For those of you who felt that, with such games as Bunker Hill, Like Lions, and Cortes, XTR was abandoning the One True Church of Krim, a return to Fundamentalism can be enjoyed - although “enjoy” is not exactly the right word - with the rather appropriately titled Balkan Hell, Ty Bomba’s turn on what L’Affaire Bosnia is all about. For those of you still steeped in heresy, unwilkling to embrace the faith, the Krim system reduces wargaming down to its basics: pushing piles of counters around the map searching for that mythical 3-1 odds ratio, piling up dead guys faster than Quentin Tarentino, unrestrained by such heretical notions as ZOC's, logistics, and, all too often, reality.
B-Hell is Ty Bomba's vision of what would have happened if the Croat/Bosnian coalition had decided to fight, rather than talk, in the autumn of 1995. So we have the Croats, Bosnians, and Bosnian Moslems vs. the Serbs and the remainder of the Yugoslavian regular army, with most of the action taking place in northern and central Bosnia within seven and a half mile hexes and two day turns, with brigade-sized units the vehicle of choice. Graphically we are on familiar ground. Those big ole, geezoroid 5/8" counters with anti-anorexi typeface, which aren't bad, although I'd question some of the color choices. For crin’ out loud, now, orange on yellow for the Serbian armor?
The map, however, is another story, perhaps the main story. I always pictured the Balkans as being the most rugged fighting terrain this side of South Korea. Not so in Balkan Hell . Everything is a nice, soothing green - sort of mould-flavored tapioca - with some all-too infrequent tan valleys. But of more importance is that the rough hexsides, which are crucial to the game, being impassible to motorized movement, ended up the same shade of green as the map’s base color. While this has to be a printer's error, it renders the game almost unplayable, because, with all those counters, you simply cannot spot the tank-proof hexsides. The only fighting chance you’ve got is to outline all of those hexsides in pen before starting play.
Even with this visual roadblock, it was with great (although rather ghoulish) anticipation that I looked forward to playing in Hell. (Ed. A location that designer Bomba has, in best Dante-esque fashion, consigned to most of BROG’s reviewers.)
Among other things, I expected to learn about the political situation in ex-Yugoslavia along with the military particulars of what is, essentially, a quasi-military brawl. But lo, what I received instead was a healthy dose of Krim. Although I did get a basic inkling about the politics - at least now I know who is on whose side - militarily, instead of a bunch of paramilitary thugs clunking around the countryside, taking time out from shooting at civilians and UN peacekeepers to occasionally fight each other, Balkan Hell, much to my surprise, turned out to be closer to the Western Front in 1915.
He who knows the Krim system should be able to play Balkan Hell right out of the bag, which is the big advantage of using a system. It’s Igo/Hugo with a twist-- the Serb mechanized units move after Croat movement but before combat (so they can avoid being attacked), while Serb combat comes before Serb movement, allowing the Croatians to move away (or even counterattack) at the beginning of the turn vs. everybody but the Serb armor. Makes for some tricky maneuvering, let me tell you. Supply lines are infinite... wait a minute, infinite supply lines ? In Bosnia?
That was my reaction, too-- this is some of the ruggedest terrain going, with almost no road network and neither army having what you'd call an advanced logistical network. How do these guys have the ability to trace an endless supply line to some distant map edge? Of course, there are no zones of control, either, so a unit sitting up on a mountaintop with highway E73 winding at its feet has no impact on a unit crawling along that narrow path. Yet you do get a concentric attack bonus from those non-existent ZOC's. Hmm...
There is only one scenario, which begins with Sarajevo already besieged by the Serbs while a huge Croatian juggernaut is poised to launch an offensive from the northwest. The Bosnians, Moslems, and Serbs are scattered throughout the country and the remnants of the Yugoslavian army (they're on the Serbian side in this rather complex jumble, and they have the only units capable of standing up to the Croats) lurks on the southern map edge. Play quickly centers around Sarajevo and the vital Highway E73 which runs from Sarajevo down to the coast. The Serbs are trying to maintain the siege of the city and cut the highway, while the Croatians/Bosnians win by relieving Sarajevo and capturing towns in Bosnia. A UN cease-fire can end the game any time after turn 7, so the Croatians need to move out smartly, clearing out the few Serbian units skulking around the northern half of Bosnia while racing to get to Sarajevo and the highway before the Yugo's show up.
Apparently, Krim doctrine is so pure that it can cover every modern conflict since 1938. Using what is essentially an East Front-oriented system in Bosnia is not really out of the question-- most of these armies are operating at a WWII level, anyway. And there are a few deviations from dogma. The Moslem and Bosnian units can only make two multi-unit attacks per turn, reflecting their armies' lack of coordination. The UN safe havens put in an appearance, giving defending Croatian/Bosnian units the benefit of NATO air strikes if they are attacked in six cities, including Bihac, Tuzla, Gorazde, and particularly, Sarajevo. The newest wrinkle are the special forces units, which can give a potentially huge combat modifier on attack or defense-- the Croats have nine of these guys vs. the Serbian one, so you can see who I'd bet my money on.
But Krim is such a rigid creed that it tolerates very little variation. It requires huge armies zooming across a largely bare map, meeting in great collisions of cardboard with mountains of dead counters growing on the table's edge, waiting for the cat to knock them off and eat them (but that's only if you play at Richard Berg's house). And every game must conform to this model. The combat system is so voraciously hungry that to last for seven turns the contending hosts need hundreds of units.
In Balkan Hell, the armies rival that of North Korea in size-- the Croats alone have 40 motorized infantry brigades ! The U.S. would have trouble putting that many in field, let alone a country as indigent as Croatia. But Krim calls for lots o' counters, so Ty Bomba found some Balkan orders of battle and stuck every last unit listed into the countermix, without realistic consideration of the armies' actual capacities. Add to that the player-as-commander's ability to provide gas, ammo, and food to hundreds of brigades movin' and groovin' about the map, when the actual leaders seem to lack the ability to meet their troops subsistence needs for even one day, and you have a game which feels quite detached from reality.
By obeying the Krim creed of Design for Effect, Balkan Hell is so devoid of details and options that every game turns into a shoulder-to-shoulder double line of counter stacks along Highway E73, each line striving to shove the other out of the way under a rain of dice. As I said above, it was more like the Marne than the Balkans. There is so little sense of subject that if you changed the colors of the counters and the names of the map you could be playing in the Caucasus Mountains, the Pusan Perimeter, or any other theater of mountain fighting from the past 50 years.
Ty Bomba's response would probably be, "Well, what's wrong with that? You can play the game right out of the magazine, setting it up and finishing it in a couple of hours without mountains of unnecessary detail to bog you down." But what if there is something more than Krim? How about adding some flavor to give players a closer feel for the situation , like maybe some command control rules limiting the number of units moved per turn or political random events that could bring about a NATO blockade or secret Russian aid to the Serbs ? COMMAND's best games of the past couple of years are CORTES, BUNKER HILL, and especially GREAT WAR IN EUROPE, titles that included apostasies like supply lines and morale ratings without gamers throwing them down and running, screaming, for an exorcist. Balkan Hell's lack of such color is doubly disappointing because, while COMMAND is willing to take the chance of publishing games on current subjects like Bosnia, they shy away from potentially challenging the faithful with any of the latest 15-years' worth of developments in game design. And like the medieval Church, they see no reason for questioning, let alone changing, their doctrine.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Graphic Presentation: Not only bland, but, unfortunately, a play stopper.
Playability: The usual high, Command standard: familiar systems, easy to play, with almost no errata.
Replayability: About as much as my desire to go over there.
Historicity: Very little flavor. This could be any other mountain terrain campaign from the past 50 years.
Creativity: The game has very little to show for all of the research that must have gone into it.
Wristage: About what you'd expect.
Comparison: It’s better than root canal.
Overall: It’s hard to tell what they - or you - are fighting for. Or why. So why bother.
from XTR/Command
One 33” x 22” map; 352 counters; rules book. Addendum to Command #35.
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© Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg
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