by Gideon Marcus

With Muhammad Ali stripped of his title as heavyweight champion, owing to his refusal to enlist in America's armed forces to fight for nameless hills in Vietnam, the boxing world remains, for the moment, without a titular head.

Not so for the wargaming world.  A year and a half ago, Avalon Hill released its biggest, most complex title to date, and it still remains the monster amongst its hex-and-counter brethren.  Blitzkrieg is a truly impressive beast: three mapboards instead of the usual two, 100+ pieces per side (compare to chess' 16 or Afrika Korp's ~50), 16 pages of rules.

Yes, it's sure a big'n–but is it fun?  Read on!

Red vs. Blue–2

Nine years ago, Charles Roberts kicked off the board wargaming hobby in a big way with his Tactics 2 (there had been a Tactics (1) released a few years before, but its impact was slight).  Tactics 2, like chess, featured two more-or-less identical opponents with no geographical ties to any real world nations.  They fought with abstractions of regular forces, all army units.  So primitive was this game that it used squares instead of the now-standard hexes (still, paradoxically called "squares") that were a revolution in simulating movement.

Tactics 2 was not a fun game. It was a boring, endless slog.

Blitzkrieg is Tactics 2 done right.

You've still got the two generic countries, in this case "Great Blue vs. Big Red", but now the map is a lot more interesting.  In between the two titans are seven "minor countries" that can be occupied for more production potential.  There are beaches to land on, deserts to cross, mountain ranges to hole up in, oceans to sail.

And the other armed services aren't just abstractions anymore.  The Navy still is, with transport represented simply by the number of troops which can be at sea at any time (and fleets can't shoot each other as they pass by), but now there are Marines (well, Rangers) that can land anywhere as opposed to their GI cousins who must make assaults on beaches only.  And there is a profusion of Air Force units: three types of bombers, from the short-ranged assault type to the long-ranged strategic variety, not to mention escorting fighters.  There are also airborne units that can fly from airfields and land great distances away–critical to taking farflung strongpoints behind the lines.

Even the Army is heterogenous, with units representing infantry, armor, and artillery (though functionally, they all work the same–the only difference is their movement and combat factors).

Cities are essential to the game: a player can only support 12 combat factors of units for every city controlled.  A player who loses cities may find his or her units evaporating without a shot being fired.

The game is won one of two ways: either one side completely destroys all of the other side's units, or (more achievable), one side occupies all of the other side's cities for a turn.  A third option says the game can end by negotiated surrender, just like real life.  In practice, this is the most common outcome.  There comes a point when the end is inevitable, even if it be far off.

Easy to learn, hard to master

Taken individually, none of the rules in Blitzkrieg is particularly challenging.  At the base of it all is the standard move, fight sequence of all other Avalon Hill games.  The Combat Results Table (CRT) is novel–instead of the standard "Defender/Attacker Eliminated", "Defender/Attacker Retreats", "Exchange" results, both sides have the chance to lose strength points.  This means that after every fight, a player is usually "making change", exchanging full strength units for depleted ones.  This is more realistic as individual battles rarely destroy entire units.

There are stacking limits (no more than 15 combat strength to a square), terrain modifications (units doubled on defense in towns and mountains), zones of control (units going next to others must stop and fight), replacement units and reinforcement units–all standard stuff.

The new rules aren't too onerous.  Invasions work kind of like in D-Day where assaulting units line up on the beach and fight their way ashore.  If there's no one defending the beach, they get to zoom inland. 

In addition to the aforementioned parachuters, a player can also move 12 units of Army from one city to another–including ones just taken from the enemy that turn.  This can be huge.

The Air Force adds a completely new dimension…literally!  Tactical bombers add their strength to an attack while strategic bombers bomb completely separately, interdict supply, or reduce towns to rubble.  Medium bombers can do either!  Fighters engage bombers or each other.

There are even weather, nuke, and sea-based aircraft rules!

Again, none of these are particularly difficult to apprehend.  But in order to win the game, all must be employed, and skillfully.  Neglect the air capabilities of an opponent in favor of the human wave tactics that won you Stalingrad or Waterloo, and you'll soon find troops behind your lines eating your supply.  Neglect the threat of naval invasion, either to your shores, or as a thrust to throw the enemy off balance, and you lose a powerful component of strategy.

So, that's the game, but I haven't answered the original question, have I? 

In Practice

At the beginning of the year, we set up the behemoth that is Blitzkrieg for a try.  Nominally a two-player game, we decided to make it a four-player game by having two people per side.  This makes a match both competitive and collaborative, which I find more fun than a straight head to head.  Plus, Janice is smarter than me, so she ensures we don't make dumb mistakes.

Against us were two Travelers, Lorelei and Elijah.  Would youthful vigor defeat aged wisdom?

Because of Great Red's proximity to more minor countries, and also because of somewhat better planning, Janice and I were able to take four of the seven minor countries with fewer losses and more quickly than our opponents.  This was not decisive, but it didn't help the kids.

Now, with both sides directly facing each other, with troops at sea threatening each other's shores, the question was where the first blows would land.

We quickly identified the largest concentration of Red troops that could be "bottled up".  If they could be taken out of the fight, Red would lose much of its offensive capabilities.  Accordingly, we landed in force on the middle south, around Curry Bend.  A titanic battle began that would take several turns to resolve and suck up more and more forces from both sides.

But what's this?  Elijah and Lorelei had paid more attention to the rules than we did.  They parachuted across the desert into one of our vacant cities in the northeast and promptly flew in another 12 points of units, which went on to occupy even more of our hinterland!  Our rear was open to the wind, our supply threatened.

Well, two could play at that game.  We took two of their cities in the northwest and set up hedgehog defenses in the home country.  While it was scary to lose several cities, the fact was, we had plenty of formerly neutral nations to supply our units.  We were never in any danger of losing troops to supply restrictions.

Great Blue, on the other hand, could not withstand the loss of dozens of combat factors in the south.  With their main offensive strength crushed on Turn 5, it was clear that their days as a fighting force were ended.  And so we adjourned to watch Star Trek.

After Action Report

I took three things away from this session of Blitzkrieg.  The first is what every good general has learned: to crush the enemy, you must destroy their armies in the field.  Taking cities is all very nice, but so long as one side is losing more troops each turn than the other, and the number of troops lost exceeds the four replacement units per turn, an inexorable imbalance grows until defeat is inevitable.

Secondly, we determined that Big Red has an inherent advantage over Great Blue.  Having a contiguous nation with greater access to more minor countries is an incontrovertible advantage.  Not insurmountable for Blue, but worth noting.

Thirdly, yes, this game is a lot of fun.  Highly recommended.  Just know that it'll take longer than most games!  Each team's turn took about half an hour to plan followed by half an hour to play out.  Thus, our five turn game (plus setup and learning), took about 12 hours played over several sessions.

But it was worth it!

Join the Fun!

If all this talk of playing general stirs something your bones (and hey, it's a lot more fun and less harmful than actual fighting), you are warmly invited to join our Galactic Journey Wargaming Society.  We have been facilitating several play-by-mail games so that even players remote from each other can enjoy a contest: over the summer, we had a smashing good time killing each other in a friendly game of Diplomacy.

And you get a spiffy newsletter!  What are you waiting for?

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