat journal	Use the Combat journal button or press `J` to review every engagement. Filter by command, use Map to revisit a battlefield, or download the complete journal.
Force forecast	Use the Force forecast button or press `F` to inspect scheduled reinforcements, production estimates and arrival areas. Map returns to an arrival anchor.
Order queue	Use Review formations or press `Q` to expand the Orders remaining counts into named units. Filter by movement, enemy contact or supply trouble; Map selects the formation.
Weekly situation	After the enemy turn, review its attacks, losses, objective changes, arrivals, weather and your next priority. Earlier/Later browses the retained history; press `S` to reopen the latest report.
Find a formation	Open Formation locator or press `L`. Search names, armies, types and locations; filter by command or condition, then Select/Map to centre the result.
Portable save	Save campaign uses this browser. Export save file downloads a validated backup; Import save file checks its identity, map state, formation IDs, player command and campaign structure before restoring it.
Strategic objectives	Use Objectives or press `O` to review major and directive cities, control, value, operational role and distance from both armies.
End the week	The End week button, or the Enter key. If useful orders remain, an Orders review appears before the week is committed.

Turn order

A turn is one week, and it runs in a fixed order. The first five steps happen before anyone moves, so when you are given the map you already know the weather and the state of the railways.

Weather is rolled for the north, the centre and the south separately.
Track is repaired and converted, and each side’s working rail net is traced.
Supply is traced from the working railheads and every formation is graded.
Production is counted and replacements go forward.
Any reinforcements due this week arrive.
The Axis moves and fights, then the Soviets do.

Reviewing the fighting. The Actions reported panel keeps the most recent engagements close at hand. The Combat journal keeps the entire campaign history, including formations, odds, shifts, die rolls, losses and whether ground was taken. Its Map button returns to the recorded hex; the download opens as a tab-separated table in spreadsheet software.

Planning around arrivals. The Force forecast shows scheduled formations still due for both commands, their expected dates, strength and map anchors. If an arrival area has no friendly deployment space, the formation is marked delayed and remains queued until space opens; it no longer quietly disappears because one railway platform was inconveniently full.

Finding the next order. The three counts in Orders remaining share their calculation with the Order queue. Open it to see the actual formations behind each number, their command, location, strength, movement and current warnings. Map closes the queue, centres the formation and selects it for orders.

Reading a movement route. Select a formation and hover any pale destination. The purple route traces the exact least-cost path the formation will follow. The route card reports distance, movement cost, points remaining and whether an enemy zone of control forces the unit to stop on arrival.

Reading the campaign. Strategic objectives collects every major city and scenario-directive target. Capture, recapture, defend and hold roles follow current control and each city’s historical home side. Threatened cities have an enemy combat formation within three hexes. The Objectives overlay uses solid rings for cities you hold, dashed rings for enemy control and heavier rings for the campaign directive.

Your first week

Look at the rations. The three sliders on the right divide this week’s rail tonnage between the sectors. They open split the way your army is actually deployed. Note what each sector reads — full, adequate, short.
Pick a panzer corps. Hover a few counters near the frontier until you find one whose panel says Panzer corps. Click it. The pale hexes are everything it can reach this week.
Attack something. Click one of the outlined hexes next to it. Every one of your formations adjacent to that hex which still has an attack in it joins in automatically. Watch the ledger on the right: it prints the odds column, the shifts applied, the die roll and the result.
Exploit. If the defender retreated, your mobile formations still have movement left. Push them through the gap rather than after the retreating enemy: ground behind the enemy line is worth more than the enemy rear guard.
End the week. The opposing staff takes its half, and the next week begins. Before closing the week, check the Orders remaining card for formations still able to move, enemy-adjacent formations and supply alerts.

Movement

Every hex costs movement points to enter, more for forest, marsh and mountain, more again to cross a river. A formation that moves next to an enemy stops: a zone of control is a halt, not a wall. Low supply and bad weather both cut how far anything can move, and they cut motorised formations hardest.

A pale destination can be several hexes away. The formation follows the least-cost route used to calculate its reach. Up to twenty-four sequential movements can be undone or redone during your half of the week. Combat, a rail allocation change, saving, or ending the week commits movement history.

Look for the pocket. Pushing an enemy army back costs you a week and gains you a hex. Getting behind it cuts its supply, and a cut-off army fights at a fraction of its strength, weakens every week, and eventually surrenders. That is what the panzer corps are for.

Combat

Attacking strength against defending strength gives a ratio; the ratio names a column of the combat table; shifts move you along that column; a ten-sided die is rolled. Shifts come from armour attacking in the open, air superiority, weather, either side’s supply, whether the defender is cut off, and whether a major river is being crossed.

Before the die is rolled, the Attack forecast lists every participating formation, adjusted attack and defence values, the base odds, all column shifts, the final column and the share of combat-table results that inflict losses or clear the target hex. Press Enter to confirm or Escape to cancel.

Whatever the table says, every attack costs both sides something. A week of small attacks at poor odds will wear your army out faster than the ledger makes it look.

Supply, which is the real game

Supply is traced outward from each working railhead as a cost, not a distance: forest and marsh put a formation further from its railhead than the same number of hexes of open ground would. That trace gives every formation a grade from cut off to full, and the grade multiplies how hard it fights, how far it moves, and how fast it is rebuilt.

Select a formation on the Supply overlay to draw the exact predecessor path used by that calculation. The selected-unit panel names the railhead area and reports the accumulated cost. If no path appears, the formation has no working trace. Isolation duration advances once when its own command ends the weekly phase; inspecting the map or changing rail allocation does not somehow make the pocket older.

Two things follow, and both of them decide campaigns:

Move the tonnage with the offensive. The sliders are not scenery. An army group attacking on short rations is an army group at two-thirds strength.
The Axis converts track at about half the Soviet repair rate, because the gauge is wrong. Your spearheads will outrun your railheads. Watch the Supply overlay: when the ground behind your leading corps starts to darken, your offensive has a week or two left in it, not a month.

Sound

The game has a voice, and it is a headquarters rather than a battlefield: a key press on the controls, a card tick when you pick a counter up, a pencil stroke when a formation moves, the duplicator striking a line when a result is printed to the ledger, guns a long way off when an attack is fought, and a field telephone at the start of each week.

The Sound button in the right sidebar switches it off, and the slider beside it sets the volume; both are remembered between sessions. Nothing plays until your first click, because a browser will not open an audio context before then. Everything about the campaign works identically with the sound off.

Winning

Points come from steps you destroy, formations you shatter, and the cities you hold at the end — an enemy city is worth more than one of your own. At the end your score is set against par for the side you held. Par is not a number chosen to feel fair: it is what a skilled staff averages in that campaign, measured by playing it out many times, bad campaigns included.

Both commands have their own par, so playing the Soviets well in Barbarossa is worth exactly as much as playing the Axis well.

Losing

You lose by finishing below par. A campaign also ends early if Moscow and Leningrad both fall, or if one side stops existing as a fighting force.

Saving and restarting

The campaign is saved to this browser every week automatically, and the Save button writes it immediately. The title screen offers to resume it. A damaged browser save is ignored safely so you can import a portable backup or begin a new campaign. If browser storage rejects a manual save, the game reports the failure and keeps movement Undo/Redo available. When a campaign ends the save is cleared, and the closing screen offers a new one. Nothing is sent anywhere: the save lives in this browser only.