The mind shudders, boggles and then leans heavily against the wall, its breath taken away, gasping for intellectual air. Could it be? Has fate thrown these two together like “Strangers on a Train”? Or maybe it’s more like Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels. Whichever, the pairing of the talents of Perry Moore and Doc Decision opens the mind to new vistas like nothing since Timothy Leary started to expand his horizons. And here they are, with some help from Dave McEllhanon, to give us a quick overview of the rather desultory attempt of the British Army to wrest Baghdad from the Turks during World War I, another one of those inglorious Allied sideshows. Interestingly, the Baghdad campaign is one I started to do some work on, mostly because (a) no one else had, and my usual excuse (b) I found a map. Now, as to “a”, I eventually stopped work (after doing the map) because I deferred to Fran Leibowitz’s basic theory of creativity - and I paraphrase - that if you’re the first person to try to sauté steak with lime, try and think why. Perry obviously not being a Fran Leibowitz fan, plunged right ahead, and the result is S&T #176’s Blood on the Tigris, a rather simple, but surprisingly effective, study of the aforementioned campaign. Blood on the Tigris is the type of game for which I would - and you should - subscribe to a “magazine-with-game”. It covers an unusual subject, and does it with enough flair and insight to provide an enjoyable afternoon of gaming. Granted, Tigris has its share of gaffes, but no more than most games, and none that are unsolveable with some House Rules. And its not bad looking, either. Beth Queman’s counters are clear and concise, with enough pizzazz to keep the viscerals humming, and Dave McElhannon’s map is appropriately drab, much like most of the present-day Iraqi countryside. It also holds all of the necessary charts. It would have been nice if Dave had included the fact that a fairly large portion of the SE corner of the map (the one with the important pipeline to the Maidan-i-Naftun oilfields) belonged to Persia, not Mesopotamia, but, then again, who really cares… except, perhaps, the Persians among us. And I did find it curious that the railines radiating from Baghdad were not included, especially as that was the reason the Brits were going to all this trouble. Tigris is, above all things, a logistics game. When the British have enough supply, they get up and start doing things; when they don’t the turn moves along real fast. For those of you who can’t quite put a finger on what happened here, the British Home Office, fearful of the Kaiser linking his European railine to Baghdad, thus providing relatively quick entrée to India, decided to co-opt any German attempt therein by taking Baghdad. They started the campaign in the late fall of 1914 and finally achieved their objective in 1917, during which a large British force surrendered in the quasi-famous siege of Kut and the British army spent a lot of time waiting for adequate supplies to arrive. In the meantime, the entire reason for this desolate exercise blew sky-high when the Germans accidentally torched their munitions dump in Constantinople, rendering their Middle East plans somewhat moot. Yet the Turks, who ran Mesopotamia with time-honored, Ottoman inefficiency, still did all right on their own, until Palestine went belly-up and they lost interest. Perry’s Tigris system is a monthly-turn, 36 square mile hex, Igo-Hugo special with no real surprises, which is good, as it makes the game rather accessible. As the rules succinctly state, it all hangs on supply, of which the Brits - actually mostly the Indian Army - get very little unless they seize certain objectives, which gives them added supply and you, as player, some rather dopey rules (more, to be sure, anon). The players translate stock-piled supply points into depots or caravans, often switching back and forth between the two statuses, as needed. Without supply, movement and strength are halved, and as both sides usually have about the same number of troops lollygagging around, withholding their meals tends to have a great effect on their battle-worthiness. The terrain pretty much channels movement, if alone for the fact that the best rout to Baghdad - the only objective in the game, which ends as soon as the British take it - is straight up the Tigris, with some minor exceptions for the on-again, off-again, Shat-al-Hai river rout. Lots of marsh, lots of small rivers to cross, and not much else out there and little reason to stray far away from any of this. The major British advantage in movement is the large number of small boats they have that can, in rainy season, go up and down the rivers rather quickly. The British “fleet”, however, brings in one of the game’s rather strange anomalies. Most of the infantry units in the game are of 2 or 3 combat strength. So, too, are the British gunboats. This means two British gunboats are the combat equivalent of a brigade. Now, the rules never say you add in the gunboat strengths into adjacent/land combat, but the sentence, “… gunboats affect and are affected by units in all adjacent hexes …” can have no other meaning. Of course, we could be misinterpreting this, and gunboats do not join in ground combat (which would seem more reasonable); means I (the Turk) would have lasted on more month in Amara. On hindsight, and especially with the counter-attack rule the CRT provides, I would think that the gunboats do not participate directly in land combat; couldn’t tell from the rules. We also note, not so parenthetically, that the air units - good rules here, nice color - are also worth a brigade, especially the German-piloted Fokkers. Given the pre-pubescent state of air power, I have severe doubts that one Fokker triplane was the combat equivalent of a British brigade. I mean, this is one guy dropping the equivalent of two seltzer bottles, half of which went flat on the way down! Good idea, inappropriately applied. Moore would have been better simply having unaborted planes (possibly) add to the attacker’s DR, or something… which is what it appears the boars are supposed to do. The game we played went rather historically, almost disconcertingly so. The Brits immediately drove the Turks out of Basra, seizing the necessary supply port. They then sent their major column up the Tigris towards Amara, while quickly despatching the Turkish “navy”. After that, with one exception, it was slog, slog, slog, with the Turks only stopping to give the Brits a battle or two, if only to keep them from just walking where they wanted. It’s not that the Turks don’t have a half-decent number of men, it’s that, for the most part, they’re inferior, and the Brits have too much support for them to stand and fight for any length of time. The British player, though, did seize the Rainy Season opportunity and sailed a small flotilla up the now-open Shat-al-Hai almost all the way to the key, and heavily fortified, city of Kut, which was totally unoccupied. By June of 1915 - 5 months ahead of historical schedule - the British had a brigade in Kut, with Turkish units streaming north and south to shut them off, as they did in 1916. At the same time the British were investing a strong Turkish force in Amara, and both events raised two questions, and much commentary about several rules. Stacking limits players to two brigades per hex. I’m sorry, but that’s patently ridiculous, especially without any design commentary as to why such a small number. We’re talking 36 square miles per hex here, and three-brigade divisions, which means a division can’t occupy one hex. Add to that the knowledge that, historically, the British stuffed 18 battalions of infantry into Kut, that’s about 6 brigades, and you start to wonder whether anyone was manning the development switch when that rule slid through. Then there was the question of British Supply points for holding Kut. The rules say he gets one every “even” turn for doing so, but the SP arrives in Basra! Now, we weren’t sure how a Kut-earned supply point showed up in Basra, especially if the city was surrounded and under siege, as it quickly was. Giving the SP to the British in Kut made them virtually invulnerable to a protracted siege, which they certainly weren’t. So what did this Kuttish SP mean? Perhaps it meant increased Home Office commitment because of the “situation”, but the Brits got the SP whether a “situation” existed or not. By mid 1915 we were into two separate siege situations, with the main British column finally wearing down an unusually determined Turkish division in Amara, while the Turks had little trouble, helped by five divisions, sweeping that lone British brigade out of Kut. The CRT tends to lead to units standing, if they wish, unless the odds are so great that you obtain Breakthrough results. Most of the results are 1 or 2 step losses, meaning one counter goes, at the most. To ameliorate that, there is an interesting counter-attack result - the CRT says “engaged”, but that’s not what’s going on here - forcing the defender to attack one hex of attacker, usually at 1-1. Makes for some interesting results, although I find it hard to believe, yet again, that greatly out-numbered units inside a Fort would counter-attack out. Without designer’s notes to clarify the “whys and wherefores” of this, we laid it at the feet of the usual Turkish stupidity and British mediocrity. By mid-1916, the British had reached Kut with a fairly large force, and we now settled down to real-style WWI: lots of bash and crash, with no one really getting anywhere for months on end. Planes a-flyin, bombs a-burstin, but no one a movin’ … until the Reinforcement Chart started to play favorites. Perry’s schedule is based entirely on what happened historically, regardless of what’s happening on the map. That means, as all of you North Africa buffs will recognize, time-dishonored stuff like, “I don’t care what’s happening, 2nd Division goes home”. This means three things, in game terms: 1. Regardless of what is happening, the British start to get lots of men, which was Home Office’s reaction to the Kut situation. 2. The Turks stop getting anything, mostly because Palestine has become a major ulcer; its fall would totally dispirit Ottoman efforts elsewhere, leading to 3. The British will most surely take Baghdad before the end of the game, if only because they have too much, and the Turks run out of men and space. So, as history, Tigris works remarkably well. It’s easy to learn, easy to play, and, until mid-1916, when everyone in Jolly Olde starts showing up for a Middle Eastern vacation, there’s lots of nail-biting battles and sieges, even some surprises. That’s all well and good, and certainly enough to recommend the game. But it could have been better: It could have had a Random Event Table It could have had a Reinforcement Schedule based on what was happening on the map, not 80 years ago. It could have had a “release” dieroll for the Turkish 35th division, sitting in Nasirya, doing nothing, unable to move by specific rule. (They did sit their, but only for a few weeks, until Nixon’s column blew ‘em away.) And how about a possible Russian column coming in from the east? Not that the British need any help, but it was a distinct (and planned) possibility … one which, granted, would have given HRH a royal heart attack. (Russians in Persia! Hard Cheese for the Great Gamers!) And it could have told me what I’m supposed to do with those two farblungit Arab cavalry units, emerging from Persia (Arab cavalry in Persia??),with no supply and nothing to do, other than watch the British pipeline garrison and starve to death. Where was the Dream Team on this one? CAPSULE COMMENTS: Graphic Presentation: Nice. Effective. Playability: Good, with some rules anomalies needing housecleaning. Replayability. Maybe once. Too “historic” for any more. Needs some randomness. Historicity: As an overall view, rather nice. Some details wanting. Creativity. Good use of standard mechanics. Wristage. No more than usual. Comparison. An unusual situation. Closest I can think of would be XTR’s Chaco, which is more incisive, but not as playable. Overall. A good, if not great, effort. Worth having, especially if you want to take a look at what S&T is doing these days … when it comes out. from DECISION/S&T One 22” x 33” map; 210 counters; included in S&T #176. $16 off the rack. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 21 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com