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I attended UKGE this year and around halfway through the day a friend called me and told me about "one of the best games he had played." Andy does not say this very often, in fact I have never heard him say it at all.
He doesn’t like Kickstarter as he dislikes the way you must wait for a game after paying for it and the fact that some kickstarters are unbalanced or do not live up to the hype often leaves him annoyed. However, the excitement in his voice after play testing Pavlov's House did not disappear when he said it would be coming to Kickstarter and this surprised me.
Over the next few months he spoke about the game and how he had been in contact with the designer to help polish the game and get it ready for market. Then he called me all excited and told me that the designer had found a publisher, and that Dan Verssen Games would be bringing it to Kickstarter this year. It was at this point that I knew Andy was right all along, anyone who has played a DVG will know that they are very well made and work extremely well. The themes are not everyone’s cup of tea I agree but from a gameplay point of view there is no denying they are near on perfect.
So, what is this game? Pavlov's House is based on a real-life event that occurred during the Battle of Stalingrad. Defenders of the fortified apartment building managed to hold off an offensive for 60 days. When I first though of how a game like this would play out I got excited too, I am a huge war film and game fan and I find that it's a theme I can easily get lost in.
Intel on Pavlov's House
Pavlov's House is a game for 1-3 players that plays in around 60 minutes. In Pavlov’s House you take control of the defending troops and must attempt to hold out against the advancing German troops. Can you last long enough to storm a key German strong point? I asked designer David Thompson some questions about how this game will play, and what were his inspirations were behind its design.
The board is split into three sections that represent three different views of the Stalingrad battleground. On the left is a view inside of Pavlov’s House. In the centre of the board is a bird’s eye view of the grounds outside Pavlov’s House. On the right side of the board is a depiction of the Volga River.
Each section has important roles to play and are all equally important as each other. The game uses line of sight where if a unit is placed in a coloured area it can attack troops in the same colour area.
This is clever as the left side of the board shows the inside of the house and troop positions, which then affects section two of the board which is a bird’s eye view of the house and surrounding grounds. This gives a tactical feel to the game that I haven’t personally seen before
The game is very in-depth to explain here but straight forward to pick up. I have only seen a print and play version but the mechanics are solid and it flows very well.
Each section has important roles to play and are all equally important as each other. The game uses line of sight where if a unit is placed in a coloured area it can attack troops in the same colour area.
This is clever as the left side of the board shows the inside of the house and troop positions, which then affects section two of the board which is a bird’s eye view of the house and surrounding grounds. This gives a tactical feel to the game that I haven’t personally seen before
The game is very in-depth to explain here but straight forward to pick up. I have only seen a print and play version but the mechanics are solid and it flows very well.
Interrogation
David, can you please tell my readers how the design process for this game started?
Sure, Martyn, no problem. I first conceived of Pavlov's House in early 2016. At the time, I was wrapping up work on Castle Itter, which essentially served as the first part in what has developed into a series of games. I knew I wanted to continue working on war games that featured skirmish/tactical-level “last stands” - amazing feats with a very personal character.
Pavlov's House was originally going to be more similar to Castle Itter. It was going to be a solitaire-only game, with the player controlling the defenders of Pavlov’s House. But when I began the review of literature, I realized I needed to go beyond just the defenders of the building itself. I needed to include all of the different elements of the Soviet 62nd Army that contributed to the defence.
Once I started incorporating these elements, I realised the game needed two scales - tactical for the defenders of the building, and operational for all the other elements. At that point, it made sense to expand the game from solitaire-only to also allow for two player co-operative. Much later on in the design process, I developed a variant that allows for a player to take on the role of the Germans in a competitive (2 v 1 or 1 v 1) version of the game.
Could you give me a quick run-through of a turn order and what occurs during that?
Sure. First off, it’s important to know that the game ends when the deck that controls the German actions is exhausted (in the solitaire and co-op versions of the game). There are three phases to each turn of the game.
In the first phase, four cards from the Soviet card deck are drawn. Each card has two actions to choose from. This means there is potentially up to eight different actions to choose during this phase. And three of the cards can be used for actions. The actions in this phase represent the operational-level contributions from the 62nd Army. They include things like preparing artillery and antiaircraft guns, moving supplies across the Volga, and repairing communications infrastructure.
In the next phase, three cards are drawn from the German card deck. Each of these cards is resolved, in order, one at a time. They represent a broad range of things, varying from Stuka strikes to artillery attacks. But at their heart, they drive the personnel and armor assaults on Pavlov's House. In games with increased difficulty, Tactics cards are added that increase the effectiveness of the German cards.
In the third phase, Soviet counters are used to defend Pavlov's House. There are 34 unique counters, all tied to the actual Soviet soldiers who defended the building. In this phase, three of the counters can re-position within the building, and three can take actions that correlate to their historical role. The defenders include antitank riflemen, snipers, forward observers, and a lot more. Once this phase is complete, a new turn begins.
I should also mention that command, control and communications play an important role in the game. The operational-level elements will have to deal with fog of war by using their signal unit effectively. This can also increase the number of actions available in the first phase. Similarly, by having the command team present in Pavlov's House, command and control is improved, resulting in an extra action.
Andy played the game at UKGE and really enjoyed it. What feedback did you take from that and how has it helped the game?
Andy has been amazing. It was great meeting him at UKGE. He quickly picked up the intricacies of the game. After the con, he used the files I made available for playtesters to put together his own print-and-play copy of the game — and that's no simple feat. It’s a big game, and making a copy of it is a big investment, in terms of both time and components.
After he played it a few times, we began communicating regularly. He asked me how he could help, and I basically asked him to break the game - to look for strategies that were degenerate. The game has gone through a LOT of testing. First by me. Then by my local groups. Then by my online playtest groups. And finally through “blind playtests” like Andy’s. But you can NEVER, EVER playtest a game too much.
Andy identified a few things that I ended up tweaking. Some of them were minor, but one thing especially stuck out and that was a strategy built on focusing almost exclusively on the use of snipers to counter Wehrmacht infantry. Snipers should be a good option, but not a broken strategy. Andy helped me deal with this and a few other things, which significantly improved the game.
You were going to self-publish I believe and then DVG picked up the game, how did that come about?
Actually I never really considered self-publishing. That's not something that interests me. I applaud those who can do it - it's an impressive feat, but I'd rather spend my game design time (time not spent at my day job and with my family) designing rather than working on the publisher side of things.
UKGE was my last major test for the game. I had been working on it as my top priority for about a year, and I wanted to open it up to playtesters. At the same time, the BGG war game design contest was concluding, and Pavlov's House was well received in the contest. So I figured it was time to pitch it. DVG was a no-brainer, as I’m a big fan of Dan and the entire team at DVG.
Finally, why should backers buy this game?
That's a great question. As of the time of this article being written, Dan and I are still working through the specifics for stretch goals and add-ons for the campaign. There are a couple things that I think most backers are going to want.
One thing I'm very proud of is the companion book that I've written to go along with the game. It's a 40 -45 page book that provides all the historical context to really understand the Battle of Stalingrad at a high level and Pavlov’s House in detail.
When I started down the road of designing the game, I had no idea how clouded in myth the story was. Basically the entire story is derived from Soviet propaganda, and western sources that perpetuate the Soviet myth. There is almost no original English language work on the topic. After exhausting all the existing game material (my favourite place to start) and English literature, I eventually had to turn to some more recent Russian work that sought to clarify the original Soviet sources.
The end result is the companion book that I would argue stands up to any other English language text on the battle for Pavlov’s House. I also made sure to include tons of maps, details on the defenders, etc. The companion book also includes some design notes for the game. Other stretch goals and add-ons will likely take the form of familiar stuff like component upgrades.
Of course the most important thing (for me, anyway!) is that if people support Pavlov's House it will help pave the way for the next game in the series. I haven't made the idea public yet, but I'm very excited about it. I'll be traveling in September to do some research at the battle site — the first time I'll be able to conduct research at the location where one of my games takes place.
Mission report
Coming to Kickstarter on August 23, I recommend any war game fan to check it out. It's intelligent, tactical and fun. Andy was right all those months ago. It’s a very good game, one of the best I have played? Probably not but it’s up there with a lot of other games I love.
For me the best thing about this game is it has a war game feel but with easier to pick up and play rules than most other games in this genre.