"What terrain for the steppes of Russia" Topic

15mm of course on a 4x6' game board.

I have seen photos of battless in Russia where it pretty uch looks like a pool table. But that's kind of boring.
What do you put on a table to make it interesting and still make it look like the steppes of Russia?

PS Never having been there, my preconception could be entirely wrong.

You are right, the steppes are primarily flat from what I know. However, your game can have any terrain you prefer. I think your options will depend on what you use for terrain. For example, some people might use a big sheet and place various flat objects under the sheet to replicate the gentle hills. Or, you can put model hills on top of the cloth which is easier to game on and with, but a little less realistic.

A small hillock or two, high enough to be a line of sight block but not affect movement. Gullies, dry or wet and small towns or communes each of a couple to half dozen structures. Also picket fences denoting pens for animals or vegetable gardens. Groups of trees as windbreaks, copse of trees or orchards.

A quick Google shows all of the above:

link

In general I go with rolling hills at a minimum. Add in some villages maybe a road.

One thing I do is "ridgelines." These are bits of flock glued to a string and laid on the table. They count as a very minor elevation change. Enough to block LOS but they have no other game effect.

You could include a dry ‘waterway', though not a height advantage or LOS obstacle they offer cover and are known to exist on the steppe…

The relief features of the steppes in Russia include:

- Predominantly flat. Minor elevation changes, slight slope of the terrain and ravines (gulls).

- Strong gullying. Loess-like rocks common on the surface cause strong development of ravines, their steep cliffs and plateau-like watersheds.

- Presence of depressions and saucers. Shallow round depressions of varying sizes, sometimes filled with lakes, swamps or temporary accumulations of water.

- Ridges. Long and gentle elevations of the relief, alternating with depressions and often elongated in the north-east direction.

So you can easily diversify your gaming table, especially since the troops sought to use exactly such terrain features to create positions.

A typical gully in the Don steppe.

Ravine (distinguished by sharp, crumbling edges).

Depressions (saucers)

In fact, the steppe is a very smooth relief, but not such a flat table surface. The main relief here is located "down". Below the line of sight. In such niches you can hide troops, make a maneuver invisible to the enemy.
And here rare, extremely flat hills or high-rise buildings have a very high value. Now the war in Ukraine is going on mainly in such areas, and the troops are desperately fighting for possession, for example, of mine waste heaps and any high-rise buildings (mine shaft or elevator). By the way, if your actions take place in the Donbass region, you can also create them.

Possibly worth mentioning an old observation of the German Army that in Russia villages tended to be on high ground to avoid flooding in otherwise flat terrain, where further west villages tended to be by the waterways at bridges or fords--presumably so people didn't have to haul water up steep hills.

Those are great pictures, Caprum! Thanks for your insights on this.

Here is a picture from a 6mm game I ran about 3 weeks ago. It is not specific to any area in Russia but more representative of the Ukraine than further east such as around the Stalingrad region.

In fact, the differences between the steppe zone in Russia and Ukraine do not have any special differences.
Unlike during the Second World War, there are now a large number of artificial forest belts (lesopolka – a narrow strip of forest dividing crop fields), which were purposefully planted during the Soviet period to combat powerful winds that often destroyed crops and even blew away the fertile soil layer.

robert piepenbrink, in fact, the villages are located at the top where there is a powerful flood and the rivers can simply destroy any buildings during this period. So this is not a general rule.

Your photo shows a nice table, but such terrain is typical for more forested areas, closer to Belarus (Kursk region, for example). Groves in the steppe are not a common occurrence unless they are planted deliberately.
This hill in the center is a tempting position)))

One more thing. The steppes gradually rise from east to west. So the German side always has a slight advantage in altitude. And also the western bank of the rivers will be steeper than the eastern one, in most cases.

Nice pics, Cuprum.

By the way, yesterday I watched a new episode of a crowdfunding Russian documentary about the Battle of Kursk… It told in detail about the terrain on which the main events took place… Well, in fact, the sides were quite seriously limited in maneuver precisely because of this terrain, cut by ravines and gullies. In addition, the terrain there is "wetter" and abounds in a lot of various small rivers and streams with marshy banks.
Despite the "flat table", it was not easy to choose suitable directions for attacks there. Especially for heavy equipment…

I came across an interesting photo: the covert movement of a Hungarian tank column along the bottom of a wide ravine during the battles on the approaches to Stalingrad. Flat steppe)))

Very nice pictures, Caprum! Your observations are appreciated.

The area I am depicting in my game is actually the Kursk region after the battle as the Soviets are going over to the offensive. Please note that this is no specific location nor does the game depict any specific battle. It was designed as an introductory game for the Mein Panzer rules system.

Yes, I understand. But this is typical terrain for those places.
Here is a screenshot from the video I mentioned above. The brown color indicates impassable ravines and gullies. This is one of the sections of the German offensive in the area of ​​the village of Yakovlevo (height 254.5), about 300 German tanks attacked here… And then the Russians launched a counterattack.
Difficult terrain.

As above, the Steppe aren't flat. I use a lot of low rises and put the in plenty of gullies with odd clump of woods and cultivated land around villages. Google Earth gives a pretty good idea of the terrain.

As someone else commented, you can just mark rises with bits of terrain, lichen, rocks or whatever.

+1 on gullies.

The American prairie and the Russian steppe have the same deceptive quality. One envisions waving grasses on low rolling flatness for as far as the eye can see. But, that's an illusion. What's missing is the water. Scanning the horizon you can't see the gullies, dry or flowing, that bedevil movement and offer defensive opportunities. Mother Russia's tank traps.

It is in the nature of gamers to start with a flat table and think of positive space features. What is above local base line elevation? In the steppe the key is negative space features. What is below the local base line elevation?

To be sure, there are lots of places where the water courses are not in deep gullies, but running in shallow streams near the surface level. But water near the surface level can be a 2 edged sword. Limited fall breeds limited flow. If that gets out of hand, I give you the Pripyat Marshes. Don't forget. Like the famous jungle observation, the mud is neutral.

Get insulation board cut to match the size of your game table. The surface of the insulation becomes the steppe level. Cut down into the insulation to create gullies of varying depths. Don't get too carried away. I'd suggest getting an old copy of PanzerBlitz and using its game board as a guide. IIRC there were streams that ran short distances that didn't connect to any other water features.

Don't think bridges in the steppe. Think road cuts, dug to create a slope to the gully bed.

I can't find the reference, but I saw a YouTube video ages ago where an old Brit military historian was perplexed why the Russians were so focused on getting the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka. From the map he could divine no strategic value for the place. He asked his daughter to look up to see if the place had another name under Soviet rule. She said it had been called Pervomaiske (I think) He realized it was the same place fought over bitterly during the Great Patriotic War in 1943. The city dominated all of the routes available from the Don River lowlands and anchored the left flank of Donetsk. That just wasn't apparent from a road map.

He remembered reading how the Russian commander tasked with retaking it cursed his fate for having to fight up the many deep ravines that led up onto the level steppe.

Like the famous jungle observation, the mud is neutral.

Mud isn't neutral. It attacks everything that moves with equal ferocity.

This has been a great discussion. I've been contemplating East Front gaming for a couple years, and this has given me lots of terrain construction ideas.

- Ix

Mud, an equal opportunity destroyer.