In the past one and a half years we have seen an occasional review of SPI's EL ALAMEIN but certainly no game strategy articles. This is small wonder as it has been said by many gamers that the game is a failure.

Why a failure? Before we closely examine the reasons why perhaps a major reason is that it failed to live up to the expectations of the desert war fans. It failed not only as a simulation but also as a game.

When one speaks of a wargame about desert warfare one expects open spaces, a mass of maneuvre, a tactically fluid battle situation depending largely upon one's nerves, and finally a tactician's paradise of small battles. With this game we have received something else again combining many of the worst elements from previous SPI game development. Let us examine what we have.

The counters are not too bad in appearance, the colors are the same as those found in PANZERARMEE AFRIKA: yellow Italian, beige German, and brown Allies; all with a sort of dust-beaten desert appearance. This is fine but there should be more contrast in color between the Allies and the Axis. An irritating nuisance is that the counters are identified only for the OCTOBER scenario (the 2nd Battle of Alamein which resulted in the Axis destruction) and no parent unit identification is ever included.

For the other two scenarios you simply re-use the OCT. scenario counters. This saves money for SPI and might possibly aid in set-up and playability but it greatly detracts from the game's reputed "realism". If SPI can afford 400 counters for some games, why not here too? In this manner SPI has been able to fudge history without the knowledge of the game player.

After later examination the board does not appear as bad as it did having figured the scale to be about 3.2 km or about 2 miles to the hex instead of the claimed 5 km. Features are very sparse and in sum from Burg el Arab to Fuka (neither town marked) there are 40 ridge hexes in six ridges and 2 hills, 7 depression hexes plus the entire eastern end of the Qattara Depression, the one town of El Alamein, and of course the coast road. There are also some start-line markings that generally mean little and an Axis Retreat Line that seems rather arbitrarily placed. Configuration is rather interesting as instead of the usual rectangular playing space we have a funnel shaped area with Fuka at the neck and El Alamein at the wide end, interesting as history describes the land conformation as just the opposite. Due to the paucity of the features the board is rather bland and it is doubtful whether anyone will attach much "fetish" value to the capture of any particular hex. This is good as desert terrain was always quite worthless unless fortified.

This benefit is nullified though as some victory conditions depend on capture of terrain which strangely reimposes the fetish value. in other terrain notes why does SPI have this fascination with making the Qattara Depression passable? Absolutely every account I have read has emphasized the impassability of that region. Yet this game allows such movement and even includes clear hexes to the south, terrain which in actuality is part of the sand sea stretching south from the Qattara. Why is the El Taqa Plateau so far north of the Qattara? Actually El Taqa is correctly placed; it is the Qattara that is too far south. These ridge hexes are quite literally impassible from the Qattara side up or down. If the Ragil Depression is included why are not the many other small depressions The depression rule is ridiculous anyway. Why is Ruweisat Ridge two hexes wide at one point? If the desert bump called Kidney Hill is represented why are not the many dozens of other similar "hills"? What happened to all the desert tracks?

Frankly the playing space should have been cut off just south of the El Taqa Ridge Line. Then the July scenario description space could fill this new space and the former space could be opened up as playable space. In keeping with SPI's penchant for "what-if" situations why did they ignore the possibilityof using the space thus created to build a scenario postulating an Axis withdrawal to the "Fuka Line".

Rommel says he wanted to build a second line there. The position was strong. An escarpment covered the coast and another escarpment and bad-going terrain covered the deep flank. Only the center was open and in actuality Rommel even had part of this covered by a minebelt.

In sum, the gameboard shows the rigors of a rush job. Whatever happened to the philosophy that a mapboard should be a work of art? Did it die on the west front in 1914?

Rules

With the rules we have the usual mile long Errata Sheet. Rather than criticise for poor rules writing I criticise for poor conceptualization. My primary criticism concerns their rules about road movement and the road-head marker. Too much rules space is spent on this insignificant feature. specifically some 70 column inches or about 26% of total rules space. Few units ever have the opportunity to take advantage of road movement as most movement is off road. Motorized units may enter road mode only while on road, while has logic, but non-motorized units may enter road mode almost anywhere and move almost anywhere while in road mode. What is the logic here? Is this some kind of compensation for desert tracks?

If so then the designer had better look at his map again as tracks are rare and generally follow a north-south route. Most movement in this game is east-west. While playing I noticed that units are put in road mode only rarely and at times this was even not necessary. Motorized units can wove far and fast enough anyway with their two impulses.

A further inconsistency is that as many units as desired may be put into road mode. This is convenient in the October scenario where when the 10th turn has passed the Axis can pick just the moment when the British are hung up in the,minefields and them sprint for the west edge with virtually the whole army. Since most of the army is motorized these will be enough to gain whatever level of victory is desired while a few of the non-motorized block the British for the one critical turn.

Are those supply units true approximations of the supply situation in the desert?

Emphatically, no. The whole system is rather much like advancing railroad repair units as in MOSCOW CAMPAIGN or 1914. A mechanized army's supply tail looks nothing like this on an operational level. What is required here is the originality which thus far is lacking in the game. In addition to supply tails SPI ignores the fact that Axis logistics could never support the moves most players make.

The average player will move all over the place even when he does not have to as he thinks this is Blitzkrieg or mobile warfare. But he will find there was rarely more than one day's supply of fuel available. Even ammo ran low. The Axis was able to leave at the end only because so little had survived. Why does SPI ignore this fuel situation?

Could part of the fuel situation be hidden in the rule preventing units from moving out of the ZOC of an enemy unit? Realistically this idea has little merit, motorized units can vanish as soon as they appear and any unit can break contact at night. Even game-wise the system breaks down when a full regiment of tanks is pinned by some crummy 1-8 armored car unit. There has got be a limit to effectiveness here.

Minefields

The minefield rule is also a bit like hocus pocus presto-chango, we have a rule that works. By sheerest' chance it fits into the nature of the game although it in no way reflects the nature of true minefields in the desert. We instead have something that resembles PANZERBLITZ minefields except that some mines are friendly and they do not make attacks. A desert minefield was called a mine marsh and it usually was hostile to all as even those who laid it had difficulty in maintaining maps of it.

It was fairly easy, obviously, to gap one's own minefield but by no means would that unit have double defense in the minefield. He might be doubled, or whatever the proper effect, behind the minefield, but never on it.

There were many minefields and some might fill a hex but most would really only cover hex sides, behind which would usually be found a battalion or so of defenders with a couple of anti-tank guns. For example the Axis "defenses" as described in the ROMMEL PAPERS,

"were so laid out that the minefields adjoining no-man's land were held by light outposts only, with the main defense line, which was 2000-3000 yds in depth, located one to 2000 yds west of the first minebelt. The panzer divisions were positioned behind the main defense line so that their guns could fire into the area in front of the line and increase the defensive firepower of their sector..."

A rule properly reflecting minefields would probably be more complex and lengthy than the present rule but would be space more properly utilized in the rules folder as it would be critical to play.

EL ALAMEIN presents a curious CRT. The results are all the same ones with which many of us are so familiar, but why this particular arrangement, which defies all previous CRT theories?

At 3-1 odds chances are 50/50 either the defender retreats or the attacker will retreat, nothing else happens. At 4-1 odds the defender retreats or will exchangeif the result is "1". At 7-1 the odds are 50/50 that either the defender is elim or result is exchange, a most peculiar table indeed. Everyone will try for the surrounded battle and shoot only low odds battles. SPI wanted a bloodless table and got one but are these accurate results? Why not a CRT of attrition as the designer's notes suggest, rather than a CRT that suggests a game of bumper cars?

Historical Accuracy

As for "historical accuracy" the above hassles demonstrate that if indeed the game reaches an historical conclusion or reasonable variant there of then we are going about it by fallacious means. The game tactics necessary to win this game do not answer the problems faced by our historical counterparts. We might be playing a game but we are simulating nothing.

The game was a flop for historical accuracy before it ever left the drawing board. Even as a game it is a bore as most battles gain little, the rules are difficult to read although not as hard to learn, the first turn surprise advantage in the September scenario is purely asinine (it did not exist), and play balance is suspect through all scenarios. Why couldn't we have had a campaign game to link the scenarios? Why no explanations for the what-if situations? Must we accept the word of the designer without explanation, without question? Who invented all these what-if units? in essence what this game shows is the effects of SPI mass production of games. Mr. Dunnigan, the designer of EL ALAMEIN, while quite a designer in his own right, who has come out with a few good titles, cannot possibly know everything about every game he has designed and may be knowledgeable enough about East Front to come out with a PANZERBLITZ but the limitations of his knowledge about the desert seem apparent. I surmise that what happened here was that Mr. Nofi did all the research and then presented his collection of data to Mr. Dunnigan who then assembled the game. The game then mechanically proceded through their pipeline to the playtesters who proceeded to force the game to work. Thus the SPI staff has produced a game without the vital element of critiqueing the game concepts. Hence one more mass produced worthless game.

A VARIANT

"Historical placement" of units in this game is a misnomer. For those of you who desire something more accurate I provide a variant to the July scenario At least with this variant the Germans have a vague chance whereas before they were going nowhere.

Allied Units

4-4s - 2919, 3320, 3429, 4910
3-4s - 3611, 2623, 3314
2-4s - 3713, 3813
3-8s - 3323, 3814, 3812
2-8 - 2821
1-8 - 3817
1-3 Supply - 3816, 3420
Road Head - El Alamein
Mines - 3314, 3610, 3611, 3712, 3811, 3320, 2919, 2623

Axis Units

2-6s - 3209, 2512, 2611
1-6s - 2513, 3309
1-3s - 2612, 2712
4-10s - 2811, 2711
2-10s - 2610, 2710, 2810, 3009, 3110
1-3 (2/6) - 2910
1-2 (2/4) - 3209
Road Head - 3309

(1) Minefields - If Axis and next to an Allied unit which is in its own minefield then may move away during movement phase without another friendly unit in that hex by expending 2MF to leave enemy ZOC.

(2) ZOC - Axis ZOC does not extend into enemy hexes.

(3) Boxes - Forget the SPI rule.