Lost Battles: Operational Combat in Russia (1971)

Strategy & Tactics magazine #28.

Time Scale: 1 day per turn

Map Scale: 2 km per hex

Unit Scale: Battalion/Regiment

Lost Battles is an operational game covering various Eastern Front battles at battalion - regiment level. These battles are fought on a generic map that represents the types of terrain found on the Eastern Front.

The game has that essay quality of many Dunnigan designs. It intentionally does not try to be all encompassing but consciously focuses on specific strands of the story as simply and straight forwardly as possible. Good advice for storytellers and game designers. While a bit primitive by today's standards Lost Battles is nevertheless complete and playable presenting many interesting problems to be solved. Though only four scenarios are provided with game, the highly variable victory conditions actually make the game extremely replayable. The game also provides brief tools to design many scenarios of your own. In fact you could say that it is this that the game does most best. It is likely that many early designers played a game or two of this before going their own way taking with them the bits and pieces of the simulacrum that suited them.