The first wave of Second Front (SF) playtest kits set sail in early February 1990, and I, like many other eager Europa testers, received mine with a great deal of delight. For those readers of the magazine not involved in the playtest, I have prepared this article to share a brief look at the playtest rules and OBs, and the impending changes and enhancements to the system they will bring. Understand that there has not been time to revise maps, paste and cut counters, or actually play the game prior to this report. Likewise, my views on how the SF changes will impact previously published games in the series when retrofitted are necessarily preliminary as well, and so not presented here. With those disclaimers out of the way, let's hit the beach.

D-Day

One of the first questions to be answered in the design of SF was how to pack all the units of the Overford invasion force into a beachhead of several hexes. John Astell, the designer, has addressed this with a major modification to the stacking rule. Briefly stated, there are no stacking limits in SF (although John is toying with the idea of establishing a 50 RE maximum).

However, before you get too enthused with the concept of huge stacks overrunning everything in sight, let me fill in some details. Only those units which adhere to the normal Europa stacking limits (i.e., the frontline units) are actually kept on the board. The remainder of the overstacked units are represented by a corps marker and placed in its box off-board. While overstacked, these excess units do not contribute to the attack or defense, nor are they considered in exchange calculations, but they do suffer any adverse effects if their hex is attacked (in other words, the potential of destroying the invasion force on the beach is very real if the Germans are able to mount a viable counterattack). Units may be swapped in and out of this corps marker anytime during a players turn.

Needless to say, there are also many rules pertaining to amphibious assault and naval movement. These in fact make up the largest part of the new rules. I will not attempt to explain or interpret them at this time. I would anticipate, however, that creative gamers will exercise these quite thoroughly, testing the effect of further invasions, as well as afternate D-Day sites, on the course of the game.

Westwall

At the start of play the Westwall is in a state of neglect; however, the German player may refurbish it by declaring an emergency restoration if an Allied unit is within 14 hexes of a Westwall hex. While this consumes all his resource points and RAD (equivalent to the "Soviet Workers") capabilities for two turns, it sounds like a great buy. After restoration the Westwall hexes are treated as follows:

Westwall hexes negate AEC, units defending in them are not required to retreat, and the number printed in the Westwall hex (ranging from one to three) is subtracted from the Allied attackers die roll. If captured by the Allies, they are considered destroyed and have no further effect on combat.

The German will also get some benefit from the destroyed Maginot Line Ourvrages. These, for now at least, are treated as forts, without any expenditures for restoration. As I interpret the rule, the Allies receive the same benefit upon capturing any of these hexes.

The Bulge

The stacking limit modification mentioned earlier applies to the Germans also, so big stacks might appear on the German side of the line prior to the jump-off of the Ardennes Offensive. One could hardly disguise this, so I anticipated a Surprise Attack rule might be included. However, there is no provision for one at this time. Instead, the Germans have the ability once per game to "declare an emergency." Once declared, the German player receives emergency replacements at a rate of 12 infantry and 20 armor RPs on the I turn of each month for three consecutive months. I suppose the Germans can accumulate quite a few of these, use them all at once to raise new units and rebuild weakened ones, rush them to the front, and launch their "surprise attack" in that fashion.

The effects of poor weather on combat will henceforth be more directly fell by one's cardboard minions. There is now a -2 modifier for all attacks made in mud weather and a -1 for all attacks in snow and winter weather. This latter constitutes a new weather category falling between frost and snow in severity and covering "typical western European winter conditions: rainy, muddy weather with occasional frost or snowy spells, and snow in the mountains." However, there is now a provision for partial AEC in winter and snow weather; if one's stack has 1/2 or more AECA or AECD, there is a -1 modifier to the die roll. I would imagine the Germans would wait for such a turn to launch their armored offensive on a section of the Allied front held primarily by infantry. Sound familiar?

The Air War

As expected, the huge USAF will require some changes to airbase considerations. This is addressed by allowing players to build up to four airbases in a hex.

The "Strat Air" campaign is currently handled "in the background." This will cut down on some of the counter clutter as both sides generally maintain their strat air assets off-board in a special Available Box. These may be called up several times during each year (eight times for the Allies and four for the Germans) to make "special efforts," greatly increasing (at least for the Allies) the tactical air punch available (the Allied air blitzes which periodically broke the stalemate in Italy come to mind).

Carpet bombing appears in SF, and although I haven't fully digested it yet, it looks messy. I suspect players may try this a few times to see how R works, achieve something less than optimal results, and abandon ft as a viable mission. If so, that would be a pretty realistic representation!

A slightly modified version of Ben Knight's "Base Hit!" suggestion from TEN #3 will no doubt bring the bombing of airbases into vogue. Per this rule a hit on an airbase decreases the capacity by one (as always), but also hits one air unit stationed there, bombing players choice. Any hit on an air unit works the same as under the old air unit bombing mission, which is now absorbed by the above (almost like two missions for the price of one). This sounds like bad news for Goring's guys.

The Opponents

I will make only a few comments here about some of the new units and related details.

One point of interest is that the Germans continue to rule supreme in the area of special replacements, still being the only national force (other than the Finns), to have a 25% recovery rate for unisolated losses. This surprised me somewhat; I had thought the Americans were the ones to break easily, but quickly rally (or is that another game?).

The first units to catch my eye were the Hitler Jugend SS units. No ordinary punks these; they are represented currently by a 20-10 and 16-10 Panzer XX, along with a 12-10 Panzer Grenadier XX.

Then there are the V-Weapons. These allow the Germans (while within range) to strike at Allied ports and London, damaging the ports and inflicting resource and replacement point losses on the British if successful.

V-WEAPONS CHART
Attack Die Roll	V1 Attack	V2 Attack
	Range 9 Hexes	Range 12 Hexes
1	miss	miss
2	miss	miss
3	miss	miss
4	miss	HIT
5	HIT	HIT
6	HIT	HIT
Modifiers: -1 for an intercepted V1 attack -1 for a V1 attack that received an A or K result from AA fire

Tucked away in the US counters next to the trucks, there is a counter bearing the name "Little David". This counter accompanies a US siege artillery unit (rated 4-0-6) around the board and represents the ability of this unit to launch an atomic bomb attack against Reich forces. If "Little David" supports an Allied ground attack against an adjacent German occupied hex, the counter is expended and the result of the attack is an automatic DE. This blows a hole in the German line of course (although units with cadres would yield some potential survivors), but the US player has to think twice about dashing through. Any unit entering the hex during that or the next turn suffers possible radiation sickness, which afflicts units with a 33% chance of elimination. (For the curious, John explains it is unlikely that the bomb would have been delivered by air due to the chance of being intercepted and shot down en route.) Since this unit isn't projected on the Allied OB until Aug II 45, it is unlikely to see use in a normal SF game.

Partisans, while abstracted, are represented with a rather potent array of partisan attacks as per SE rule 33. Surprisingly (at least to me), the Italian partisans are more active than the French, with three attacks per turn vs. two for the French.

Other System Changes

To address the problem of "5-1 Abused" (explained by A.E. Goodwin in ETO #28) there is an experimental modification to the CRT that moves the EX result to the "-1" row and the EX result to the "0" row. No more almost guaranteed exchanges at 5-1 [-6]! (And I suppose the reference to "NE" above is no "er correct, as John has changed this result to "RA" ("Repulsed Attack"), which works the same, but sounds more palatable.

There are several movement changes related to the extensive paved road net in western Europe. For example, units may move along roads at the rate of 1 MP per hex, even in the worst weather. Admin. movement has also been liberalized. Units using admin. are no longer restricted to roads and clear terrain; due to the intensive road infrastructure admin. is now allowed in all terrain and across all hexsides except prohibited terrain and mountain or major river hexsides. John says, "in case you're wondering, the dividing line between the extensive road net and the sparse one (SE admin. rule) matches fairly well the German-Soviet demarcation line."

In another experimental modification to the admin. rule, players are now allowed to move admin. through hexes made friendly during their current movement phase, so long as these hexes are owned at the time the unit moves and the other restrictions of admin. movement are met.

Air combat is modified in the case where several air units are firing at a single air unit: the exchange of fire hafts; immediately when the player with the several air units achieves a R, A, or K result. Thus some interceptors (or escorts) may not get to fire at all.

The final entry in this partial and arbitrary list is a change to the construction rules which varies the amount of construction capability based on the size of the constructing unit. Thus, for 1/2 RE construction units MP/turn costs are doubled, while a brigade-sized unit is treated as being two construction units for purposes of quick construction.

Victory

This is kept simple at this stage of the playtest (we're in Stage One, which is the 1944 Campaign Scenario, covering France, Italy, and Western Germany from the spring of 1944 through the summer of 1945). To win decisively, the Allies must take all the major cities on the map. Lesser levels of Allied victory or German victory are also determined based on ownership of major cities.

Getting the kit out and the playtest started is a victory of sorts in itself. I'd like to commend all of the people who worked so hard to make this kit a reality. Thanks folks!

This report covers just a few of the many highlights and entertaining features of SF. It must necessarily be brief and incomplete due to time and space constraints. Be assured there will be more reports to follow as the playtest progresses.