Gary Grigsby's War in the East gets a major update

When Gary Grigsby's War in the East: The German Soviet War 1941-1945 was released back in 2010, it was one of the most epic and detailed wargames regarding the Eastern Front ever and five years later, it still is. Yesterday saw it strengthen that position with the release of a new patch, 1.08.07. The last officially released patch was 1.08.04, so this new patch has a lot rolled into it. In fact, the change log is so incredibly long, I can't even fathom being the poor guy who had to type it all up.

Here's a taste:

New features

1. Units with a withdrawal turn set can be now marked as disbanding instead of withdrawing using the editor and clicking on the “Withdrawal turn:” text. Such units return all their men and equipment to the pool before disappearing from the map, never become frozen for refit if under 75% TOE on the turn of disbandment, and are listed on the losses screen just like units disbanded manually.

2. Air groups with a withdrawal turn set can be now marked as disbanding instead of withdrawing using the editor and clicking on the “Withdraws:” text. Such air groups return all their aircraft to the pool before disappearing from the map.

3. The losses screen was adjusted, so that only really destroyed units are accounted in the right side statistics, and turn headers on the left show the number of destroyed units separately from the number of disbanded units.

4. Morale of non-HQ units and air groups will be now shown on the hex popup window (listed after the letter “M”).

5. Added the ability to assign air groups using recon aircraft from National Reserve to German army air bases.

6. Added the ability to assign construction support units to rail repair units (FBD or NKPS).

7. Movement point allowance of rail repair units (FBD or NKPS) will now depend on their RRV (rail repair value) and TOE percentage. Base allowance will be equal to RRV+1 (with a maximum of 16), multiplied by 10%+TOE% (with a maximum of 100%). To maintain full repair speed it is necessary to keep the rail repair unit at over 90% TOE, and have enough construction units attached to get RRV 15.

8. Only fresh air groups will be able to participate in bombing airbases, with the exception of first German turn during June 1941.

9. Airbases in all scenarios were converted to use new air support squads. They work as regular support squads, but are smaller (only 10 men), and can’t use HiWis. These squads will never replace regular support squads in other units. Previously, all air bases had 250 regular support squads in their TOE. After the update they consist of 220 air support squads and 30 regular support squads (AA weapons unchanged). German forward (army) air bases have their own TOE now, with just 130 air support squads, 20 regular support squads, no 88mm Flak and 4 each of the other AA weapons.

10. Added two more German army group redesignations (Army Group South Ukraine to Army Group South in 10/44 and Army Group North Ukraine to Army Group A in 10/44). Disabled the undocumented rule renaming Army Group B to Army Group South as soon as Rostov was Soviet controlled, since it was causing problems. Army Group B will be redesignated Army Group South in 4/43. Updated some AI rules that assigned armies to various army groups during the entire campaign, to take into account these changes.

That's only through #10 of a list that goes up to #120. And that's just one category! Seriously, you need to read the change log for yourself to see what a beast this thing is.

Gary Grigsby's War in the East is for PC and can be found at the Matrix Games site or Steam. The update itself can be downloaded here.