Prokhorovka! Unboxing

On the morning of July 12, 1943, Pavel Rotmistrov watched from a command post west of Prokhorovka as his 5th Guards Tank Army rolled toward the SS. Hundreds of T-34s and T-70s came over the rise southwest of Prokhorovka, straight at the Leibstandarte dug in around Hill 252.2. The Soviets later called it the greatest tank battle in history.

Historians have been arguing about that ever since. It was still a brutal day, fought over a few square miles of farm fields. Prokhorovka! puts those fields on the table, all ten feet of them.

Getting It

This is the third historical module from Italy’s Advancing Fire, released at the very end of 2021. I’d been waiting for it for a while. This time it comes in a real box. Fancy. Biazza Ridge and Brevity Assault shipped in what was basically a plastic bag.

Advancing Fire takes orders by email through their website. Ritterkrieg lists it at $190, but it’s out of stock there. As usual, the links are at the bottom of the article.

Contents:

• 14 scenarios, two of them for the Starter Kit rules
• A campaign game for the counterattack on July 12
• Four counter sheets: 384 full color 5/8″ counters and 560 1/2″ counters
• Five 37.4″ x 22.8″ map sheets that join into one 37.4″ x 114″ map of the tank fields
• A 36.8″ x 22″ map of Andreevka and Vasilyevka
• A 24.4″ x 15.7″ map of Storozhevoje
• A 30.7″ x 23.6″ map of the area around the Stalinskii State Farm
• A rules and history booklet with the special rules, map terrain and campaign rules

It isn’t a complete game. You’ll need the ASL Rulebook and Beyond Valor, and the two Starter Kit scenarios need ASL Starter Kit #3.

I’ve got one small complaint, and it’s the box. I’m thankful to get one at all, since only a handful of third-party publishers still do it. It’s thin, though. Shelve it on its own or standing up, and don’t stack anything on it.

The Road to Prokhorovka

Prokhorovka is a small town on the southern side of the Kursk salient, in Russia’s Belgorod region, not far from today’s border with Ukraine. In July 1943, the Germans attacked the salient from the north and the south at once. In the south, Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army drove north toward Oboyan and Prokhorovka.

By July 10, the II SS Panzer Corps was pushing up the road and the railway to Prokhorovka. The Soviets threw in their reserve, Rotmistrov’s tank army. The module covers July 10, 11 and 12, as the SS took the high ground and the Soviet tanks came back at them.

T-34s for Miles

There are about a thousand counters on four sheets, with the big and small sizes mixed on each one. The Soviet sheets are T-34s as far as the eye can see, with T-70s, antitank rifles and a few Lend-Lease tanks mixed in. You’ll still need your Beyond Valor counters for the campaign game. Somebody on the forums counted about 150 Soviet AFVs in it.

These are worlds ahead of the counters in Advancing Fire’s first two modules. The color and the die cutting are great. Huge improvement. They even threw in reprints of the Biazza Ridge counters that were misprinted the first time, Colonel Gavin included. Most of us know him from Gavin Take.

The SS come in black. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s a color, and those are the units that fought there. If it bugs you, there’s a matching set in the regular German blue-gray, so you can play with either one.

Homework Included

The booklet runs about 34 pages on glossy paper, with a margin left for three-hole punching. The special rules mostly cover units and terrain, like historical trenches, barbed wire, buildings and hills. Biazza Ridge used hillock rules on its hills, and they confused a lot of people, me included. There isn’t a hillock in sight this time, and the hills use slopes instead.

Then there’s the history, and there’s a lot of it. You get research references, period maps, aerial reconnaissance photos and an interview with Christopher Lawrence, whose book on the battle gets a plug on the box cover. Someone could lay those recon photos over the ASL maps and see how close they come.

Fourteen Fights and a Monster

The scenario cards are full color on glossy stock. There are 12 full ASL scenarios and two for the Starter Kit, and most of them are big. Several run 13 to 16 turns, and a couple of them start at night. One card has 245 factors of mines on it. Wow.

The Starter Kit pair is a nice touch. Attacking 241.6 Hill is 5 turns, and Totenkopf Boundary Defense is 7. Still, buying the whole module to play two SK scenarios is a steep price of entry. On VASL, you only need a friend who owns it.

Then there’s the campaign game, Tank Fields of Prokhorovka, in two parts across the whole joined map. Bring a lot of burning wreck markers.

Ten Feet of Steppe

The maps are a big step up too. Biazza Ridge and Brevity Assault had maps printed on thin paper that you had to unfold with kid gloves. These are thick, with a matte finish that doesn’t throw glare, just like the old fold-out maps from MMP.

Sheets 1 to 5 join into the campaign map, and it’s nearly 10 feet long. Yes, feet. It’s mostly open, rolling steppe, with a few villages and big trench lines, and levels running from 0 up to 6. Colored boxes with national symbols along the edges look like the entry areas. On the real ground, it runs southwest from the Oktyabrsky farm to Komsomolets, with the railway along its southeast edge.

I tried it on our kitchen table with the leaf in. It hung off both ends by about a whole sheet. You might need two folding tables from Costco. Or VASL.

The other three maps stand alone. On map A, Andreevka and Vasilyevka sit in grain fields, with small farm buildings that straddle the hexsides. Map S is the smallest, the village of Storozhevoje with woods along one edge and a hill behind it. The Stalinskii State Farm gets map Y, with a small village and woods along its lower edge. Map A is laid out with north at the top. On S and Y, north is off to the left.

Outside the campaign, map 1 sees the most action, with four scenarios. Maps 3 and 4 each get three plus a Starter Kit scenario. Map A has two plus one, Y has two, and S has one.

The Tank Fields

Most of the fighting happened in a strip a few miles wide between the Psel River and the railway. The rest was just south of the tracks, around Storozhevoje. This map shows the main thrusts, a short chronology and where each scenario sits. The dashed purple outlines are where the game maps fall on the real ground, as near as I can line them up. The numbers match the scenario table right under it.

Gray markers are the fights where the Germans attack, and red ones are where the Soviets do. Every German on the attack here is SS, from the Leibstandarte, Totenkopf or Das Reich.

The SS Comes North

The scenario called 10 July has the Leibstandarte attacking straight up the road toward Prokhorovka. Heavy rain holds it up until 10:45. The Soviets block the road with what they’ve got left, including dug-in tanks of the 169th Tank Brigade. Prokhorovka Axis, 11 July is the next morning, when the Leibstandarte takes Oktyabrsky State Farm and Hill 252.2. Both run long, at 13.5 and 16.5 turns.

Over on the Psel, Totenkopf goes after the 99th Tank Brigade in Vasilyevka and Andreevka in Vasil’evka, 11 July. That night, Soviet guards riflemen and paratroopers try to take back the state farm in A Night in a Sovkhoz. It’s only 6 turns, and all of them are in the dark.

July 12

Then comes the big day, and most of the scenarios are Rotmistrov’s tanks on the attack. Will We Avoid the Big Battle? starts after midnight, with an SS probe out of the woods by Storozhevoje. In Taking Oktyabrsky and Attack from the Psel, the 18th Tank Corps squeezes along the river and runs uphill at Hill 252.2.

A Soviet Reckless Charge is the 32nd Tank Brigade’s run down the railway with about 60 T-34s, at 16.5 turns. Reckless is right. In Breakthrough in Komsomolets, 15 of those T-34s actually get through the German screen. The SS have to deal with them.

Down south, Das Reich and the Leibstandarte fight for Storozhevoje in Thrust Beyond Storozhevoje, and Yamki to Sovkhoz Stalinsk sends the 25th Tank Brigade at the SS around the Stalinsk state farm. Andreevka-Vasilyevka Sector is the 18th Tank Corps against Totenkopf along the Psel. It runs 14 turns, and the fighting there was the last to end that day.

If you like tank battles that feel like miniatures without buying any miniatures, this is it. The same goes if you like long-barreled guns firing across open ground. The campaign game, with over a hundred AFVs rolling around that map, must be insane.

Where to Buy

Advancing Fire: Prokhorovka! (orders by email through their site)

Advancing Fire: Support (errata and VASL files)

Ritterkrieg

Debriefing

Prokhorovka! is Advancing Fire’s best module yet. It shows. There’s a real box, a thousand good counters, thick maps and a booklet full of history, for about what their first two cost. The campaign map is huge, and the scenarios are mostly big tank fights on open ground.

If you’re new to it, start with one of the two Starter Kit scenarios or Breakthrough in Komsomolets. They’re short, and they’ll teach you the maps before you try a 16-turn tank brawl. Save the campaign game for when you’ve found a big enough table.

Academy Out!

GET TO THE CHOPPA…!!!

These Articles Might Interest You

Slaughter At Ponyri Unboxing Operation Neptune Unboxing PROKHOROVKA! Pre-Order Bounding Fire Production’s Onslaught to Orsha 2 Unboxing Biazza Ridge Campaign Game Unboxing Beyond Valor Unboxing Hollow Legions Unboxing Steel Fury At Zámoly I Unboxing