The rules to Marita-Merkur became very dated as each new Europa game appeared, bringing refinements and new flourishes to the system. I have long wanted to update them, and that impulse led to Balkan Front -- an update and redesign of the rules, maps, counters, OBs, charts, box style, you name it. So much for small beginnings.

I scanned through Marita-Merkur's rules at the start of the project, put them aside, and got out my Scorched Earth files. Together with salient rules under development for Second Front and a fresh study of the Balkan campaigns, the Scorched Earth rules became the core of the Balkan Front rules. This doesn't mean every rule in BF is the same as SE, for there are many changes, and it doesn't mean that every change is applicable back to SE. The final rules are specialized to cover the Balkan campaigns in detail, and various details are specific only here. Also, the SE rules were too complex for the needs of BF. SE covers the largest ground war in history -- millions of men, thousands of tanks, and thousands of aircraft fighting a protracted war for control of the world's largest country. While BF was no less a vital struggle for survival, the involved forces are less by an order of magnitude of three than those in SE. Accordingly, I simplified the SE rules where possible to get a detailed but not over-burdened set of rules for the Balkan campaign. I think I achieved my goal, and I'll find out for sure once the Europa gamers play and comment on the game.

The following notes highlight various aspects of the rules. Since there's been so much in print on Europa rules, I'll concentrate on what's new or distinctive in the BF rules.

3A1: Divisional Units The "divisional grouping" makes its Europa debut. In World War II, many nations fielded division-sized formations without calling them divisions. Also, several nations raised many small forces, such as security or local defense forces, which are difficult to portray at their regimental and battalion sizes -- they all run close to zero in strength and result in a prohibitive number of counters.

Fortunately, these countries often had administrative headquarters in nominal control of these forces. Even though they weren't operational field headquarters, they could serve as places to factor in all the low-level forces. I've always been uneasy to show these formations as true divisions, since they were not -- I don't want to risk Europa's reputation for historical accuracy by adding "divisions" in this manner. Shelby Stanton came to the rescue when he showed me how the U.S. Army handled this problem, which we adopted for use on these counters.

3B: Sides The game splits the combatants neatly into two sides, Axis and Allies, and places the players as fictional commanders-in-chief of the military forces of each side. This is very convenient for a two-player game, but the real situation was a bit more complicated. In the field, the troops of nations on each side might readily cooperate with one another, but the same was less true at high levels. Italy ran its own war separate from Germany for as long as it could -- until the Italian failures in North Africa and the Balkans prompted ever-increasing German aid, intervention and control.

Greece rightly suspected that much of the offered British aid was intended to make trouble for the Axis more than it was to help Greece. Accordingly, Greece tried to juggle British aid by accepting enough to help them fight the Italians without provoking the Germans to intervene. In the end, Greece had little hope of success: the mere possibility of the British getting into the Balkans forced Germany's intervention, and Britain realistically could not send sufficient forces to defend Greece from Germany.

Rather than mandating a separate player for each country (which is impractical) or adding heavy-handed cooperation rules (which are never fun to use), BF builds in these considerations a different way. The Axis player controls all Axis forces, but calling in the Germans comes at a cost -- the bigger the commitment, the greater the cost. This cost reflects both the loss of Italian prestige for turning to the Germans, as well as the military cost to Germany of having its resources diverted from the planned invasion of the USSR. Likewise, the Allied player controls all Allied forces, but bringing in all British aid too quickly can result in strong German forces deploying into Albania very quickly.

5: Zones of Control. Having a unit lose its ZOC temporarily if it undertakes certain actions is a bit messy. I went with it as it allowed a major improvement to the administrative movement rule. Prior games restricted units' admin. movement to territory friendly to their side at the start of their player turn. Otherwise, a unit's ZOC would gain control of territory as the unit moved, thus subverting the admin. movement rule. Now, a unit simply moves in any friendly territory during admin. movement, as it can no longer grab up new territory as it moves. As a bonus, tweaking the ZOC this way improves the system in other areas. Units moving by rail lose their ZOCs, which prevents other control-of-territory abuses.

6: Movement Europa veterans will notice that the terrain effects chart uses a 6 MP cost in place of the standard "1/2 M + 1" (one half the movement rating plus 1 MP) of other games. This speeds up play by removing a mathematical calculation previously required for movement. If you like this change, let me know, as I'm willing to do this for the other Europa games, too.

10: Armor Effects For simplicity, units have a single AEC rating, rather than separate AECA and AECD ratings. (AECA and AECD are still present, based on the AEC rating when attacking or defending.) While I intend this only for BF, I find it's easy to remember and use, with little loss of accuracy. If you want, try it out in your next game of Scorched Earth. (For units with different AECA and AECD ratings, use the higher of the two as the AEC rating.) If enough people like it, I'm willing to make this standard.

AEC now has partial effects in poor weather. This will become a standard Europa rule, but don't retrofit it to the existing games yet, as it doesn't provide enough information on other weather conditions and weather effects to be universal.

14A1: Construction Engineers Unlike Scorched Earth, there are no resource points in this game, as I felt the complexities of that rule weren't worth the bother. Instead, I've imposed building limits, which approach this consideration from a different angle.

14A2: Combat Engineers Note that I've standardized combat engineer effects at a 1/7 proportion, rather than 1/5. This makes them a bit more flexible and brings the proportion in line with the minimum AEC/ATEC proportion.

20F: Bombing I've finally broken down to demands and added a 1 column on the bombing table. Don't go wild.

Also, air unit and airbase bombing have been consolidated into one mission, which has been in testing in other games for some time. Ben Knight originally suggested this improvement -- thanks, Ben.

Naval interdiction bombing represents strikes on patrolling Royal Navy warships. This is where the Royal Navy took a bad drubbing -- the Luftwaffe sank or damaged many ships. If the Allied player is too careless with naval interdiction, he can get hit hard, too.

22B: Air Combat Resolution I like the air combat system that's evolved in Europa. Despite requiring a lot of dice rolling, the differential system clearly shows the abilities of the various aircraft models. Its weak point, alas, has been how it handles several inferior fighters ganging up against one superior fighter -- quantity vs. quality. In Fire in the East quality had too big an edge, then quantity got overcompensated in Scorched Earth. BF, I hope, finally fixes the problem. Through the sequencing of fire and application of results, the side with quantity has a chance to make its numbers felt, without automatically overwhelming the other side.

26: Naval Rules I originally had three sea zones -- the Ionian was the third -- but I found it added extra complications to the game for only a minor positive effect. Thus, I merged it into the Aegean, while keeping the latter's name unchanged. ( "Aegean/Ionian" seemed much too clumsy.)

28: Nations This rule incorporates the various national considerations and international relationships of the region. It's a bit complex, but much less so than the historical web of Balkan politics and great power ambitions -- I've simplified things where I could.

A concept of inertia lurks behind many of the rules here: "A Balkan nation in neutrality tends to remain in neutrality." There are no spontaneous events, such as Yugoslavia or Bulgaria joining one side or the other for no compelling reason. The government of Yugoslavia desperately wanted to stay neutral, as it had little to gain and much to lose by going to war. German pressure eventually overcame the government's reluctance to commit itself, and Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact. This made it nominally part of the Axis, although it was not required to go to war with any Allied nation. The signing directly led to the anti-German coup by the Yugoslav military that toppled the government and provoked the German invasion.

Even Bulgaria slipped into the war almost inadvertently. Although Bulgaria laid claim to substantial areas in all of its neighbors (Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey), the Second Balkan War in 1912 and the First World War taught Bulgaria that war was an efficient way to lose territory, not gain it. German pressure and promises finally brought Bulgaria into the Axis fold. In the game, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia will remain neutral unless the Axis player provides the compelling reasons for them to act.

For the Axis, the restricted operational areas of various nations reflect the limited objectives of those nations. By the way, Hungary and Romania technically are not part of the Axis at the start of the game, as both countries signed the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis, during November 1940. Since this was the final, formal step of a process begun much earlier and outside the scope of the game, I've ignored it.

The rules for German assistance and intervention reflect Germany's conflicting needs to keep the Balkans from getting out of control while limiting direct German involvement there. Germany is preparing for "Barbarossa," its invasion of the Soviet Union. This invasion required massive resources and preparations, and any diversion to the Balkans could seriously affect its chances of success. Yet, the Germans hardly dared to let the Balkans fester once the Italians had stirred things up -- if they can't keep the British off the continent before "Barbarossa," then they won't have the forces to spare to do it later.

31: Victory Writing a good victory rule is almost always a tough job. At one level, a victory rule is unnecessary: play the game, and you'll have a good idea when it's over whether or not you did well and who "won." (If you feel the issue is still in doubt, then bend the rules and keep playing.) If you're one of those people who can play this way, then toss out the victory rule and have fun.

At another level, the victory rule is necessary because it guides players on how to play the game. It helps defines objectives, and its positive and negative victory point awards build in the larger consequences of players' actions. All this means a victory rule is unlikely to be very simple, and indeed BF's is not.

In BF the victory rule covers the direct effects and potential consequences of the campaign. The Axis player is faced with the contradictory need to eliminate any Allied threat in the Balkans through conquest of all hostile nations, while minimizing the resources committed to this task. If the hostile nations aren't conquered, then Britain can gain a secure base on the continent of Europe, with the eventual possibility of breaking out into vital areas. If the campaign lasts too long, then the German invasion of the Soviet Union would be seriously delayed, and the Soviets probably would suffer fewer losses than they did. (While some historians argue that "Barbarossa" was indeed delayed by the Balkan campaign, the late and poor spring weather in eastern Europe seems to be the major factor delaying the start of the invasion.)

The Allied player must balance the chance to save Greece and cause problems for the Axis in the Balkans with the need to conserve limited British resources.

Juggling historical considerations with play ones further complicates the task of judging victory. The victory conditions must reflect true historical factors: If you play the game and win by the rules, this win has to represent a real victory had history actually mirrored your game. (For example, if in Grand Europa the German player doesn't lose Berlin until June 1945, he may have done better than history but he wouldn't have "won" World War II!) Alas, few WWII campaigns are balanced -- almost always one side has an advantage that strongly helps them to victory. Yet, often the best gaming situations are those where both sides have good chances to win.

There is no easy answer to this dilemma. One solution is to have two sets of victory conditions, historical and player. Player victory defines who wins the game and historical victory defines who actually won the campaign. This is very unsatisfying. Which one is the real one? Who really wins? Should you maximize your play to win a player victory, and to hell with historical considerations? In the end, two ways to determine victory cause confusion and dilute the history in the game.

Another solution, the one I used, is to write historical victory conditions, compensating the weaker side as much as can be justified. That way, you have just one set of victory conditions, and it relates to what actually occurred. One side may have an advantage, but remember that most of the fun in the game comes from the play and not from winning or losing. If you really want to determine a player victory, then play two games, swapping sides after the first. If the same player wins both games, he gets the player victory. If both players each win a game, then the player who won the game with the highest VP total gets the player victory.

32: Optional Rules Most of the optional rules are minor in importance to the game (which is why they're optional!): 32A1-3, 5; 32B, 32C; 32D. Rule 32A4 and 6 are useful, and 32E (Greek Morale) is recommended. I almost made Greek Morale a standard rule, but it imposes the type of restrictions that are least satisfying to play. Rule 32F, which releases more British troops to enter play in the event of Rommel not attacking in Africa, covers a hypothetical situation. If you feel inclined to try it, you and your opponent should agree to it before choosing sides, as few Axis players will agree to it. If it's too late, then here's another form of it you can use: In the Allied initial phase of Mar I 41, the Allied player rolls one die before receiving reinforcements.

• On a roll of 1 or 2, Rommel does not launch a major attack in Africa. All British reinforcements are received, including the optional ones listed on May I 41.
• On a roll of 3 or 4, Rommel launches a major attack in Africa. All regular British reinforcements are received, but the May I 41 optional reinforcements are not.
• On a roll of 5 or 6, Rommel launches a major attack in Africa. The British misjudge it seriously, lose more forces than they did historically, and must commit more troops to save Egypt. No British reinforcements are received for the rest of the game, except for the conditional reinforcements, which are still available.

More Balkan Front Designer's Notes

Dedication and Acknowledgements
Maps and Counters
Rules
Orders of Battle
Q&A
Errata Sheet