Finnish Defense 1944 is a classic turn based strategy game which takes place on the WWII Eastern Front in the summer of 1944. From Joni Nuutinen: by a wargamer for the wargamers since 2011

Can you lead the Finnish forces brilliantly enough to stop the massive Red Army offensive that aimed to knock Finland out of the Second World War? The years 1942–1944 were quiet on the Finnish part of the Eastern Front: soldiers did wood whittling, few saw combat, and the wrong places of the front line were fortified, all this while the Red Army was taking lessons in modern warfare from the Wehrmacht. When the Soviet strike finally fell in the summer of 1944, it was a huge, well-practiced attack by a thoroughly trained army with unprecedented artillery barrages against Finns who had just extended their summer holiday leaves. The game ends when you either control all the victory points or have lost control of all the VPs (you held on as long as possible).

At the Karelian Isthmus front, the Red Army had on average 120 Red Army artillery pieces for every kilometer of frontline, with 220 artillery pieces per kilometer on the breakthrough sector at Valkeasaari. In addition to heavy coastal artillery of the Leningrad area and the guns of the capital ships of the Baltic Fleet, Stavka had also assigned heavy siege artillery (280 to 305 mm) in support of the massive Soviet offensive.

FEATURES:

+ Historical accuracy: Campaign mirrors the historical setup.

+ Thanks to in-built variation and the game’s smart AI technology, each game provides a unique war gaming experience.

+ Competitive: Measure your strategy game skills against others fighting for the Hall of Fame top spots.

+ Settings: Plentiful options to alter the look of the gaming experience: Change difficulty level, hexagon size, what resources are in play, Animation speed, choose icon set for units (NATO or REAL) and cities (Round, Shield, Square, block of houses), decide what is drawn on the map, and much more.

+ Decent enough AI: Instead of simply mindlessly attacking on direct line towards the target, the AI opponent balances between strategic goals and smaller tasks like encircling nearby units.

In order to be a victorious general, you must learn to coordinate your attacks in two ways. First, as adjacent units give support to an attacking unit, keep your units in groups in order to gain local superiority. Secondly, it is rarely the best idea to use brute force when it is possible to encircle the enemy and cut off its supply lines instead.