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[April 4, 1970] Twixt Scylla and Charybdis (S&T's The Flight of the Goeben)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

A little over half a century ago, the actions of two ships changed the entire course of human events.

Black-and-white photograph of a warship.
SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau bombarding Phillipeville on the French-Algerian coast (W. Malchin, 1915)

In 1912, two warships of the German Kriegsmarine were stationed in the Mediterranean.  The battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, in the event of war, were to raid French shipping between Africa and Europa.  When war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914, the vessels were in the Adriatic port of Pola.  Admiral Souchon, commander of the German duo, decided he didn't want to be bottled up, so he took his ships to the central Mediterranean and waited for orders.

They arrived: head east for the Aegean Sea and ultimately the Dardanelles, the strait on which Turkish Istanbul was situated.  There, Souchon was to offer the two modern vessels to the aging and inefficient Ottomans.  In return, the Sultan would bring Turkey into The Great War on the side of the Central Powers.

Thus ensued a grand chase, which the British lost.  The rest is history.

But what if Souchon had been given different orders?  What if the British had had different priorities?  Such are the What Ifs that compelling parallel universes are made of—and the subject of the newest game to arrive in the magazine Strategy & Tactics.

The Game

Promotional logo for the game The Flight of the Goeben.

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[February 4, 1970] To Rome, with love (SPI's wargame, Anzio Beachhead)

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[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

When you talk about destruction…

Two months ago, Jim Dunnigan started a revolution.  He took over the wargame fanzine, Strategy and Tactics, and not only worked to revitalize it, he started the novel practice of releasing a new wargame in it every issue!  Avalon Hill, the previous, undisputed king of the wargame publishers, comes out with one or two new games a year, whereas S&T plans to put out six to twelve (there are two in the current issue) of these magazine inserts in the same time—plus a whole line of regular releases.  In fact, a number of them are already out as limited series test prototypes, which some of my friends are playing.  Once they get through this round of testing, we should see some or all of them in a more finished form on our hobby store shelves.

Wow!

The copyright page and table of contents for the magazine Strategy & Tactics.  The table of contents reads: In This Issue... The Luftwaffe Land Army, by Victor Madeja; Bastogne, by James F. Dunnigan; Anzio Beachhead, by Dave Williams; Outgoing Mail; If Looks Could Kill, by Redmond Simonsen; Games, by Sid Sackson; Pass in Review, by Albert Nofi; Diplomacy, by Rod Walker; Wargamers Notebook, by Ed Mohrmann; Incoming Mail.

Last issue's wargame was Crete, which I was well pleased with.  The two games in this issue are Bastogne, which looks very cumbersome, and a cutey called Anzio Beachhead, which we've had a lot of fun with.  Let's take a look.

Reconnaissance

If the name strikes a chord, it's because we've already played a game with "Anzio" in the title—namely Anzio, which billed itself as "A Realistic Strategy Game of Forces in Italy… 1944"!

Which is funny because the game actually covers from the Salerno landings in September 1943.  Anzio is a strategic game that covers the entire Italian campaign in WW2, with invasions treated very abstractly.  The invasion of Anzio in January 1944 was planned as a flank of the Germany "Gustav Line", against which the Allies had stalled.  The hope was that the Allies could pierce through at a weak point and destabilize the German front.  Instead, the Allies were bottled up for four long months.  The front didn't move again until the Allies bashed headlong into the Gustav Line, and General Mark Clark took the Anzio forces to Rome, claiming the Italian capital concurrently with the invasion of Normandy.

(This was the wrong move, strategically—by going for glory instead of providing an anvil for the Allied hammer, against which the retreating Germans would be smashed, it meant that the Italian campaign remained an agonizing meatgrinder until the end of the war.)

A black and white map of Italy. Parts of Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Tunisia are also shown. Cities and regions relevant to the Italian Campaign of 1943-45 are marked.

But that's neither here nor there.  Anzio Beachhead depicts the landings and initial expansion at an operational level, covering the early part of the campaign.  In fact, it's by the same fellow who designed Anzio, Dave Williams.  Here's what Jim Dunnigan has to say about it:

"Anzio Beachhead was seen as another situation like the Bulge, where the attacker had a rapidly declining edge.  The original American commander was not bold, and lost.  So the idea with Anzio Beachhead was to explore the what if's.  At that time, I had been working on designing games for about eight years (since I first discovered the Avalon Hill games.) Before that, I was always interested in the details of history, and how they were connected.  Avalon Hill wargames were the first time I saw someone else thinking the same way, and doing it in a novel way. I was always building on that."

"I had been designing a similar game, called Italy, which incorporated the rest of the Italian theater, with a smaller scale map of the Anzio area (ie, two interrelated games, one strategic and the other operational).  But when Dave's game came in I thought it did a better job of the Anzio section.  We had come up with some of the same solutions, and his game was more compact and suitable for the magazine."

Vital Statistics

The title page of the Anzio Beachhead game. In the upper left corner it reads: Dave Williams designed Avalon Hill's latest effort, Anzio, and, you will soon discover, a great deal more.  The Anzio Beachhead game is but a part of the additional design effort that went into Anzio but never saw publication. In the center of the page is a black and white illustration of Anzio Beachhead.  A tank is on the left and a military ship labeled US 21 is docked to the right.  A small group of soldiers stands between them. The title of the game is written in white capitals across the bottom of the image.

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[October 4, 1969] New kid in town (Strategy and Tactic's wargame, Crete)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

For the last decade or so, the term "wargame" has been virtually synonymous with Avalon Hill.  That Maryland game company has come out with one or two new titles every year in this exciting genre (along with a handful of other, more general releases).  But now, there's a new player in town.

Strategy & Tactics was, up to last month, one of many wargame fanzines.  Most such 'zines are devoted to supporting Play-by-Mail games of Diplomacy, but S&T has been more catholic in its coverage, reviewing many games and providing articles of general interest to wargame-lovers.  The magazine even included the occasional wargame, mostly rules for miniatures wargames (a related but different beast from board wargames).


Volume 1, Issue 7 of S&T including rules for the miniatures wargame of modern soldiering, Patrol


Janice and me playing Patrol with toy soldiers

With the latest issue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (#18 total), there is a new editor at the helm: Jim Dunnigan.  Dunnigan's name may be familiar to you as the fellow who developed 1914 and Jutland for Avalon Hill… and also a self-published game on last year's takeover of Columbia University.  He has elected to apply his wargame-creation talents toward designing a brand new board wargame for S&T—Crete.


Cover of the latest issue of S&T


Table of contents of the latest issue of S&T

This fascinating game is a full-fledged simulation, incorporating a number of neat innovations.  It is also a Do-It-Yourself-er: the map and counters (and rules) are just printed in the magazine, which means you either need to cut them out and affix them to pasteboard, or make your own copies from scratch.  Since I have access to a Xerox machine, I was able to have the best of both worlds, photocopying the pieces and playboard, the former on colored construction paper, and the latter tinted with colored pencils.

Lorelei provided the box cover art!

So how does it play?  Read on!

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[July 4, 1969] When Joey goes over the top… (Avalon Hill's Anzio)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

It's kind of a funny thing.  There are two feelings about war these days.  On the one hand, you've got the war in Vietnam raging without end despite LBJ resigning and Nixon running ostensibly to end the thing.  Now National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger is pleading for patience from those who say peace is taking to long.  "Come back in a year," he says.  It's no surprise that, in addition to innumerable protests and chart-topping songs, we've even got a wargame devoted to dissent: Up Against the Wall Motherfucker.

But "war" also conjures up other, less controversial, memories.  The veterans of World War 2 are my age—affluent and nostalgic.  We recently celebrated the centennial of the Civil War, which while bloody, shaped these United States we know today.  It's no surprise that the bulk of commercial wargames have been set in these two eras…with WW2 the big favorite: Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, D-Day, Stalingrad, Guadalcanal, Battle of the Bulge, Afrika Korps, Midway.

Avalon Hill is currently the leading publisher of wargames, generally coming out with one or two new ones every year (along with a handful of "family" titles).  Their latest, just released in April, is Anzio, and it's something of a revolution.

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[May 12, 1969] The Students are Revolting (the wargame Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker)

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by Gideon Marcus

My crowd can't decide what to take this semester, but we've narrowed it down to the administration building and the library.

~Judy Carne on Laugh-In

Last Spring, students and Afro-Americans formed an uneasy alliance at Columbia University, taking over multiple buildings in pursuit of several disparate aims.  Black students and denizens of the neighborhoods surrounding the campus fought against the school annexing public spaces (specifically, the building of the new Columbia gymnasium in Morningside Park).  Other students rallied against Columbia's doing research for the defense department—essentially an inside raid against the Vietnam War.

After assembling to protest, radicals managed to seize five campus buildings, where they squatted for nearly a week before New York's finest, the boys in blue, dismantled the makeshift furniture barricades one by one and dragged the occupiers to the paddy wagons.

This did not end the struggle—thousands of students boycotted classes in May, and Columbia President Kirk resigned in June after giving in to pressure not to press charges against the protesters.  Hundreds of students due to graduate that month held their own, unofficial commencement on Low Plaza, in front of the Low Library—scene of clashes in the early stages of the occupation.

Last June, the Columbia Sentinel published a game delightfully titled, Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!, inspired by a phrase uttered more than once throughout the event, sometimes in official channels.  One of the game's authors is Jim Dunnigan, who wargamers will recognize as the fellow who wrote Jutland for the wargame company, Avalon Hill.  The other is "Jerry Avorn", a name that is unfamiliar to me.

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[June 20, 1968] Art imitates Life (the wargame Viet Nam)

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by Gideon Marcus

Over There

It seems like only yesterday that a minor naval engagement in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam embroiled the world's mightiest nation in a struggle against Communism in Southeast Asia. Less than a year later, the American commitment totaled 100,000 troops. Today, as the last aftershocks of the second Tet Offensive are beaten back from Saigon, more than half a million soldiers are fighting and dying in those far off jungles and cities.

It's a war unlike any other we've fought, though perhaps not unlike wars our allies have fought–there's a reason why the British, who fought an ultimately successful anti-guerrilla war in Malaya, have declined to join us in Vietnam.  It's not really a war for territory, nor a total war, as we fought against the Nazis or the Japanese.  It's a holding action, a war for "hearts and minds", holding the bag until the South Vietnamese can fight for themselves–if, indeed, that will ever be possible.

So new and unusual is this conflict that one would hardly expect it to be a viable subject for board wargaming.  After all, the pushers of counters on hex grids have largely stuck to World War 2 and the Civil War for their battlefields, highly researched and decently distant as they are.

And yet, just one year after Tonkin, Game Science came out with Viet Nam, a sophisticated wargame covering the war on a strategic level.  Could a game developed so early in the conflict have any chance of modeling reality?  And is it any fun?  This Memorial Day, we took the game for a spin and came to some very interesting conclusions.

In the trenches

The first thing one notices about Viet Nam is the board.  Rather than use the hex grid that has become de rigueur these last several years, it reverts to areas like in last decade's Diplomacy.  This makes sense.  Viet Nam is not a game of tactical maneuvers but of strategic province control.

The Allied forces (Americans, ARVN, Koreans, Filipinos, Australians) and the Communists (Viet Cong and NVA) start out splitting the provinces between them.  Control is indicated with a little bingo disc that represents a local militia.  Each side also gets a number of regular armies, the Allies starting with more, but acquiring them at half the rate of the Communists.  The regular armies are important because they are the only units that can both move and hold ground, the local militias adding strength but being both immobile and subject to flipping by the enemy.

The Allies also get air units that can be used for tactical support of armies (adding to their strength), strategic bombing of provinces (with a chance of destroying Communist units in the area), interdicting the Ho Chi Minh Trail (which kills Communist reinforcements) and mass bombing of North Vietnam (which earns victory points).  Bad weather in the summer and fall months limits strategic air missions.

Each turn, simulating one month, begins with both sides allocating ten factors towards various political activities: bolstering/destabilizing the government, terrorism/counter-terrorism, psychological warfare (to flip militias), seeking world favor (worth victory points), and ambush/counter-ambush (a trap for Allied armies).  This is essentially Rock-Paper-Scissors and the place where the Communists can win the game.  Unless the Allies guess right every time, they will lose stability or provinces, each of which leads them down the path of losing victory points.  Once below a certain level, they go down to nine or fewer factors to apply in this phase, which is a spiral of doom toward defeat.

After the political phase, both sides plot their moves in secret.  The Communists are trying to seize provinces and Allied bases.  The Allies are seizing provinces, defending, and allocating air power.  As the Communist players in our game quickly learned, randomness is key–there are always a dozen places they can attack, and the less consistent they are, the less chance the Allies will anticipate and head off an attack.

Combat is another kind of Rock-Paper-Scissors, each side having a set of four cards depicting various attack strategies.  In each conflict, the two players choose cards and then compare the two to determine the result.  For the Americans, the outcome is either inconclusive or a victory resulting in the loss of a regular army.  For the Communists, they are either forced to retreat or they win.  In other words, this is a part of the game the Communists will also ultimately win once they understand the cards, as the Allies cannot guess right every time, and they run out of armies faster than the Communists.  The more provinces under Communist control, the more mobility they get, again building momentum toward victory.

So is the game hopeless for the Allies?  Maybe not.  The game begins in January 1965, when weather is excellent.  Optimal strategy suggests that the Allies should interdict the NVA for those good months, allowing the Allies to build up an army superiority.  The Communists can only really run rampant if they have the regular troops for it.  If any air power be left over, the Allies should immediately start bombing North Vietnam as it is the only sure way to get victory points–it is the Allied counterpart to the Communists' political factor advantage.

Provided the Allies can contain the NVA and make lucky guesses to keep the Communists stalled, it is possible that, over time, the Communists will be forced below 10 political points per turn and, themselves, end up on the slide to defeat.  It'd be a long slog, but it is at least conceivable.

Proof in the pudding

I spotted Viet Nam not at my local game store, but in the campus store at the new campus of University of California San Diego.  Though the copyright on the game is 1965, various references in the rules and components suggest this is a brand new edition, updated based on three years of conflict.  Thus, I don't know how prescient the original was.

That said, the game seems to suggest that unless the United States goes bombing right out of the gate, as many generals urged us to do, there is no chance of victory.  Even a six month delay results in swarms of NVA and endless Red provinces.  Moreover, even had we gone in, bombs blazing (and what might the political ramifications vis. a vis. the Soviets been of that?), Viet Nam suggests that victory still would not have been certain, and it would have taken a long time.

It seems like an accurate simulation to me!

But is it fun?  Well, we enjoyed it at the time, all eight hours that we played before the Allies conceded the game to the Communists in latter 1965.  But on further analysis, there actually isn't that much to enjoy.  It's all a matter of luck, see-sawing back and forth on the victory point chart, until a lucky break drives the meter over to either a win or the inevitable road to defeat.

Thus, Viet Nam is less a game and more a puzzle–and a lesson.  Once the puzzle be solved and the lesson absorbed, there is not much replay value.

Just like the real war…




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[May 24, 1967] Heavyweight Champion (Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg)

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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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[November 6, 1965] Turns, Turns, Turns (Avalon Hill's Midway and Battle of the Bulge)

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by Gideon Marcus

For the Byrds

"To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn)" says the newest hit record by The Byrds.  It appears that America's premiere wargaming company, Avalon Hill, has taken this phrase to heart, releasing not one but two World War 2 themed games in the past year, one taking place in the sultry days just before summer, the other in the bleak frigidity of mid-December.

Midway and Battle of the Bulge both are significant departures from the games that preceded them (e.g. Afrika Korps, D-Day, Tactics II, Waterloo, Stalingrad, etc.) and both push the state of the art in armchair wargaming forward quite a bit.

Of course, as charter members of the Galactic Journey Wargaming Society, Janice, Lorelei, John, and I spent many hours giving these games a spin.  And you, luck readers, now get to see the fruits of our "labor"!

Midway

For seven months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese raged almost unopposed across the Pacific.  Their juggernaut rolled over Indonesia, the Phillipines, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Guinea, and the American outpost of Wake Island.  Yet their primary goal, the elimination of the American navy, eluded them.  The Japanese doctrine was centered around a decisive fleet battle victory that would force the Americans to the negotiation table.

On June 4, 1942, the Japanese got their chance.  Six Japanese carriers and an invasion force steamed for the American island of Midway.  Three U.S. carriers were dispatched to prevent the island's capture.  Thanks to some expert code-breaking and a little luck, the Battle of Midway ended in a Japanese defeat, marking the high-water mark of their expansion.

But could it have gone differently?

Battleship for grownups

If you've ever played the Milton Bradley game Battleship, you already have an idea how Midway works.  Sort of.  Midway is actually two games in one.  The first takes place on a strategic board depicting the ocean around Midway island.  The Japanese fleet enters from the west in several groups while the American navy is arrayed in the east.  Each turn, both sides call out sections of the board to search with their scout aircraft.  If enemy ships are spotted, carriers (and the airfield on Midway) can launch aircraft to attack them. 

Only a limited number of sections can be searched per turn, depending on the nationality and disposition of ships, so there's a lot of cat and mouse to this portion of the game.  Whoever gets the first strike has an advantage, though a straight slugfest will tend to favor the Japanese as they have more planes.

Hornet's nest

The second portion of the game involves the actual plane to ship combat.  The defending player arranges their ships to maximize antiaircraft screening while the attacker arrays a combination of torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and escorting fighters to most effectively sink vessels.  No attacks can be made risk free, though it is always better to lose one or two planes in an assault if the yield is the loss of an enemy carrier deck.

Points are scored for vessels lost and the speed at which the Japanese take Midway.  Indeed, the Japanese can win their battles pretty handily, but just a turn or two delay or the loss of a key ship can cause them to lose the game on points.

That's what happened when John and I played — as the admiral of the Kidou Butai, I left the American navy at the bottom of the sea and took Midway, but the delay in my timeline caused me to come shy of my victory conditions by just a few points.

Scorecard

I appreciated the novelty of Midway.  It was quite different from the other wargames I had played to date, although, to be fair, I have not played Bismark, which I understand also has a search and evade dynamic.

Nevertheless, there just wasn't enough to the game to merit a lot of replay.  As much as I like ships and am an ardent Nipponophile, Midway failed to grab me.  John felt similarly.

Three stars.

Battle of the Bulge

Where Midway was the faltering step of a military at the height of its power, the Battle of the Bulge was the twilight of a fallen giant.  In December 1944, the Allied forces had steamrollered their way across France and the Low Countries, pushing the Nazi Reich back to its traditional Rhine border.  While it was clear that the war wouldn't be won by Christmas, it also seemed that the Germans, hard pressed in both the east and west, could no longer take any role other than the defensive.

This conclusion was wrong.

On December 16, 1944, an onslaught of panzers and troops smashed against a thinly defended point in the Ardennes forest — the same area the Germans had attacked on their way to Paris in May 1940.  Aided by a cloak of overcast, the Wehrmacht lanced into Belgium with the aim of dividing the British and American armies, seizing the port of Antwerp, and forcing the West to sue for a separate peace.  Within a few days, German troops had laid siege to the stubborn redoubt of Bastogne, and Tigers and Panthers were probing the banks of the Meuse river, an important allied defensive line.  By then, Hitler's last gasp had formed the shape on the ground for which this episode of the war was named.

Of course, we know how things ended.  The rugged defenders of Bastogne answered "Nuts" to calls for their surrender.  Allied reinforcements blunted and then repelled the Nazi advance.  The skies cleared up after Christmas allowing the overwhelming British and American air superiority to savage the German lines.  By early January 1945, the battle of the bulge was over, and Germany's ability to wage offensive war decisively destroyed.

What if?

Avalon Hill's newest game recreates this exciting (if preordained) battle in close detail.  Turns last just twelve hours, and units are represented down to the regiment/brigade level.  As with the game, Waterloo, the Germans start out with numerical superiority and have to work their way from one side of the map to the other against increasingly reinforced Allied lines.  Indeed, both Waterloo and Battle of the Bulge fight over practically the same real estate.  Poor little Belgium.  Victory is won by the German player if a sufficient number of troops is pushed across the Meuse and supported for 48 hours.  Alternatively, that number can be smaller if the Wehrmacht takes and holds the key towns of Clervaux, St. Vith, and Spa.

While many of the mechanics of the game look familiar at first blush, Battle of the Bulge represents a great departure from its predecessors.  For one thing, it has a completely different Combat Results Table.  Virtually all of the Avalon Hill games since Tactics II had used the same chart to determine the effects of combat.  This time, instead of just offering "eliminate", "retreat", and "exchange" (equal destruction of both forces) options, there are now also the results of "engaged" (which locks up units until the battle be decisively resolved) and "contact" (neither side inflicts any damage).

Roads and the holding thereof are critical.  Off the roads, troops and vehicles are slowed to a crawl.  On the roads, advances can slice deep into enemy territory.  However, such advances can only be made nilly-willy in the Basic Game; in the Advanced Game, there are supply considerations, which largely only affect the Germans.  If a Wehrmacht unit cannot trace a logistical path along roads back to the east side of the map without it being blocked by allied units or their surrounding "zones of control", it immediately loses much of its mobility.  After six turns of being cut off, surrounded units of either side cease to exist.

Treads hit the Road

In the first game, I played the Germans against John using the Basic Rules.  It was a handy victory, my panzers rushing with gay abandon behind the Allied lines and reaching the Meuse well before Christmas.  But without supply restrictions, the game felt little like a simulation of any real-world situation.

As it turned out, my next opponents were Janice and Lorelei, hot on the heels of an excellent and hard-fought game of Waterloo.  They enjoyed working together as a team (which made sense in both games as they played coalitions rather than single nations) and I appreciated the added challenge that came from matching wits with a double-brained foe.

Given the apparent German advantage in Battle of the Bulge, they needed every neuron they could get.  The Wehrmacht simply overwhelms the first few turns, and so long as the dice are reasonable, advance is swift.  The German assembles a ridiculous number of panzers to assault one spot, while assembling the rest into suite of two to one attacks, making sure to surround their prey.  Since no attacker deaths can result from either of these types of fights, the Huns can sweep through their resistance while taking very few casualties.

In the game we played, I don't feel the Allies made any specific mistakes and yet I reached the Meuse at around the same time as I had in my game with John, and I only lost a single unit in the process.  Needless to say, we'll have to play again (likely switching sides) to see if the issue is the game or just beginner's bad luck.  The current plan is to play a game starting December 16, 1965 and play through in "real-time". 

I'll be glad to play the good guys.  Putting on Wehrmacht gray makes me very uncomfortable.

Scorecard

As for rating, pending further study, I'd give Battle of the Bulge four stars.  It's definitely got replay value, and it's the most dynamic Avalon Hill game I've played to date with the possible exception of Afrika Korps.

Previews of Coming Attractions

It looks like Avalon Hill has managed to squeeze out one more title this year.  An advertisement for Blitzkrieg came with my latest catalog; it looks like it will be some kind of generic, division-level strategic game. Looks fun and customizable — needless to say, I've ordered my copy!

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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[October 12, 1965] Gaming Across the Pond (Wargaming in Britain)

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The Journey lettercol continues to be active.  Last month, we received a piece so interesting that we felt it deserved an article slot on its own.  So let us present Mr. Geoff Kemp with his delightful survey of virtual conflicts in the UK…


Geoff Kemp

Two Roads Diverged…

Although primarily built on the foundations of two similar companies on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, board gaming has taken divergent paths over the course of the last 130 years. In America, Parker Brothers were formed in 1883 by George S. Parker. His gaming philosophy was to move away from the then current board games published to promote moral and social values, such as The Mansion of Happiness or which emphasized how hard work and manners would make you happy/wealthy, like Office Boy, to games that are fun to play. In contrast, in the United kingdom, John Waddington of Leeds founded a company which originally produced packs of cards and other paper products before moving over to initially card games and then board games primarily produced, like Parkers, for families to enjoy.

There was a great deal of crossover and communication between the two companies, with Parker Brothers producing ‘Monopoly’ in the USA before licensing Waddingtons to produce an English version: a London board rather than the original Atlantic City board used in the states. Later Cluedo was invented by Anthony E. Pratt of Birmingham, England and manufactured by Waddingtons before American rights were sold to Parker Brothers for production there. These were the two main players in producing board games for many years on both sides of the Atlantic, often licensing their games to each other. Thus gaming was seen as primarily seen as a family pastime and this continued with the arrival of companies such as Ariel Productions and H.P. Gibsons.

Things started to change for us in 1962, with the arrival firstly of 3M games (also known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) closely followed by The Avalon Hill Games Company (known as TAHGC) in the USA. They produced games which started to move away from ‘family’ games and towards board games geared for traditional wargaming as played on tabletops, featuring wooden/metal and occasional plastic models, as well as more financial based games or strategic games. From 3M came Twixt ('63), Stocks And Bonds ('64) and Acquire ('65) whilst Avalon Hill produced Stalingrad ('62), Afrika Korps ('64), Midway ('64), and Battle of the Bulge ('65). Combined with games such as Diplomacy (Games Research – 1954) and Risk, which was published by both Waddingtons and Parker brothers, there has been a suite of games diverging from the family games genre. Possibly the biggest recent innovation, however, was Avalon Hill’s. They began producing a magazine devoted to their games, in the form of ‘The General’ which saw the first edition dated 1st May 1964 with articles on game tactics, history and industry (almost exclusively AH related).

This is where gamers on this side of the pond have turned a shade of green in envy as even the magazine (much less the games it describes) can take weeks to get to us here, although at least we now have more of an idea of what is happening in the States. Besides home grown products such as the games from Waddingtons, Gibsons, Ariel, and a few others, it is not easy to get hold of a lot of American games; even the exceptions such as Acquire or Diplomacy are only found in some of the bigger department stores, unfortunately.

Another area where boardgames have diverged is in the area of sports related games, although this is more likely down to the popularity of different sports in each country. Again you have various Avalon Hill games such as Football Strategy ('60), Baseball Strategy ('62), and Le Mans ('61) whilst in the UK we have Subbuteo Football ('47), Subbuteo Cricket ('49), Wembley ('52), Stirling Moss Rally ('65) and Formula One ('65).  Baseball being primarily an American sport and Cricket a British sport explains why each has gotten a game in their respective countries.

Possibly the biggest confusion is over ‘Football’ simulations as the game has different names on each side on the Atlantic. I believe in America, the Football Strategy game by Avalon Hill relates to what is known in the UK as ‘American Football’, whilst Subbuteo Football and Wembley are games reproducing Association Football which I understand to be known as ‘Soccer’ in the USA. Is this correct?

But racing is universal in appeal. Formula One is an excellent British game, easily the best British attempt to date to reproduce the excitement of Motor Racing. Unfortunately, although I have heard good reports of Le Mans, I have yet to see a copy so cannot really comment there. Stirling Moss Rally is based on Rallying (stage as opposed to circuit racing), which has been popular in Europe since 1895 and has many famous Races. The most well known is probably the Monte Carlo Rally which was first raced in 1911.

I have said that it is not easy for us here to be able to get hold of American Games, but is it the same for you in getting hold of some British games. I realise that in some cases certain games are available in both countries, such as Monopoly (published by both Waddingtons & Parkers) or Cluedo (Waddingtons), also I believe known as Clue (Parkers), but am unsure how many other games that applies to.

So what are you playing at the moment? Here I am enjoying a mixture of British and (when I can get them) American games. Current Favourites are in no particular order, Acquire (3M), Midway (Avalon Hill), Dog Fight and Square Mile (Milton Bradley), Astron, Risk, Railroader, Formula One and Mine A Million (Waddingtons), Wildlife (Spears), Wembley (Ariel) and Subbuteo Football. 

They say that war arises between two parties over scarcity of resources. It is clear, however, that there need be no resumption of hostilities between Britain and the United States in the near future thanks to the abundance of games produced and shared by our two nations.

Now, if only my copy of The General would arrive in the post!




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[November 3, 1964] State of the Art of War(games)

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by Gideon Marcus

Where we stand

Just over a decade ago, there were no board wargames.  Back then, if you wanted to simulate the field of battle on a scale smaller than 1:1, your only real option was to buy or cast an army of tin soldiers and fight per the few various rules sets that had been developed. 

And people did just that, mind you, whether they were playing Fletcher Pratt's naval wargames or H.G. Wells' Little Wars.

In 1954, Charles S. Roberts started a modest revolution with his game, Tactics.  Now, armies could be represented with cardboard chits instead of expensive figures.  And for nearly ten years, Roberts stood as virtual king of an entire class of games.  With the exception of Games Research's Diplomacy, Roberts' company, Avalon Hill, produced every board wargame ever made.  By 1961, his company war producing two a year (as well as several general audience games).

But in December 1963, straitened circumstances caused Roberts to sell the company over to Eric Dott, head of Monarch Services, Avalon Hill's creditor.  Roberts' friend and colleague, Tom Shaw, is now at the helm.

This turnover does not seem to have affected the wargame company from Baltimore.  Two games have been launched this year, both World War 2 titles: Afrika Korps, a simulation of Rommel's drive in North Africa, and Midway, depicting the savage naval battle between Japan and the United States near the Pacific island base. 

Of course, I was bit by the gaming bug right at the start, and I've done my best to keep on top of all the new games.  With the exception of the poorly rated Chancellorsville and the obtuse Gettysburg, I think I've played them all.  And that means I get to share my experiences with you on the current state of the art of wargaming.  Read on…and perhaps you'll get bit by the bug!

Breakout

In 1958, Roberts developed a sequel to Tactics imaginatively called Tactics II.  This game didn't simulate an historical battle.  Instead, "Red" faced "Blue" in a match that was geographically dissimilar, but with identical armies.  It was with this game that Roberts popularized a number of elements common to wargames today.

First, the idea that (as opposed to chess or checkers) that you can move all of your pieces during your turn.  This was a revolution, and it took time for new players to wrap their heads around it!

The second was the "Combat Results Table" (CRT).  Tactics II set the mold for wargames, incorporating a movement phase followed by a combat phase.  All units that ended their turn next to an enemy had to fight them, the results of said battle determined by the roll of a die and consultation with the CRT.  At odds of 1 to 1, or even 2 to 1, it was a brutal chart — more dangerous to the attacker than the defender. 

But at 3 to 1, the attacker was assured of success.  The enemy would have to retreat or would be outright eliminated, sometimes taking an equal number of attackers with them.  The odds of defender elimination rose as the odds increased in favor of the attacker. 

It was a simple concept, and yet, so profound was its impact in its elegance, that the think tank, Rand, approached Roberts.  It seemed that his CRT was strikingly similar to ones they were using in their own games!  A sheepish Roberts explained that he'd made his in about 15 minutes, developed from the textbook maxim that odds of 3 to 1 were considered the minimum necessary to guarantee victory.

That's the history — how's the game?  Well, Janice and I took a stab at it, but quite frankly, it didn't appeal.  The lack of historical underpinning, and the complete parity of the forces gave us a sense of "why bother".  Perhaps if we'd played the advanced game, which has more bells and whistles.

Also, we had been spoiled by the more advanced games that Roberts developed in the '60s.  Once you see the improvements made, you'll understand what we mean.

So, two stars for Tactics II, but coupled with admiration for the revolution it was.

The Great Invasion

There is no question that the most "popular" war of the last several centuries is World War 2.  This makes sense — all of us served, or had family who served.  It was global and thus rich in settings and scenarios.  It was a "good" war with clear good guys and bad guys.

It's no surprise, then, that four of the last five wargames put out by Avalon Hill (and at least the next two, per early reports) all have WW2 as their setting.

The first in this series, D-Day, covers the most dramatic American land engagement of the war: the assault on and liberation of Nazi-occupied France.

As with Tactics II, a lot of firsts were introduced in this game.  Unlike its historical predecessors, Gettysburg,Chancellorsville, D-Day didn't simulate a battle but a whole theater of war.  Moreover, instead of having a fixed setup, with units occupying (more or less) the places they held on the eve of the depicted battle, D-Day is the first alternate history wargame.

For the Allied player may choose one of seven invasion beaches, Normandy among them.  And the Germans largely have free reign on how to set up their forces in anticipation.  This means that every game has the potential to be completely different from the last.

Another big distinguishing element from Tactics II, though it was pioneered in Chancellorsville, are the hexagonal "squares" on the mapboard.  This was an innovation Roberts definitely borrowed from Rand's wargames; these innovative hexes allow equidistant movement in six directions, as opposed to squares, on which diagonal movement is greater than movement through the sides.

Needless to say, my friend John and I were eager to try out this behemoth of a game.  After a false start — it's really easy to lose as the Germans if your setup is suboptimal — we settled down for a twenty hour slog across France.  The first time out, I'd done a simple storm across the Channel into Picardy.  This time, I was experimenting with the southern option, going in from the Mediterranean.  That meant I'd flanked most of the German defenses.  I got lucky and managed to spill out into central France before John could solidify his defense, and so, halfway through the game, I had all of my invasion forces ashore, arrayed against a precarious line of his troops.

What ensued was a methodical, tedious grind as I slowly pushed him back, hex by hex.  Attempts at clever breakthroughs involving paratroop operations in Holland resulted in failure.  Time and time again, 50/50 die rolls went against me.  Finally, at the banks of the Rhine, I made a couple of desperate die tosses…and lost.

We were highly impressed with the game at that point.  It had afforded us several sessions of entertainment and had come down to a virtual draw.  But there was a nagging feeling tugging at the back of our brains.  While the opening rounds of the game were exciting and varied, we had a suspicion that it always came down to the mid-game slog…and dozens of hours of grinding to a conclusion.

To explore our concerns, we teamed up, working on the optimum German defense.  We found that, no matter what, the Allies can always crack through somewhere, and at that point, it's just a matter of time before the Allied behemoth is on the continent, working its way toward the Reich. 

Conclusion: D-Day is a great game to play once or twice, but it pales after that.

Four stars for the first games.  Two beyond.

Duel in the Desert

The next two games that Avalon Hill released after D-Day were Waterloo and Stalingrad, games I have reviewed in prior articles.  The first was a set piece battle a la Chancellorsville; the second an operation monster similar to D-Day.

The latest release, Afrika Korps, lies somewhere inbetween the two in scope.  A simulation of the battle for North Africa, 1941-42, it pits a powerful, mobile German force against a ragtag but ever increasing band of Allied defenders.  As with prior releases, there are a couple of interesting innovations. 

For one, logistics is not abstract, as in D-Day, or not a concern at all, as in Waterloo.  Instead, supply trucks are physical units you drive around, and they are expended in an attack — which can leave your aggressors high and dry even after a successful assault!

Also, because of the scale and nature of the desert terrain, moving units along a road doesn't just confer a +1 movement bonus; you get a whopping +10!  Also, the Germans have an immortal Rommel unit who confers an additional +2 movement bonus to accompanying troops.  That means that there are German units that can move a ridiculous 24 hexes in a single turn.

That kind of mobility and the lack of defensive terrain (no river lines, for instance) makes for a much more fluid game.  Units dart around, forward and back, trying to encircle the enemy and cut them off from supply while at the same time, trying to prevent being encircled themselves.  Rather than a slow slogfest, like D-Day, Stalingrad, or even Waterloo to a degree, Afrika Korps affords and rewards daring play. 

Unfortunately, a lot of the game is luck based.  In order to keep the Germans from stomping the Allies, and to model the interdiction of Axis transport by the British navy, there is a chance every turn that the fascists' supply trucks don't show up.  Enough turns like that, and the Germans become unable to do much before the defenders build up their forces. 

Morever, the Axis must take both El Alamein and Tobruch to win, and assaulting Tobruch is always a risky proposition.  Afrika Korps, like its predecessors, uses the exact same CRT as Tactics II.  There's a one in three chance a powerful unit gets destroyed in a 3 to 1 attack, the best the Germans will be able to muster.  And if the Germans lose one of their two big tank units, that's a huge blow.  That's not counting all the supply die rolls, which are often 50/50.

What this boils down to is that there's an awful lot of luck that goes into each game.  That may be realistic, but it's also frustrating.  Janice and I had (and are having) a lot of fun playing Afrika Korps, but these issues make it hard to give it more than three stars.

Come out and play!

Financial difficulties aside, Avalon Hill knows it's got a growing audience.  To that end, the company has launched a bimonthly newsletter, The General, in which new games are announced, players discuss strategy, and lonely players find each other for local contests.  It's a brilliant idea, and while the articles range from mildly interesting to somewhat sophomoric, there's no question it helps knit the community together. 

Heck, it's even inspired us to build our own network of players.  Because whatever the issues with the individual games, wargaming is an exciting new hobby.  It stretches the mind, enhances understanding of history, and is a lot of fun.

Perhaps you fancy yourself a future Napoleon, Wavell, or Xenobia — come join us!  We'd love to swap war stories…

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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