£5.00Scenarios for the Russian Front 1941-1945 (RAPID FIRE! Third Supplement)

Published in 1998, following the launch of the first Rapid Fire! rule set, this long out of print publication was our first scenario book. At the time I was nuts about all thing Eastern Front and after Colin had penned Unit Organisations for the 1944-45 Campaign in North West Europe (our first orbat book), I’d followed up with Unit Organisations for the Russian Front; so the obvious next step was a book of scenarios.

Between the two I was fortunate enough to meet Mark Axworthy, the lead author of the ‘bible’ of Romanian involvement in W.W.2: Third Axis, Fourth Ally. As he was, at that time, researching Slovak forces, he kindly corrected errors I’d made in my earlier Slovak orbats and he also provided me with a rare volume that provided the basis for the two scenarios in this book that feature Romanian forces.

The aim of Scenarios for the Russian Front was to give wargamers a broad spread of Russian Front games, both in terms of units, but also in the types of actions, terrain and weather the protagonists were confronted with in this brutal theatre of operations. Research was challenging at the time, with no internet and limited availability of English-language sources from the Soviet view point, so, as authors often state in defence of their mistakes, any errors are mine and I take full responsibility!

At the time I’d prematurely retired from teaching after a back op and was earning a crust as a maker of master models for several wargames cottage industry manufacturers, as well as writing magazine articles and Rapid Fire! books. As a result you’ll find shameless promotion of my work in many of the captions along with examples of the resulting vehicles and buildings in the photographs, some for businesses that no longer exist.

The rules that take up the last pages of the book are optional. Most of them found their way into the later 2005 edition of the Rapid Fire rules and some were further refined and simplified for 2020’s Rapid Fire Reloaded, but any of them can be adapted for play with Reloaded. The aircraft stats can also be used as a guide for arming your planes if using the Reloaded Extra aircraft rules.

One change that I would recommend is in the Narwa scenario. Over the years players have told me that they think the deadline of 10 moves for the Soviet forces to achieve their objectives for a win is far too demanding, so I would suggest a change of that to a more realistic 15 moves.

Scenarios for the Russian Front was written before the days of sophisticated computer programmes, with all the maps being created using the drawing facility in Microsoft Word. With the original final drafts long lost we have created this pdf reproduction manually, so we’d like to apologise for difference in quality between this and our usual pdf publications.

We hope you enjoy these scenarios, especially if you’re new to Rapid Fire or weren’t active in the hobby (or even born!) when this book was first published.

Richard Marsh