Strategy & Tactics # 343 - Operation Albion & the Baltic Campaigns, 1917-1918

From Decision Games:

The Magazine:

Operation Albion & The Baltic Campaigns: 1917–18
In 1917 there were two Russian Revolutions. The first overthrew the Romanov dynasty, and the second put the Bolsheviks in power. That same year the Germans launched an offensive on land that captured Riga, and followed that up with an amphibious invasion of strategic islands in the Baltic Sea—Operation Albion.

Articles:

• The Roman Empire: From Fortified Camps to Fortified Frontiers Every century or so, the Roman Army underwent significant transformations that affected strategy and the role of fortifications. Until the time of Marcus Aurelius, their overarching strategy was conquest. After that, fortifications became necessary to hold the frontier as the empire fell back along the Danube and Rhine Rivers.
• Task Force Faith: Unprepared, Unsupported & Abandoned In the wake of one of the worst intelligence and command failures in the history of American arms, a disorganized and understrength regiment of US soldiers—Task Force Faith—was abandoned on the east shore of Chosin Reservoir in North Korea late in 1950. They were sacrificed due to the haste and hubris of top US military commanders.
• Russo-Turkish War: the Caucasus 1806–12 While the main theater of operations in the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12 was in Europe—primarily in today’s Romania and eastern Bulgaria—fighting also took place in the Caucasus. There the two countries shared a border due to Russia’s gradual southward advance into territory subjugated by the Ottomans in previous centuries.

The Game:

Operation Albion: Germany versus Russia in the Baltic, 1917-1918 is a two-player operational wargame of the campaign in the Baltic, 1917-18, in which the Germans captured the city of Riga and took critical islands in an amphibious operation. Operation Albion in part led to the collapse of the Russian Provisional Government and brought the final German victory in the East. The campaign was one of the few joint land-naval-air operations of World War I. The game includes the post-Albion German intervention in the Finnish Civil War of 1919. Albion is a combined naval-air-land campaign. Players conduct actions which encompass discrete combat, logistical, intelligence, and other operations. A player can conduct one or more actions per turn. All units in the game use a similar combat system, showing the interaction of naval, air, and land forces. Each game turn represents from one day to one month depending on the pace of operations. A player may take multiple actions each GT. One inch on the map represents 40 kilometers. Ground units represent regiments, brigades, and divisions, or equivalent formations. Aircraft units represent squadrons. Ship units represent divisions of one to three battleships or battlecruisers, four to eight other cruisers, flotillas of twelve to twenty destroyers, or various numbers of other ships types.

Components: One 22 x 34-inch game map 176 5/8-inch counters