Skirmish Campaigns: The Winter War

Next up in my collection of Skirmish Campaign books is Finland '39-'40 - The Winter War.  No prizes for guessing what conflict this covers!  Obviously having some Winter War figures I thought this book would be a good addition to my collection.

Finland '39-'40 - The Winter War is a 56 page, black and white, staple bound book in US letter format.  In addition to the introductory material it contains 10 scenarios forming four campaigns set during the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.

The book starts with a single page introduction, a two page explanation of the Skirmish Campaigns format, a table detailing how to translate the scenarios to various sets of rules, a strategic map, four pages explaining the campaigns, five pages of background history and a selected bibliography before moving into the actual scenarios.

All but one of the scenarios are all platoon size or less but one requires around a company of Soviets. The terrain is mostly snow, frozen marsh and quite a bit of woods; a couple require buildings and another couple trenches and two require three T26 tanks each.

I have played  two of the scenarios from the book so far (albeit with some minor adaptations to suit the figures I actually had available at the time):

• Lake Kokkojärvi (photos here)
• The Church Village (photos here)

They were both interesting and challenging scenarios and seemed to give a good flavour of the period - at least as far as I can tell from my reading.  All in all a good addition to my library and a good vehicle to get my Brigade Games and Bolt Action figures to the table.

If you are interested one of the scenarios Defiant Confrontation is available for download.