Demyansk Pocket

Joni Nuutinen

About this game

Demyansk Pocket 1942 is a turn based strategy game set on the WWII Eastern Front. Your mission is to re-open and hold the route to the German units the Red Army has managed to encircle near Demyansk. From Joni Nuutinen: by a wargamer for the wargamers since 2011. Patched January 2026.


Historical background: During the Soviet counter-attacks of the winter of 1941–1942, the Soviet Red Army managed to encircle 100,000 German soldiers holding the front line in Demyansk, located half-way between Moscow and Leningrad. After receiving reinforcements, the Wehrmacht unleashed an offensive from the city of Staraya Russa. The purpose was not to evacuate the encircled units, but to reopen a land connection to the out-of-supply forces in Demyansk pocket in the hope of continuing to control the area as a preparation for future campaigns. Meanwhile, the encircled units, with inadequacy supplied by the Luftwaffe, engaged in a cutthroat battle. One of the encircled German units was the 3rd WSS Division, which earned its elite status in the fierce battles leading the defense of the pocket.


However, in hind-sight, the German stubborn victory in Demyansk pocket in 1942 paved the way for a gigantic German miscalculation a year later, when 300,000 German soldiers were encircled in Stalingrad, and based on the semi-successful experiences learned from the Demyansk fiasco, the German commanders were ordered to wait for help instead of instantly breaking out.


Game play: You take command of both the encircled units with limited mobility and the fresh units that are painfully slowly arriving for the counterattack attempt to re-establish a land route from Staraya Russa to Demyansk. To have a chance to seize the top spot in the Hall of Fame, you need to launch the counter attack when you are storng enough to succeed, but not so late that the encirclement collapses. However, just opening the route is not enough, but you also must maintain the newly opened route for 9 consecutive turns. All this while defending the narrow route to the cut-off Demyansk area with poorly supplied and limited Wehrmacht and auxiliary units.


One way to describe this scenario is that it was German equivalent to the operation Market Garden: A way too much was attempted to achieve, and as a result a lot of units were in and out of supply for a marginal future benefit.


NOTICE: two major differences in this particular scenario:

1) Victory Condition: The game is over after you re-establish a connection between the cities of Staraya Russa (upper-left corner of the map) and Demyansk (located at the center of the pocket) - and continuously maintain that connection for 9 consecutive turns. If the Red Army manages to cut off the connection after its movement phase, the counter resets.

2) The two airfields in the encirclement EXCEPTIONALLY ONLY provide extra MPs to nearby own units. As a a result, once you lost the airfields, the mobility of the units inside the encirclement is even further reduced.


Privacy Policy (full text on website and app menu): No account creation, the made-up username used in the Hall of Fame listings is not tied to any account and does not have password. Location, personal, or device identifier data is not accessed or used in any way. In the case of a rare crash the following non-personal data is sent (vie web-form using ACRA library) to allow quick fix: Stack trace (code which failed), Name of the App, Version number of the App, and Version number of the Android OS. The app only requests the couple of permissions it absolutely needs to function.


"The Demyansk Pocket was a remarkable achievement of German soldiery. Despite being surrounded for months, they were able to hold out and ultimately break out of the encirclement."
-- General Hans Speidel, Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army

Ratings and reviews

Great campaign, like all Joni's series. A quicker play. Quite different than most of the others in the series, in that this is a rescue mission rather than trying ro push a front. Your surrounded forces have access to a couple of airfields. Each provide +2 MPs for a unit of your choosing, they can both go to the same unit, a potential +4 MPs! As the Soviets tighten the noose around Demyansk you'll need those extra MPs to plug holes in your lines.

New update ruined the game. Unmanageable. The pocket is attack by such overwhelming numbers it is reduced in less than 14 turns . If this was the history, there would have never been this game to begin with, please fix a once great challenge.

Original was great. Didn't love the new update and how it changed the map and the balance of forces.

What’s new

+ Setting: Instead of tapping the same hexagon to browse through all units there, a unit list can be presented to select the unit from
+ Option: Allow HPs and/or MPs affect the size of the unit-icon (as units lose HPs make the icon smaller for example)
+ New frozen-forest background pattern number 23 available