In this article in our series previewing Downfall, we continue our typical game to show a range of orders and activities that might occur, such as strategic warfare, event triggers, intra-Axis conflict, weather and partisan warfare.

At the end of Preview 3, the Western Faction’s Initiative Marker occupied the lowest-numbered space on the Initiative Track so they will conduct the next Action Round.

The Western Faction chooses the first Western Order marker on the Action Track. It shows a Redeploy/Attack order on one side and a Strategic Warfare order on the other. They decide to conduct Strategic Warfare, at a cost of 8 initiative. They place the SW order marker on the Western Order Display and advance the Western initiative marker 8 spaces on the Initiative Track. The initiative marker advances past a Western event space on the track, so they flip the marker to show that an event will be resolved after conducting the Strategic Warfare order.

Strategic Warfare allows the Western Faction to do two things:

• They gain 1 Transport Point, essential for conducting amphibious invasions, recorded by advancing the Western Transport Point marker.
• They select an area of Strategic Warfare they wish to influence: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of the Atlantic, or Strategic Bombing. They choose The Battle of the Atlantic and roll two dice, getting a “10” – a lucky result that allows them to move the SW marker in the Atlantic SW Display two boxes in the Western favor. This improves a modifier for Western naval operations and reduces the number of operating OKW submarine fleets from 3 to 2. The OKW faction remove one of their submarine fleets from a sea area, placing it on the SW display to show the loss.

After completing the Strategic Warfare order, the Western player conducts the Event Procedure by adjusting the Event Cards in the Event Card Display in the following sequence:

1. They move the card in the middle event box (Continuation War) to the top of the Discard Pile box, covering the King Michael event card and its Western air symbol; and they move the card in the Draw Pile box (Urals Industry) to the event box. Since there are now no Western air symbols visible on Event cards, the Western Player must immediately remove their air unit from the map, placing it in the Force Pool.
2. The event on the card now in the middle event box (Urals Industry) is implemented. The event calls for the Soviet Faction to gain an armored reinforcement step. The Soviet Player assigns the step by flipping one of their motorized infantry units on the map to its armor side.
3. The Western Player flips over the top card in the Draw Pile, revealing the next pending event – Strategic Impact. This card shows a Western air symbol, so the Western faction immediately gains an air unit, which they decide to place with their British armor unit in Libya. The pending event card also shows a Western Action Card symbol, which means the Western faction immediately draws a Western Action Card into their hand. This concludes the Event Procedure. The Strategic Impact event is pending; it will be implemented the next time the Event Procedure is triggered.

The OKH Faction Initiative marker is now lowest on the  Initiative Track, so they take the next Action Round. But first, the Action Track has an empty box so the OKH faction (controlled by the Western Player) slides order markers down the track to fill the gap and draws a new order from the cup, adding it to the end of the track, so 10 order markers are again available.

Next the OKH faction chooses an order marker from the track — Command Failure — and places it on the OKH Order Display. They pay the order’s initiative cost by advancing the OKH Initiative marker 2 spaces, placing the OKH marker atop the Soviet marker in that space.   The Command Failure order allows the OKH faction to roll one die and advance the OKW Initiative Marker on the Initiative Track. They roll a “4” and advance the OKW marker 4 spaces. This will delay the next OKW action round until after the next Western action round.

Now two initiative markers share the lowest initiative space. The faction at the bottom of the stack, in this case the Soviets, gets the next Action Round.

However, the weather marker is now in a lower initiative space than all faction markers, so the Soviet Player must update the weather before their action round. To do so, they advance the Weather marker to the Soviet initiative marker in Space 24 and then roll two dice, further advancing the marker a number of spaces equal to the roll. They roll an “8” indicating that the marker would advance to space 32 and into Weather Period 2. However, the Weather marker can never advance beyond the most advanced Initiative marker, so in this case the weather marker advances only to space 29 occupied by the OKW initiative marker.

Next, the Soviet faction refills the Action Track with a new order marker, as described above. Then the Soviets decide to choose the Partisan Warfare order marker from the Action Track. They place the marker on the Soviet Order Display and pay its initiative cost by advancing their Initiative marker 7 spaces along the Initiative track. This moves their Initiative marker past a Soviet event space so they flip the marker to its Pending Event side.

To conduct the Partisan Warfare order, the Soviet player rolls 2 dice twice. The first roll determines the number of partisan units gained. The Soviets roll a “6”, modified to a “7” due to the Soviet dice roll bonus shown in the Event Display, which results in 1 partisan gained. The second roll is applied to the partisan Warfare Table to determine the country in which the Partisan is placed. The modified roll is a “9” indicating that the Soviet Player will place the partisan unit in any empty hex in Serbia.

With the Partisan Warfare order completed, the Soviet faction then conducts the Event Procedure, in the sequence described above.

And so Action Rounds continue in this fashion, conducted by the faction currently with the initiative.

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Previous Articles:

Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich Preview 1 — The Game Design in the Map

Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich Preview 2 — The Soviets Attack

Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich Preview 3 — The Soviet Offensive Continues