The Kirov was commissioned on September 26, 1938. If you read the back of her stat card, that pretty much covers her action in the war. She bombarded the Finnish coast in 1940 and only shot off 35 rounds before being damaged by near misses. The Kirov and Maxim Gorky were transferred to the Gulf of Riga in June 14, 1941 shortly before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. Both the Kirov and Maxim Gorky were active in the last days of June covering Soviet defensive mining operations.
She led the Evacuation of Tallinn at the end of August 1941, before being blockaded in Leningrad where she could only provide gunfire support during the Siege of Leningrad. She bombarded Finnish positions again during the Vyborg Petrozavodsk Offensive in mid-1944, but played no further part in the war.
The Stat Card:
The Kirov is one of the cheaper Cruisers at the cost of 10 build points in the allies fleet. Her armament and hull match up fairly well with other cruisers of the same or near the same point costs. If torpedoes are important in your cruiser fleet then you would probably spend the extra 3-5 points to have a cruiser with more torpedo range. Her special ability of laying mines sets her apart from other cruisers currently in the Axis and Allies War at Sea sets. The mine laying ability has brought many discussions from how effective this ability is to a complete set of house rules pertaining to laying and sweeping mines during a game.
Tactics:
The mine laying ability in relation to the game ( as well as the destroyer Gromkiy in the Flank Speed set ) is her claim to any tactics that set her apart from other cruisers.
The SA is: Once per game, instead of making an attack in the Surface Attack phase, this unit can mine its sector. Place a marker on that sector. Whenever a ship enters the mined sector, roll a die. On a 1, the ship takes 1 point of hull damage. On a 2, the ship takes 2 points of hull damage. Torpedo defense works against this damage.
The main discussion is how effective it is. This mine laying special ability allows you to mine one sector only once per game. This single sector would not do much to hinder the Axis fleet. Also larger Axis ships that can afford to absorb the hit if the die roll is not in their favor would steam through the sector especially ones with the Torpedo Defense ability.
Another thing I do not like about this ability is that the Allied player must place a marker on the sector that was mined. If the Axis player knows which sector has been mined, it defeats the purpose of mining it.
The allied player may make some headway with this ability when using it in conjunction with the Gromkiy (laying mines in more sectors) or escorting your mine layers with units with the smoke screen ability to cover them in getting where the Allied player wants to be on the game map to lay the mine. Regardless of this the fact still remains that a marker must be placed to let the Axis player know where the mines have been laid. In relation to using the markers the only tactic that I can see is that the Allied player could create a lane that the Axis player would have to go through if the Axis player wanted to avoid the mine fields thus setting up an ambush. This tactic would take several turns to complete and this tactic should be easily figured out even for the most novice players of the game and would be targeted early in the game. If playing by the Axis and Allies War at Sea rules, this ability does not do much and the Kirov just like her history and her mine laying ability would not be a factor in a game. It is also interesting to note that only the Allied forces got a ship with this ability in the Flank Speed set. I figure we will see more of this ability in future sets along with sweepers and a full set of rules pertaining to mines. The current mine laying ability in my opinion is useless if a marker must be placed to let my enemy know where I put them.
With all that being said there is still hope. There are some house rules out there that pertain to mines. The only ones that make sense to me is the ones that create concealment of the mines to your opponent. In order to come full circle with the mine laying rules out there you must also be able to sweep the mines and players would have to modify ships in their current existing fleets to create this ability. It would have been much easier for players if when introducing mine laying that this game would have created ships for both sides, added sweepers and updated the rules a bit all at the same time. It will be interesting to see how (if any) this rule of mines and any future units in future sets develop.
