Red Desert: Soviet-Japanese Battles in Mongolia, 1939

Red Desert: Soviet-Japanese Battles in Mongolia, 1939

2
Players
240
Minutes
12
Age

Location

Sign in to see where your copy sits: the shelf, drawn, and how the box sits on it.

My Copy & Notes

Sign in to see your copy here: the edition, when you added it, and what you paid.

My Notes

Notes are private to their writer. Sign in to keep yours here.

My Prints for Red Desert: Soviet-Japanese Battles in Mongolia, 1939

All 0 on LayerUp

Sign in to see the prints you marked Printed for this game, the insert in the box first.

Expansions & Promos

No expansions or promos on record for this game.

About the Game

In the late spring of 1939, Japanese and Soviet armies skirmished over an insignificant piece of ground along the Khalkin-Gol River, on the border between the Soviet client state of Mongolia and Japan's puppet empire of Manchuria. Both sides threw in more and more troops until by late August, each had committed entire armies. By the time a cease-fire took effect in mid-September, the Soviets had lost over 17,000 men and the Japanese a staggering 45,000, over half of those committed.

Red Desert portrays these battles at a scale of two kilometers per hex. Units are mostly battalions, with some companies and small regiments. Units are rated for attack, defense, movement, morale and armor strength; artillery units can provide offensive or defensive support.

Red Desert uses a variant of the Chaos game system used Winter Fury and Army of Lappland to portray these battles at a scale of two kilometers per hex.

Components:

840 1/2-inch playing pieces One map

(source: Avalanche Press website and user's description)

Filed Under

Categories
Mechanics
BGG data
refreshed Jul 19, 2026