Destruction of Army Group Center

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), and initially made wide and deep territorial gains. By 1943 the offense had been stopped, and a Soviet counterattack left the Germans on the defensive, with an exposed salient in Byelorussia defended by Army Group Center. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets launched twin offensives that simultaneously attacked both flanks of the salient, attempting to encircle and destroy the German defenders.[1]

DAGC is a two-player game in which one player controls the Soviet forces attempting to encircle and destroy the German defenders, and the other player controls the Germans trying to bring the Soviet offensive to standstill.

In 1971–72, SPI published a series of five divisional World War II land combat games that used essentially the same game system: France '40 (1971), Kursk: Operation Zitadelle (1971), Turning Point: The Battle of Stalingrad (1972), The Moscow Campaign (1972), and Breakout & Pursuit (1972). Destruction of Army Group Center, designed by Jim Dunnigan, with graphic design by Redmond A. Simonsen, was the sixth game in this series. It was published as a pull-out game in Strategy & Tactics #36 in 1973, and was published as a boxed set later the same year.[4]

DAGC was not a top seller for SPI nor particularly popular. In a 1977 poll carried out by SPI to determine the most popular wargames on the market in North America, DAGC placed a dismal 159th out of 202 games.[5]

After the demise of SPI, Decision Games acquired the rights to the game. Ty Bomba revised the rules, and a second edition with cover art by Larry Hoffman was published in 2009 as a pullout game in World at War #6.[6]

Reviewers generally felt that the game was predictable, too unbalanced in favor of the Soviets, and therefore lacked excitement or drama.

In his 1977 book The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming, Nick Palmer called the game "something of a slogging match without much chance to change strategies after the initial deployment." He noted the "simple, smooth-running game system" but concluded it was "a good game for beginners, but experienced players tend to find it lacks variety."[5]

In Issue 11 of Moves, Martin Campion called the game "fairly simple for the Russians in the historical game in which the German is set up in his original salient and is required to obey Hitler's order to stand fast (for the first turn)." Campion didn't think the "what-if" scenarios designed to avoid this predictable outcome helped, saying "The result is varied." He believed this game did not compare well to the previous five SPI games in the Eastern Front series, and concluded that it "can be mildly recommended to historians and gamers although the situation simply lacks the drama inherent in its predecessors."[3]

In Moves #13, John Michael Young noted that DAGC was the sixth game in SPI's series about the Eastern Front, and criticized it for lack of originality, saying, "People are no longer satisfied with a given game system that simply changes the values on the counters. They expect some innovation [...] DAGC fails at this. It is, in effect, the oleomargarine of this game system. It is a played-out system on a seriously imbalanced situation with none of the developmental frills which could have saved it. It is a good example of the overly clear game that is too simple."[7]

In a review written four years after the publication of DAGC, Friedrich Helfferich commented that the game "never really caught on and has by now been dropped by SPI. Nevertheless, the game has redeeming qualities; it is cleaner than Moscow Campaign, its situation is not without challenge, and neither side is as hamstrung as in the latter game."[8]

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