When two people sit down over a table to play a historical board game, they're not looking for the same thing every time. Sometimes they want an in-depth study of an event; sometimes it's just the desire for competitive fun. Defiant Russia leans heavily toward the latter.

The topic is the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union. The map portrays the western Soviet Union from the Polish border to the area east of Moscow, and from the Arctic regions on the north to the Turkish border on the south. It's divided into hexagons, at a scale of 45 miles across each.

Players control the actual units that fought in this campaign. Axis units mostly represent army corps. These include German, Finnish, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish and Romanian units. German tank units provide the real striking power for the Axis, and these are the strongest units in the game.