Supposedly, with the Cross of Iron system, any type of WWII Combat can be simulated now by just cranking in the appropriate data and finding its Squad Leader equivalent, making up some counters and starting to play (as long as your stomach can stand the homemade artwork that occasionally outdoes Picasso in abstractness). As Avalon Hill would have you believe, the Squad Leader series can be the flexible miniatures game for the micro armor fanatic or the sophisticated boardgame for the person who'd rather push cardboard a than metal (thereby conserving energy, which may have something to do with the comparative physical shapes of boardgamers and miniature buffs).

Anyhow, after receiving COI and being amazed by the amount of detail that was packed into that thin box (and the twelve bucks we put out for it), we soon got tired of our Russian Front scenarios and returned to the jig we really wanted all along, North Africa. Here was the data, and most importantly the test case for COI, that would enable us to put together our own game from "scratch." This seemed really great, since with a little artwork and historical research we could "create," and join the hallowed ranks of game designers (who, in numerous cases, just copied someone else's system with a few twists of their own and declared to the world a major breakthrough- we'll be a bit more humble about our game, though).

Armed with the armor data in Tractics, we put together counters for each of the Commonwealth tanks, armored cars and other vehicles in terms of their COI equivalents. This is not as hard as it would seem, since by comparing the COI Dice Roll Modifiers (DRM) with the armor values from Tractics the general range of thickness with its associated DRM can be guessed at (the chart at the end of the article depicts the DRM/armor relationships we used).

Since the data for the Germans was already in COI (perhaps future SL gamette designers will only get half royalties with all the German stuff handed to them), the task was relatively simple. Here, for those interested in fighting North African games with the Squad Leader/COI system is the basic data we used:

Basic Weapon And Vehicle Characteristics
Vehicle	Front DRM	Flank DRM	Weapon	Movement	MG	Special/Remarks
Honey/Stuart	-1	-2	37L	22	4/2	small target, + 1 DRM
Matilda	+1	+1	37L	8	4/2	no road bonus
Cruiser A13	-3	-4	37L	19	2/-	excessive breakdown, ST
Crusader I	-2	-2	37L	19	4/-	excessive breakdown
Valentine I	0	0	37L	10	4/-	no road bonus
Bren Carrier	-5	-5	MMG	22	-	small target, +2 DRM
PZJg I	-5	-5	47L	17	-	small target, DRM +1
Mark IId	-2	-3	20L	16	-/2	small target, DRM+1
Mark IIIe	-1	-1	50	14	4/2	-
Mark IVe	-1	-2	75*	14	4/2	-
PSW 231	-5	-5	20L	35	-/2	-
Humber	-5	-5	37	35	-/2	small target, DRM +1
M 13/40	-3	-3	47	12	2/4	-

Unit	Firepower	Range	Morale
German infantry	4	6	8
English infantry	4	6	7
Italian infantry	3	3	6

Anti-Tank Guns
British 2 pounder 37L
25 pounder 88*
Italian 47mm 47

For those of you not yet conversant with the COI system, each gun type has a kill number against front, side and rear armor, like it did in Squad Leader, except now the 75mm guns have short and long versions in the game, and when you hit something you apply the DRM for that vehicle to the roll to see if you rolled equal or under the guns kill number. The lower the DRM, the more shoddy the armor is, and DRMs greater than zero indicate fairly good armor against almost any gun one is likely to come across.

Here are the kill numbers against frontal armor so you can get a feel for the effectiveness of the weapons before we proceed to the battle of Sidi Rezegh:

Kill Number
Weapon	Frontal Armor	Side Armor
20L	1	2
37	1	2
37L	2	3
47	3	4
47L	4	5
50	4	5
75*	4	5
88*	4	5
88Flak 18	8	9 German anti-tank gun
50L	5	6 German anti-tank gun

Guns with * are howitzers and suffer a substantial decrease in accuracy.

Based on the DRM and kill numbers needed to destroy enemy tanks, it would appear that we were in for a wild melee type of affair. While the armor penetrating capabilities of guns are increased at extremely close range (a new innovation to the SL system in COI which introduces negative DRMs as the range approaches one hex), beyond 2 hexes the Matilda will only have a 17% probability of killing a Mark IId with a hit on the frontal armor (2 kill number and a -2DRM .allows kills on rolls of 4 or less (4-2=2), and the Mark II is the weakest German tank. Against any Mark III or IV tank, the kill chance shrinks to 8% frontally.

On the other side, the Matilda is virtually impenatrable to the 37L and 50 guns of the panzers (forget the 20L), with the most advantageous kill probability being a measly 17%, and that's against the flank. And even the Honey tank, which is a main battle tank here, can survive 72% of the hits by the 50mm German gun and then pop away with its peashooter.

Given the inadequate tank weaponry that existed in the desert in the fall of 1941, there are only two ways to really stop the tank rushes short of moving into 240meter-or-less gun battles, where the 50mm guns on the Mark III and the Mark IV's 75mm weapon have a slim advantage. Either line up the 88s and 50-longs in an anti-tank gun screen and blow the Limeys away at great range (as they did on numerous occasions), or try to flank the enemy and go for intentional immobilization (in COI, one can shoot for the wheels and suspension with a decrease in accuracy, but any hit stops the tank in its "tracks").

Prior to describing the battle, a few words about the terrain for the conflict are in order. Despite the blank stare that one gets after looking at the board in Avalon Hill's Tobruk game, the Sidi Rezegh battlefield included just enough little perturbations to make things interesting.

Every here and there, the ground presented a slight furl or rise that a Honey or Mark III could use to go hull down, and the airfield about which most of the fighting occurred was bordered by an escarpment which gave the viewer a nice position from which to watch the goingson down below (and from which to lob shots, too).

For boards, we dug out our Tobruk "rip offs" and some empty hex sheets and drew up a battlefield with tiny outcroppings every here and there, a road and some desert tracks.

All in all, the preparations for the battle presented very little difficulty and the use of the COI system to model the units was unbelievably simple once the basic data was obtained (and the COI system was sorted out of the maze of detail and statistics).

As we made the battle out to be (bending the facts so we could use more of our 88s and other guns), the airfield at the time was loosely held by a scared infantry detachment from the British Army, and the panzers had broken through to the perimeter of the field only to run out of ammo and fuel. The field was filled with abandoned wrecks (it's a lot of work making up all those wreck counters), and in our scenario the panzers have gotten their act together and are about to start their conquest of the field. Their only opposition is a ragtag group of Stuarts, Cruisers and two Matildas, with the long awaited Crusaders still making their way from Alexandria and breaking down on the way.

Holding the northern part of the field, the Germans set their 88s up on the rise, and readied their panzers for the bitter fighting to follow. Knowing that the English commander would be overanxious in view of the still blunted thrust that Operation Crusader had taken (sans Crusaders, of course), they sat their panzers behind the hidden ATGs and awaited the charge of the light (tank) brigade (with Errol Flynn in the lead 30 Stuart, of course).

In order to spice things up a bit, this game was conducted using the command control (or command lackof- control for the British) system, where units must pass a dice roll to move more than 1/4 move (to simulate tardy, scared and incompetent soldiers), and where an "inactive" situation might spur random elements into piecemeal thrusts against the enemy (based on a morale "break" roll of the reverse kind, which simulates the British tendency to act in an uncoordinated and reckless manner on occasion in the desert)

Fortunately for the British (or more fortunate for the Germans, as later events might prove), half the British tankers broke ranks and made their way into the killing ground of the airfield, amidst the burned out hulks of prior visitors to the battlefield.

The 88s waited until the lead Stuarts and Cruisers got to within 1000 meters, and opened up on the unsuspecting light tanks, killing two in the initial volley (four 88s were involved) but missing on six shots despite having bore- sighted the area where the target was. Not really feeling any fear (the 88mm Flak 18 was a vague rumor to most Limeys at the time even with the slaughter of the Matildas at Halfaya Pass to its credit), and being joined by the Matildas, the English came right down the alley after the ATGs (which was all they could do since they were out of MG range, had no artillery support and only the Stuart carried HE).

On the second German round of ATG fire, which was their prep fire phase, the range had closed to 600 meters and the four 88s and six 50mm guns killed four Stuarts and eight Cruisers, and lost one 50mm ATG to a breakdown.

The initial force of 20 Stuarts and 25 Cruisers, with the few Matildas, had been reduced by 14 vehicles, and now was more in line with the German strength of 7 Mark IIs, 5 Mark IIIs and 4 Mark IVs, although about 15 late-starting Cruisers were just starting to creep away from the initial positions along with two 25 pounder guns and their crews.

With an overrun of the guns a distinct possibility, the remaining German infantry were sent aboveground to form a screen for the ATGs, and most of them survived the vicious MG fire of the oncoming tank groups. The panzers which had been hidden from view behind a ridge formed two groups and prepared to spring out at the enemy before the remaining cruisers could make the battlefield.

Being two moves away from the ATGs once again the bulk of the light tanks (those that passed command control rolls as they were designated for movement) drove on against the gun emplacements, closing to within 120 meters (3 hexes) and staring the gunners right in the face. In their last dying actions, the ATG gunners dispensed with eight Stuarts and seven more Cruisers during their defensive fire, and what remained after the English advance fire got six more tanks.

Just prior to the English defensive fire, the panzers drove onto the flanks of the light tanks (the Matildas were still well behind everybody) having two groups of eight vehicles surrounding a torn-apart number of their enemy (only eight Stuarts and two Cruisers were in the vicinity of the ATGs, with 15 Cruisers just getting into the thick of things).

Instead of dealing with the panzers, the remaining tanks on the crest of the ridge drove holes through the screening infantry and overran three 88s with the panzer defensive fire failing to do any damage at 400 meters.

As the situation now stood, the ATGs had wiped out 80% of the initial attacking force but were seriously threatened with destruction, but the panzer reserve had emerged onto the battlefield unscathed with a lesser opponent in the Cruisers (and a handful of Matildas) to deal with.

With the ATG screen in disarray, the panzers attempted an encirclement of the Cruiser group which they knew from experience would have a hard time coordinating its defense. On their next turn the German tank groups drove straight for the English flanks with the intention of cutting them off and ripping them apart.

At 400 yards, the Cruisers' defensive fire utilized intensive fire against the Mark IIIs in a desperate gamble to avert annihilation, with dreadful results. Out of 14 shots, two hit but bounced off the panzers. Even worse, the guns on five Cruisers and two Matildas malfunctioned, leaving them with only 10 tanks with armament to face 16 advancing panzers.

Taking their only alternative, they broke into two groups of five and awaited the melee of tanks in the desert that was soon to follow. Three Cruisers brewed up during the defensive fire, spewing black spirals of smoke into the air, and as the last 88 was "crushed" by a cruiser the Mark IIIs and IVs opened up their prep fire on the remnants of the English force (which had numbered 64 at the start of the fiasco).

Eventually the Cruisers were destroyed in the trap, failing to kill even one panzer in the fray, and only one Matilda still had its weaponry. The lone armed Matilda, which knew its duty when it saw it, "charged" the east group of Germans, survived the initial defensive fire and lived through the ensuing German prep fire. With only a 17% kill probability, and in control of the airfield with the panzer group intact (one gun malfunction on a Mark II, but who really expected much from them anyway), the Germans withdrew behind their 50mm ATG screen.

The battle, as one can appreciate, was basically a shootout between the long range 88s and the short range two-pounders and 37mm guns, and while the British "enjoyed" (until the battle started) a 4 to 1 superiority in tanks, the piecemeal attack and the better guns on the panzers settled the issue very decisively before the main body of tanks ever reached the ridgeline (infantry finished off the few light tanks that made it).

Had there been artillery in support of the English assault force, especially with smoke, the 88s could have been neutralized and the panzers would have been drawn into battle against a larger force which could have engulfed and immobilized them, at the least. But as usual, the attack went on with one type of force against a combined arms group (ATGs and tanks), and there was nothing to counter the ATGs with except a straightout charge.

As a final comment on the battle and its mechanics, the use of the Cross of Iron system worked out very smoothly, and cut down by a considerable amount the period that would be required to play the game with the Tobruk system (if we could have gotten data on the tanks like cruisers and Mark IIIds and somehow put them into the charts). COI compares rather favorably with miniature rule systems too, and as soon as more AFV data is cranked in I'd assume that it will be taken up by the HO and micro-armor players due to its straightforward nature.

For those who are interested in "jumping the gun" on the future gamettes and getting those Shermans and Grants into action now, here are the armor DRM classes as far as I've been able to decode them:

Armor Range	DRM
to -15mm	-5
15-25mm
-3
25-35mm
-2
35-45mm
-1
45-55mm
0
55-85mm
+1
85-120mm
+2
120-200mm
+3
200-250mm
+4
250mm +
+5

There are exceptions to this system in that turretless tank destroyers get an added advantage since there aren't any rings, cupola structures or any of the other weak spots associated with a turret, but the abovementioned armor classes are fairly consistent with the data provided in COI and it'll do until those gamettes make the scene.