Kursk! Creating a Project

 Why it is Interesting to Wargamers

The pure scale of the battle.  

The Battle of Kursk is one of the largest single battles of WWII involving 2,000,000 troops, 6,000 armored fighting vehicles, and 4,000 aircraft.  It is difficult to place that in scale of how large a battle that was especially for those of us who grew up in the west.    The fighting on D-Day involved 200,000 men and the height of operations in the North West Europe Theater of Operations was a combined total of 2,750,000 men prior to the push into Germany in 1945.

The gamers belief that the German's were close to victory.   

Often when gamers look at large battles they key into small decision declaring "I would never do that, it cost them victory."  The Battle of Kursk, or rather the individual engagements offer plenty of those small decisions.  Some large ones as well.  

As an individual with a History Degree and reading five to many books on the topic, the Germans were never in a position to win the battle.  Even if they did it wouldn't really change anything.   They were grossly out numbered on multiple fronts and the American war machine was now in high gear.        

As an scenario designer it appears feasible to build multiple scenarios on both the northern and southern fronts that have opportunity for both sides to succeed and win.   

Tanks, Tanks and more Thanks.  

With over 6,000 armored fighting vehicles engaged, Kursk is the largest tank battle in history.   A gamers delight as it were.   

On the Western Front to adequately have a historic game you should have roughly 9 to 10 stands of infantry for every single stand of Armor.   Gamers "love" tanks and only begrudgingly play infantry, as a general rule of thumb.   So you usually see too much armor represented on the western front, from the Western Desert to Northwest Europe.   At Kursk depending on the exact engagement it is more of a one to one ratio at the platoon level.   .