The latest edition of “Operations”, The Gamers’ in-house organ, contains a series of interesting comments from Dean Essig (and Ed Wimble, but Ed is having a bad enough time in this issue). Dean, who has one of the more sensitive fingers on the industry pulse, correctly points out that, today, wargaming is a highly niche-oriented market. There are so many games out there that, truly, gone are the days when gamers simply bought almost everything that came out … except for a few of you, of course, those few truly loved by everyone concerned.
Nowadays, gamers concentrate their attentions, both dice-wise and wallet-wise, on either a certain area of history (e.g., ASLers and/or GBoHers), or a certain level of gaming … which is where XTR comes in. Now I refer not to the usual magazine-style game, but to what appears to be a brand-new niche: the large map, simple rules, lots of counters special. And there can be no better example of this marketing theory than their release of Ted Raicer’s latest WWI epic, The Great War in Europe.
Ted, of course, is the Danny Parker of the Trench and Phosgene crowd; WWI is not only his grazing area, but woe betide any ranchers who allow their cows to wander into his grasslands. His is a virtual one-man crusade to resurrect interest in an area of history which, heretofore, has been treated, if not with disdain, certainly with studied disinterest by the gaming crowd. But, as GMT proved with GBoH, for every historical period there is a Niche to be mined. And with TGWiE, XTR may have struck a minor Mother Lode.
Now, Raicer/XTR are not the first to try to find a way to make one of the ugliest wars of all times halfway palatable. (We speak here, to be sure, on relative terms, as we find it difficult to find even one minor skirmish that doesn’t test the metaphysical gag reflex. However, on that old Relative Scale, WWI is right up there with the 30 Years Wars and the Taiping Rebellion for gross inhumanity combined with stone-level stupidity.) Jim Dunnigan tried numerous times, starting with 1914 - wargaming’s answer to Future Shock, especially to those of us raised on Tactics and Gettysburg - and ending with the recently re-released WWI, with a side trip to the insanity of the World War I Module, an exercise in existentialist pastiche that expanded the hubris envelope used for conning the consumer.
There have been others. Avalon Hill, actually coaxing a design out of Frank “One-Game-a-Decade” Davis, gave us Guns of August, another game which tended to prove the perception that almost all gamers had concerning WWI games: after the first turn, No One Moves. And that perception was the barrier facing Raicer; he had to come up with a design that allowed the players to do something more than just recreate history. To the delight of almost everybody, he has succeeded in doing just that. Even better, he has created a game which does what all companies want to do: be talked about.
Great War is a big game, with two maps, lots of counters, lots of chrome, and a pretty simple Move ‘em, Kill ‘em system that has just enough interesting quirks to raise it several notches above your basic Igo-Hugo contest.
Visually, while professionally crafted, Great War is nothing special, although it does have its moments of curiosity. Beth Queman’s map, which shows major improvement over her recent XTR efforts, is notable mostly for its clarity, as opposed to eye appeal. The colors are more reminiscent of Mark Simonitch’s work, but I do think better use could have been made of the non-playable spaces to give us more boxes and charts, plus a CRT or two, as opposed to the huge and mostly unnecessary Trench Status Track. This poor utilization of space and organization is the one sour note running through TGWiE.
What is more important about the maps is that the scale of the West Front is half that of the East Front, - the two do not meet - which means that units move twice as far, in terms of hexes, in France as they do in Austria, etc. While I can understand the need to do this in design terms, what it does is create a totally different “feel” in the west, as opposed to the east. Mathematically, the Western movement rates are about right. However, the pragmatical result is that units can move too far in the West in one gulp - and without enemy reaction - to feed my perceptions of this front. Granted, by the 3rd turn of the game, everything has bogged down to the usual endless line of troops. However, when breakthroughs occur, and they do occur frequently, the ability to exploit is somewhat unsettling. But we digress ….
The counters are, again, utilitarian. Lots of colors, easy to read (for the most part), eschewing icons for the recognizability and genericism of NATO symbology. Interestingly, the fonts for each country are different; with more than a dozen countries around, this is the sort of graphic cornucopia that is harmless in a somewhat humorous vein … harmless to all but the soon-to-be-departed (with little lamentation) Dave Wood - Fontman to his friends - who probably had multiple coronary occlusions when he saw the countermix.
The rules are in the usual magazine format, with some 20+ pages devoted to the actual game. While they’re easy to read, in terms of organization - the sheer task of finding stuff - they could be the worst ever done by XTR. This is a simple game in which the basic mechanics don’t show up until the 14th page, and half of the previous pages are devoted to chrome - granted, interesting chrome - that not only doesn’t come into play for at least two hours of gaming time, but is so devoid of organization that you spend far too much time asking questions like, “Say, can the Serbians move out of Serbia,” “Exactly when do I roll for “x”?” and “Was that the Strategic Phase or the Strategic Turn?” This is a game that could have been made far more enjoyable with a simple Country Chart, listing all the little idioscyncracies attached to each country. There is a seed for such a tree in §3.7 of the rules, but it is too little, too early. Instead, what you get is a new system: the Igo-Hugo-You Flip sequence, in which rifling through the rules becomes a way of life. It says a lot that, when confronted with this issue, Der Bomba insisted it was not a problem … even as the errata list grew like warts on a toad.
To some extent, Ty is right. The game is fully enjoyable - actually very enjoyable - even without the ability to get through one turn without at least one “Yes I Can! No You Can’t!!” argument. But while you are enjoying it, you must remember that Great War was designed for fun and amusement; it is not a definitive dissection of WWI. As such, it is Design for Effect at its most … uh, effective.
The Sequence of Play is Igo-Hugo with a neat disguise that uses a lot of make-up. Actually, there are two Sequences, as there are two types of turns: Strategic, where all the chrome comes in and which occur about every 3-4 turns, and the standard Operational Turn, where the “laying about” occurs. The Operational Turn includes a Strategic Phase which should not - like we did - be confused with the Strategic Turn, lest you wish to see all those frightened froggies jumping into the Med in the middle of Turn 2.
What is most interesting about the Sequence is that while Player “A” is going first on the Western front, Player “B” is doing same on the Eastern Front. Aside from utilizing playing time more efficiently, this simple mechanic forces the Initiative Player to focus on one front at a time. Other than that, it’s move and fight, then check for Supply.
Now, just because the system is simple, does not mean that it is not devoid of subtlety and nuance. Both of these are in sufficient supply to make this a most interesting and demanding game. For example, you may stack up to six units in a hex. However, there are two CRTs: one for 1-3 unit stacks, and one for 4-6 unit stacks, with all results being in steps lost. (Most units are one-steppers.) It appears that, unless you are really in for the certain kill, that 1-3 unit stacks is the best way to go, as the CRT results are better for the attacker. This is not a “written in stone” way to go, though, but it does seem the best tactic for most of the game. Then again, there has been much murmuring that the CRT, when used cagily, can help the attacker in ways not seen during the actual war. Developer Dirk Blennemann has stated that, if you have the nerve and can avoid the Allied level of Automatic Victory, a steady, attritional attack everywhere along the line by the Central Powers in France, using the 1-3 CRT, will destroy the Allied armies totally by the end of 1915 (the Falkenheim Plan, if you will). I like games where “A” says he has the perfect plan, and “B-Z” say “No Way!”
Of course, the main controversy surrounding Great War is the usual XTR eschewance of ZOCs, entirely. I didn’t find their non-existence a problem here, especially after Ted Raicer decided to change the whole supply mechanic with a piece of errata that forbade units from traveling out of range of their supply. It WAS a problem before that, with the CP Player using his cavalry to first surround the poor Brits and Belgies and then heigh off to seize every Western city from Ostend to Oshkosh before the Allies could even pack up their troubles in their old kit bags. I don’t quite remember the Bosch Cavalry doing that sort of thing, and, apparently after some reflection, neither did Ted.
The main feature of the combat system is that you tend to lose lots of units, most of which manage to come back sooner or later, unless you have a soft spot for such as the Montenegrans, etc. This constant ebb-and-flow of manpower does give the players that very-WWI feeling that, regardless of what they do now, they’ll be able to recover later because of their seemingly endless source of manpower. That this is not actually true comes home to roost after about 2+ years of warfare, unless you have had the foresight to see it coming. By that time, though, the focus of the game has shifted from the slog of combat to the draw of chit.
The heart of the game is neither its accessibility nor its combat system, though, but its niftily crafted chrome. Raicer has attempted to include as many non-generic occurrences into the scheme of things, not as “If this is Turn 17 it must be Gas Time” but as an actual gaming decision. He has come up with about three dozen Special Events, from the Salonika situation to Mustard Gas to Air Aces to Typhus, and placed them on chits, with lots of interesting Balkan sidelights to keep us amused. The chits are assigned to a group, depending on approximately when they would happen, and each group is placed in the Pool at specific intervals. In each Special Event Phase, players may draw one chit for each Resource Point they want to spend, and, with RPs being not abundantly plentiful, this is not a simple choice. Having drawn the chit, the player then gets to use it or act upon it. The beauty of this is that not only do the events happen randomly and within some player control, but that such a system is expandable (with more such event chits)! And what the Event Chits further do is throw some new interest into a military situation that, by late 1915, has pretty much died down. That all of this is presented in the rules before any actual rules are presented, as I discussed, supra, does not detract from the leg-up level of fun it brings to the game.
Some of us, of course, play these things not only for fun but to get some historical insight. TGWiE has not been designed to do more than provide an overall, superficial view as to the whys and wherefores. And even within that minimalist approach, it is a far better portrayal of the war in the East than in the West. I found the general playout of the Eastern Front to be a good, overall birds-eye view. I could not say the same for the West, where, prior to the Raicer Supply Errata Fix, the Germans were running all over Belgium and Northern France like ants at a picnic. Even afterwards, the unit Movement Allowances were still too large to reflect what I felt actually happened.
So, what ya gets here is pretty much what you expected, plus a bit more. There’s enough history so that we can actually tell this is WWI, and enough chrome to satisfy all but the most demanding. And there is a game that does what few others do, pulling you into its world, forcing you to play the situation, not the rules. Like all beauties, it has a mole or two, none of which detract from its overall aura. Ted Raicer’s Great War in Europe should be the trendsetter for several years to come.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Graphic Presentation: Good, not great.
Playability: Very good, somewhat limit by poor rules organization and lack of explanatory and accessible charts. Pretty good solitaire, too.
Replayability: Despite size and playing time (several sittings), this is something you’ll want to try again.
Creativity: Good in its chromatic applications to a fairly generic system.
Historicity: Not its strong point, but not something to lose sleep about.
Wristage: A lot, but nothing one doesn’t expect.
Comparisons: The best WWI game at this level, it does what all of the others fail to do: make it a game.
Overall: This could end up a flagship of the XTR line, it’s that good.
from XTR
Two 22” x 33” gamemaps; 1200 counters; 1 Chart/Table Sheet; Rules Book; Ziplocked. Supplement to Command #33. XTR, POB 4017, San Luis Obispo CA 93403. $30 without subscription.
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© Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg
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