Hello All
Today I’m going to take a bit of a look at the Soviet command cards for Enemy at the Gates. I won’t be talking about all of them here, just the ones I find interesting. Also if you want to know what the Cossacks do you’ll have to wait for my post later in the week taking a deeper look at them (safe to say Cossacks are something that really excites me!)
As you’d expect the cards are a mix of new formations, unit upgrades, special rules and a few odds and ends. I’m going to split them into groups for this review.
Formation Build Cards
There are a total of eight cards that change your formation from a standard infantry list to one of the specialist formations. First off you have the Naval units which were renowned for their bravery and so get a better rally rating, to help with those nasty pin markers, there is also a Hero version of this card. 
Next up we have the other end of the spectrum, the militia, those troops aren’t as brave and so mean you have more points to play within your force. As always with a reduction like this, it works better at lower points levels than at higher ones. They also have a more limited selection of options than the normal Soviet infantry. 
Another formation card comes in the form of the NKVD Battalion. This is a great choice if you are worried about German Sniper teams killing your Kommissar teams as when the Kommissar is killed another team in the unit is becomes the Kommissar team.
Continuing the Kommissar theme, and while not a formation upgrade, we have Smersh and the more aggressive Kommissars. These boost the stats on the units while they are alive; if any motivation test results in the roll of a 1, the unit commander is killed. He can, of course, jump to a new team. 
Unit Build Cards
Now onto unit upgrades and to complete this trio of Kommissar themed cards we have the blocking detachment. This is an upgrade for an HMG unit that gets to shoot at friendly units that fail motivation tests; the more hits they cause the more likely the unit is to pass the motivation test.
A surprise card, as I don’t think this was an option before, are captured Panzers as a unit! Some reports say the Soviet captured around 500 German tanks (mostly Panzer IIIs) during the fighting around Stalingrad. While most of these were sent back to the factories and converted into SU-76i’s some were pressed into service against their former owners. This unit gives you a nice addition to your Soviets and if you are anything like Duncan from the blog, you love some captured tanks in your army.
The Sapper units that were an HQ unit before, but now can be taken as an additional support infantry unit.
The unit upgrade that was talked about at the Open Day for the KV-1’s next. Called ‘Unstoppable’ this forces Infantry and Unit teams to re-roll Last Stand tests! Seems like a fun and a nice addition if you are playing with KV-1s aggressively.
The last card I’m going to talk about today is Pavlov’s House. This is a building “reportedly” taken up a Storm Group led by a Sargent Pavlov. This upgrade will probably mostly see use in City fighting, and rightly so really, but with the ability to give all infantry teams in the building a 2+ save, it’ll force your opponent to have to dig the infantry out in combat.
So there you go, a preview of the Command Cards and as you’d expect there are a lot more in there. In total, the Soviets get 47 cards to play around with. Come back later in the week when we look at three more cards that make up the Cossack options and I make a pledge!
Until next time, thanks for reading.
Ben