Blitzfreeze expansion for Five men in Kursk/Normandy and possible spin offs?

[Kommando_J]

Recently(today in fact) discovered an expansion for five men in kursk/Normandy called 'Blitzfreeze', simply put you control a small group of men from army group north as you attempt to retreat back to secure territory ahead of the soviet army.

More info to be found here: https://wanderer.productions/category/blitzfreeze/

(please note I have no financial interest whatsoever)

What makes it interesting is that actions and events during the battle effect your troops after with:

- Stress from actions(getting shot at by a sniper/seeing friends get shot etc.)

- Injuries having the possibility of slowing down your band on its retreat (do you cut loose the hard fighting nco with a permanent leg wound as he becomes a liability/provision drain?)

- Winter and actions in battle(such as going into cold water) also can lead to a variety of post-battle ailments which can slow down/cripple men.

- Scavenging loot and trading it with other troops for provisions/ammunition.

- Some missions are just random encounters while others are given by the military (such as scuttling a downed tiger tank) and if any troops flee off the board during an 'official' mission they have to roll on the military discipline table and can be hanged for cowardice!

Think this may be the perfect rule set for me(due to low mini count ).

Also got to thinking...what other campaigns would make for a suitable similar campaign?

Thought the following might be worth converting over:

Chindits fighting Japanese/Japanese late war, replace winter conditions with tropical conditions/threat of tropical disease?

Scavenging partisan band staying ahead of Germans?

As suggested to me on 4chan, soviet retreat after Operation: Mars?

[DonFabrizio]

some sugestions:
Polish troops trying to reach neutral Romania, September 1939
Soviet soldiers trying to escape Finish Motti encirclement, winter wear 1939-1940
British and/or French troops trying to reach to coast, May-June 1940
Soviet forces trying to break from encirclement, Barbarossa 1941
German/Hungarian/Romanian/Italian troops trying to escape encirclement on the Stalingrad front 1943-1944
British airborne forces hoping to escape the Arnhem fiasco, September 1944
the retreat of German forces from northern Finnland or the Balkans, fall 1944

[TheWanderer]

Also consider looking at the Korean War for inspiration. Look at the actions in November 1950 that proceeded the battle of the Chosin Reservoir and the UN retreats in December. It has all the makings of a compelling campaign narrative - the relentlessly advancing Chinese and North Koreans, horrific weather conditions and a fixed destination - that of the new defensive positions on the 38th Parallel.

Character creation can be a bit more interesting as you've got multiple nationalities fighting with the UN at that period - British, American, Korean and Turkish soldiers were all involved in the retreat from the Yalu River in the close of 1950.

[Momotaro]

Thanks for linking - I love this kind of campaign!

I've been thinking about something set in the cold north for a horror campaign.  Kind of like the computer game The Long Dark, but with fatigue, starvation and cold as much an enemy as the encroaching beasties in the darkness.

[Kommando_J]

Definitely has applications for a horror campaign, perhaps an anti-partisan patrol making its way through a set patrol route suddenly beset by the creatures drawn by the slaughter of the Russian campaign?

One could even adapt it for the k47 setting- Scavenging Russians hounded by totenkorps or chindits encountering shibito during a raid after raiding a japanese facility.

[TheWanderer]

Another episode of the campaign walkthrough I'm running is up on the blog! Check it out:
http://wanderer.productions/2018/04/05/blitzfreeze-campaign-walkthrough-pt-6/