Europa players are, in general, curious folk, slightly different from your average wargamer. It would be unusual, for instance, to come across a Europe Aflame player debating the exact number of guns, tanks and men that make up each counter. Europa players are people who have discovered and relish - the wealth of detail available in the highly-playable Europa system.

The inclination towards detail that draws players to the Europa system also orients their thoughts. This emphasis on particulars is evident in both the endless rules-fiddling which Europa players undertake and in the nature of articles published by the Europa magazine. Recent articles have included an analysis of assault gun counters and an essay on terrain that corrects the location of some remote glacier hexes. Few other game systems, especially at the Europa level, are able to offer such in-depth looks at game design and analysis.

However, this advantage possesses a corresponding disadvantage - it draws players away from the higher realms of military operations, namely strategy. In the pages of TEM, only one article has appeared in recent issues that dealt to any extent with strategy (and that one, an excellent article by Roy Lane, was entitled "Russian Tactical Doctrine!"). This can be compared with The General which manages to include an article on Third Reich in most issues, despite the fact that the magazine covers a great many games.

This fact raises many questions: are the Europa games ill-suited for strategic analysis? Is there a realm for strategy in Europa? Do Europa players dislike writing articles on strategy? My answers to these questions would be, in order: "somewhat," "yes, and "definitely."

This article is the first in a projected series which will include strategic overviews of various Europa games. Hopefully, these articles will generate goodspirited debate and will open a discussion of strategic avenues available in the various games. If they are wildly successful, they might even give a dedicated counter of tank rivets something else to think about for a while.

Before this discussion can go any further, it is necessary to define what strategy is. It is a nebulous concept, difficult to pin down, and often used to describe different things. Allan R. Millet and Williamson Murray, editors of the 3-volume series Military Effectiveness (a must-read for any serious Europa enthusiast), provide the following worthwhile working definitions of the various levels of military concepts:

"One cannot assess military effectiveness without fundamental judgments about the purpose of military activity (national policy); the translation of political objectives into broad plans for military activity (strategy); conceptions for the use of military forces in the destruction of enemy forces, the resources for war-making, and political will (operations); and the techniques of the actual use of firepower and maneuver to kill the enemy and destroy enemy targets (tactics)." [1]

How then, does Europa fit into this scheme? In what areas are players able to make effective decisions? The highest sphere, that of national policy, is beyond the pale of most Europa games. In almost every case, players of Europa games are locked into preset courses of action before a single counter is lifted. This is not to say that Europa players are devoid of options - any player can inform you to the contrary - but rather that Europa players have a lack of national options.

The German player in Case White, for instance, can't decide upon a negotiated settlement before the invasion, nor can a player with Fire in the East and Near East decide to invade Turkey in order to outflank his opponent.

Nor can a Europa player, in general, decide upon national policy. Either national policy has already been set before the game begins, as in Case White, or the victory conditions reflect the political goals. There are numerous reasons for this, from a desire to reflect history to a concern for playability. Certainly an Italian player in Marita-Morkur would set different goals than the historical ones had he the choice.

This is not to say, however, that even on the level of national policy a Europa player is completely unable to make decisions. The possibility of invading Switzerland in Fall of France, or Vichy Syria in Western Desert, certainly falls into the realm of national policy, to at least a limited degree. Nevertheless, one would have to admit that the Europa system has not been designed to operate on such an elevated level.

The next highest level, then, is the area of strategy, the translation of political objectives into broad plans for military activity. Strategy can further be divided into Grand Strategy and Petit Strategy with no value judgments implied. Grand Strategy covers industrial mobilization, resource utilization, troop commitment and other nonbattlefront decisions that would enable a country to achieve its political goals.

Petit Strategy covers the use of the products of Grand Strategy to achieve those goals. The decisions in 1942 and 1944 by Germany to increase its industrial potential represent.

Grand Strategy; the Allied decision on a Second Front in France in 1944 represents Petit Strategy.

Europa allows players to make Petit Strategic decisions, but not Grand Strategic ones. Perhaps the foundation of Europa is the detailed OB, which informs players of reinforcements or withdrawals. Generally, no provision is given for the player to refuse to withdraw certain forces, or to voluntarily withdraw others. Nor are industrial or natural resources taken into account in the games, with the exception of the abstracted factory and oilfield rules in Scorched Earth and The Urals (and perhaps with good reason; I would pity the player who had to worry about his bauxite).

Petit Strategy, on the other hand, is closer to operations in nature, and as such, is more represented in the Europa games. The Europa games define themselves as being operational in scope (see Scorched Earth, p. 1), and their scale - divisions, regiments and battalions - gives credence to that claim. Nevertheless, as George Orwell might have said had he been a wargamer, some games are more operational than others.

Certainly Scorched Earth contains more than the purely operational decisions to make. On such a large scale and covering an extended period of time, the game allows players to make a number of decisions that reflect historical imperatives. Does one place the main effort in the north or in the south? Should the emphasis be on the destruction of enemy forces or the occupation of territory? What troops should be in Finland, etc?

This is not always the case in Europa games. Players do not always have the flexibility to make such decisions. The Allied player in Fall of France, for instance, has his strategy planned before the game starts; the French player must move his mobile divisions into Belgium to repel the supposed German main thrust. In general, though, Europameisters have the power to plan the campaign themselves, and this area, Petit Strategy, is the one most applicable to Europa.

There is one further area of strategy that cannot be overlooked in any discussion of any game, Europa or otherwise, and this is the area of Game Strategy. Gamers are certainly familiar with Game Tactics - in Europa this can range from factor counting (an odious and time consuming habit; I hope all gamers out there allow only limited inspection of stacks) to figuring out exactly how much AECA needs to be included to get the desired modifier and even to arranging air-to-air combat matches the best possible way.

Game Tactics range from the harmless and perfectly natural who wouldn't use combat engineers if a city had to be assaulted? - to horrible (people who optimize every single combat, and sometimes even write them down, are my personal pet peeve). The term rules lawyer has been invented for masters of Game Tactics; perhaps the better term ought to be rules sergeant.

Regardless of whether or not one is a user or abuser of Game Tactics, they are a part and parcel of every game - it is the nature of the beast. The more complicated the game, the more involved the Game Tactics will become, and Europa is a very complex game.

Game Strategy is similar to, but not the same as, Game Tactics. It is unlikely that "Slick and Sick Tricks" would ever expound upon an item of Game Strategy. Game Strategy - as opposed to strategy - arises from the the fact that games are simulations designed to portray various actual historical occurrences, and as simulations sometimes use artificial means to achieve their ends. Thus there sometimes arises a difference between "game goals' and the actual historical goals of the participants involved.

An example might make the idea of Game Strategy more clear: In Western Desert, the Axis player is awarded 30 victory points for every six- month period in which he is in control of Cyrenaica.

An Axis player on the retreat near the end of this six-month period might decide - and would be smart to do so - to fight fiercely, perhaps even sacrificing certain forces, for the turn or two required to rack up the victory points, following which the forces could retreat for as long as they wanted.

Does this equate historically? In general, no. Although one can make up historical rationales for hanging on as long as possible to this piece of land for that short time period, there is no historical equivalent. At the highest level of command, Hitler fought against any retreats whatsoever; lowerdown, Rommel was loathe to waste troops on a hopeless stand. But in game play - which is by definition artificial - the decision might make sense.

The Marita-Murkur victory conditions offer another case in point. Although there were historical conditions for invading Crete in 1941, the only game reason to invade the island is to avoid a tie, or to increase your victory level. Therefore, if the German player has been very successful he need not invade Crete at all - certainly a warping of the historical rationale for Operation Merkur.

It might seem that the existence of game strategies would be detrimental to a game or game system. To some extent this is true; the examples listed above show that such strategies might well produce ahistorical results.

On the other hand, a wargame that did not have game strategies - even very elementary ones - could hardly be considered a wargame. This is because game strategies unlike game tactics, which arise because of conditions in the rules - arise from victory conditions. If a game has no victory conditions, or if it merely had a referee who told the the players at the end who won, then players would not resort to using game strategies.

Likewise, if a player or players paid no attention whatsoever to victory conditions, then the significance of game strategies would largely diminish.

This, of course, is unlikely to occur. Virtually all people who play wargames competitively use the victory conditions of that game. Even people who prefer or resort to solitaire gaming usually use the victory conditions to measure how well each side performed. Therefore, the existence of game strategies is almost unavoidable. This should not cause too many problems - people who are used to the idea of hexagons and to the idea of "zones of control" ought to be able to handle this concept as well. And luckily for Europa's players, its games' victory conditions are usually such that game strategies are kept to a reasonable minimum.

Conclusion