A debate has been going on for the past ten years or so among modern military historians about just how well the American soldier performed during World War II. The commonly held belief, fostered by writers like Russell Weigley and SLA Marshall, has been that the American GI was not very proficient in his line of work, relying on massive air, artillery, and armored support to make up for a lack of tactical acumen; that he bludgeoned, rather than fought, his way to victory; the overall, rather Victorian British-sounding feeling being that this was somehow a clumsy, unmanly way to fight a war.
Now several, more recent authors, like John Keegan and Keith Bonn, have re-examined the question and come up with a different answer, saying that that old argument is quite wrong, that it's based on a reflection of American performance in Vietnam, when massive firepower was too often the only tactic, and some rather self-serving German after-battle analyses: "Of course we had better troops than they did-- the Americans only beat us because they had so many damned tanks and planes." Objective studies of the major battles, as well as situations where the Americans didn't have prolific air and artillery support, such as the Ardennes and the Low Vosges campaigns, show that the GI's fought pretty well, beating everything the Germans could throw at them.
Into this argument wades Moments In History with Piercing the Reich, their follow-up to Triumphant Fox, about the American campaign to break through the Siegfried Line and capture the German city of Aachen in the Fall of 1944. Designer Dirk Blennemann, with a lot of research on the subject, still holds with the original view of the GI in combat, and has included a set of optional rules to reflect what he sees as the German soldier's superior tactical proficiency. That he made them optional is significant; he probably realized that an American audience might find them unpalatable as being too biased towards the Germans. Certainly they do give players an opportunity to test their own perceptions about the value of the American vs. the German combat soldier.
Veterans of TF should be warned: Dirk Blennemann (who lives in Aachen!), while leaving the basic system intact, has made some very interesting modifications. Judging by the plentiful notes and historical support material, Mr. Blennemann did his homework on this one, introducing some new wrinkles to further remove players from the "all-knowing, all-seeing" Olympian heights that they are accustomed to in other games.
Unfortunately for PR, first impressions are usually lasting impressions … and the game’s initial impression is close to diastrous. The box cover is a dreadful lime-green with a couple of black & white photos … as close to “god-awful” as one can get. Until one gets a look at the map. The map is in one of Beth Queman’s less-than-inspired moments. It's entirely computer generated, with clunky geometric blocks of terrain imprinted onto a tan background with gray hexes. If Ms.Queman is going to rescue what appears to be a flagging career, she best start producing the level of work of which she is quite capable. (Cf. A Famous Victory.)The counters are nice though, a return from the pastel excesses of Triumphant Fox to the more familiar khaki and feldgrau scheme, and they do show nicely on the drab map.
"What do I care what it looks like ? I wanna play the thing, not frame it." True enough. With some modifications, this is the same system that debuted last year in Triumphant Fox. This is a battalion-level game, with some companies; hexes are 1 km, with weekly turns. Aside from the usual movement-combat-tank/anti-tank points, units are rated for effectiveness, simulating morale and combat acumen. The sequence of play is similar to Richard Berg's TCT ,with both sides rolling for initiative, the winner able to activate a formation (usually a division with some independent attachments) while the loser gains cumulative additions to his next roll, so that initiative tends to swing back and forth rather quickly. But rest assured, your opponent will always get three or four consecutive activations at the worst possible moment. When activated, a formation gains a supply of Action Points with which its units may perform various operations: movement, combat initiation, HQ relocation, entrenchment, etc., the number of points determined by a die roll. This is a nice change from TF, where divisions received a set number of points each time they activated. Here it's much more random-- you can have a fresh division with only three action points, or a formation worn-out by six activations rejuvenate with the maximum seven.
Formations are rated for the number of times they may activate in a turn. The American divisions, absolutely brimming with supplies, peak at seven, while the Germans are a mixed bag, from the 7’s of the panzer divisions down to the 4’s of the volksgrenadiers. What makes activating difficult, however, is that formations only recover a limited number of activations at the beginning of a turn, the German recovery level dependent upon the effectiveness of American air interdiction. So pushing a division to its limit may knock it out for the next couple of turns as it tries to recover.
Not that your opponent is sitting idly by while you zoom around the map. An active formation that moves adjacent to an enemy unit gives that unit's formation HQ a chance of a Reaction Activation, giving the enemy formation a limited number of action points with which to dig in a beleaguered outpost, move in reinforcements, or even, horror of horrors, counterattack. Reaction activations do count against a formation's total for the turn, so a good tactic is to try to feint an opposing division into burning up all of its activations through reactions.
I like this system a lot. It's an original way of portraying the fluid, attack/counter-attack nature of World War II mobile combat. The new random method of determining action points means that you're never certain of how much (or how little) your division will be able to get done. My one complaint is that the activation tracks are in plain sight on the map, where you can see just how many activations that pesky panzer division has left.
Combat is a fairly involved business. After moving a stack adjacent to an enemy, spending one action point initiates a hasty attack. Adding one or two more points upgrades it to a regular or prepared attack, allowing you to commit air support, combat support (other adjacent units), and the headquarters' attack support bonus, representing such divisional assets as artillery and engineers. Both sides then draw a combat multiplier marker, which gives a range of multipliers - from x1 to x3 - based on effectiveness, type of attack (hasty, regular, or prepared) or defense (disrupted, normal, and entrenched). This is another change from TF, and it is an excellent method of simulating the often dramatic swings of a division's combat value over a two month period. A stack of high-effectiveness units in a prepared attack will usually get the ‘x3'… but not always, so that every now and then you actually do find one determined company giving a regiment-sized assault a bloody nose.
CRT results are taken as losses, retreats, and disruption checks, where you roll a die against the unit's effectiveness rating. Bad news if you fail, as disrupted units lose ZOC, can't move, make reaction die rolls, or entrench until they recover. Recovery itself requires an action point, and some units, particularly the American armored battalions with their low effectivenesses, tend to disrupt with annoying regularity and require a long time to recover. I didn't care for the way disruption was handled in Fox, and I still don't. It just seems like far too drastic of a result. The victor in combat does receive a bonus action point that can be used to finish off a disrupted enemy or exploit a breakthrough.
As you can see, combat is quite involved, the entire process requiring several steps, consultation of a host of charts, a chit pull, and at least two die rolls. KRIM-sters will hate it. For the rest of us, plan to spend a while fumbling through the rule book until you get the hang of it. I rather like the combat system. It covers most of the elements of WWII fighting without some of the arcane burdens found in the Gamers' OCS series, while the addition of strength multipliers makes it a much chancier affair.
It's not until the optional rules that Piercing The Reich wanders onto shaky ground. The Germans have two hole cards back there: Infiltration Attacks, which give the lowly German infantry a chance to launch small counterattacks; and Tiger Tank Scare, wherein German tank units gain column shifts because of the American fear of Tiger tanks and their tendency to identify any German armor as Tigers. Both of these rules come in on the traditional side of the American troop quality question, and they're both pretty shaky. Historically, the German infantry divisions were really down to the dregs by October ‘44, many of them Volksgrenadier units totally lacking in the sort of training needed for infiltration tactics, while the psychological effects of the "invincible" German tank have always been overblown, again promoted by self-serving, after-action German reports. But, these rules are optional, and nothing says you have to use them if you don't like them, right?
Not that I can't see the reason for having them, since without some help the Germans are in pretty sad shape. The initial set up gives them two weak infantry divisions holding the Westwall with two panzer divisions, the badly under strength 116th and the strong 9th, in reserve to stand up against two excellent American divisions, the 1st Infantry and 3rd Armored, with the usual. dumbkoff Hitler strategy rule requiring them to withdraw their best units, the two panzers, on turn 4. We disdained the optional rules, and, sure enough, the Americans got the first four activations on turn 1, sending the 3rd Armored smashing through the Westwall defenses straight to the gates of Aachen, threatening the cut off the German infantry still holding the pillboxes.
Ideally, the Germans would like to pull off a nice phased withdrawal back to the city, but with encirclement a real threat it turned into a stampede. On turn 2 the 9th Panzer kicked into gear, isolating the 3rd Armored's spearhead, only to be hit hard in return, and without that tank scare rule the panzers were rudely handled, taking some big hits in the process.
The Americans, by contrast, replace casualties at a fearful rate, not uncommonly making up an entire turn's losses with no ill effects. (Some sort of rule reflecting the big drop off in quality the Americans commonly suffered in their replacements would probably have been useful.) A nice rule renders the victory conditions secret: the Americans decide by drawing victory chits requiring them to either capture Aachen, cross the Roer, or pocket German troops, so the Germans are never quite sure what their objective is. By turn 4 the GI's had captured Aachen and were waving farewell to the withdrawing panzers, while the battered Germany foot sloggers tried to patch some kind of defense together above the city. Then the American reinforcements started to show up: two more, strong infantry, and another armored division. With Aachen as their victory condition, they could already see the sun setting over the Reich. The lesson, of course, is if you're playing the Germans, hold out for using the optional rules, as they prevent an already difficult job from becoming an impossible one.
This is a very good game system, mobile, fast-moving. You're never quite sure what's going to happen next. Far from resting on their well-deserved laurels from Triumphant Fox, the folks at MIH have really worked hard, fine-tuning their operational WWII system for its second installment. Piercing The Reich is a fine second chapter in what promises to be an excellent series… if only it all looked a little better.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Graphic Presentation: Yuck. With an exception for the counters.
Playability: This is not an easily accessible system. Stick with it, though, as the is system designed so that you take nothing for granted. Minimal solitaire capability.
Re-Playability: With random activations, variable combat strengths and unknown victory conditions, eminently so.
Creativity: A thoroughly original system.
Historicity: Thoroughly researched and documented, with some historically controversial optional rules.
Wristage: Considerable.
Comparisons: Jack Radey’s decade-old Aachen - same ugly green box cover! - still has some appeal. This is just about the best battalion-level WWII system around, even given the Gamer’s excellent series.
Overall: Another winner from Moments in History.
from MiH
One 22” x 34” map; 360 counters; Rules Book; 4 Play-Aid Sheets; Boxed. MiH, C/O AHP, POB 6253, LOS OSOS CA 93412. $35.
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© Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg
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