Dateline: Summer 1995
Location: War Room
Exercise: Grand Europa

It's coming soon to a hobby shop near you! In 1974 GDW released DNO/UNT and a dream. The dream was and still is to turn a monster game into something most players can only imagine: playing all of WWII at division level using the Europa system. Or something like that.

Well, that's all fine and good. Finding room in my house for a 6 x 8 foot table was easy - actually my table measures 6 x 13 feet to accommodate "War in the Desert." The table is in the basement of my house along with two other tables.

What's all this leading to?

Simple. How the hell are we going to play Grand Europa? As things stand now the present game of Scorched Earth my local group is playing started a year and a half ago and will probably continue for a couple more years!

Grand Europa may be played by groups of college kids on summer break, non-stop sixty-five hours a week. Or as I did while in the military - non-stop fifty hours a week while off duty against a group of local college kids. Well that was back in '74276 and the times they have changed. Today my principle FTF opponent is a few years older than my advanced 36 years. We get a player turn done every two weeks on average. Yeah, I know the math; it'll take as long to play the game as it did to fight the war.

Well, when I'm rich and famous I'll become a professional Grand Europa player and work (play) forty hours per week. So what this comes down to is finding the time and the locals willing to dedicate their wargaming lives to the dream. It ain't gonna happen folks! At least this ole boy thinks it won't. My wife would skin me alive if I were to have five or six guys living in my basement for the next five years just to play out one game of Grand Europa!

An average turn of SE takes one player from two to ten hours to finish. At Europafest I in Eau Clair we had planned for two hour time limits per turn, with thirty minutes for exploit. These time limits were based on four players per side. We came close.

Yet on a daily average during the Fest we completed only two full turns per day. After moving and watching someone move for twelve to sixteen hours it took more than a few beers to relieve the pounding in my head. And that's just to do SE conventionstyle, which has to be regarded as optimum performance for completing a GE move.

All this isn't meant to discourage the new player to Europa. Actually it's a backhanded compliment to the system. The amount of logistical planning which goes into each turn is proportional to how often you win. And Grand Europa will be king when it comes to logistical planning and time required for completing a single move.

Locally, new players are put on the Finnish front. The reasons are twofold: low counter density and maximum rule exposure. So while the main-front players are struggling to complete their front, the novice Finnish player can LOOK UP the answers to their rules questions. Grand Europa will be much the same, where experienced players will control the desert or the Ost Front while the novices will run lower intensity fronts.

What I'm leading up to is that assembling the players needed to play GE with the time available over the very long haul isn't going to be easy. Typically a group will need one British, one American, one Russian, one German, and several smaller nation players who will then become aligned Allied or Axis for a single game. So with only one to three players per major country, turns aren't going to move too quickly. The intensity of watching people play Grand Europa will rival that of watching the grass grow.

So who would watch for several hours across an expanse of maps and counters a group of other people completing a move? A lot of people. Europa play is prone to mistakes. While trying to keep odds in your head, it's very easy to make mistakes while moving. So many teams of players will insist on watching an opponent complete his move. Now take a typical SE turn and expand the time frame into a Grand Europa turn. No way is this boy going to spend ten hours making a move sitting on an old stool only to turn around and spend another ten hours watching someone else make a move!

Enter the computer

No, not computer Europa,'but a computer used to send your move in a few seconds across town or across the nation. First to your opponent's computer, and then to the gamemaster's. What the computer and a modem can do for Grand Europa is simple. They will alleviate all the negative points I've raised in this column.

How?

First, a data base can be used to store the move and hold the exact unit ID in the exact hex location in numerical sequence. If the 7th Panzer Division is in hex 2A:1430, it will show up before the 60th Motorized Infantry Division in hex 5B:2120. When the unit moves, the end hex location will be given, along with what activity the unit was up to during the move in the form of a note.

The note might look like this for a unit which starts the turn in 2A:4622: xrr, xxxaf; -> 2A:4624. Cryptic, but effective. What this says is that the unit broke the rail line in Orel, put three hits on the Orel airfield and then moved to 2A:4624 as its end hex location. The data base will contain every detail pertinent to each unit, which units are participating in overruns or combat, which hexes are controlled by your side, the supply status of unsupplied units, and repair/damage details.

The time required for doing this paperwork is equal to the time you would otherwise spend watching your opponent move. With the computer a player never needs to watch his opponent move.

The move is all there in black and white, including any illegal moves made. I was amazed when I first started playing by electronic mail (PBEM) at how many mistakes were being made by myself and my teammates in our national SE game covered in ETO. The process sure improved my command of the rules!

PBEM allows players without local opponents to play competitively and at a pace they can live with. Because PBEM doesn't rely on the mail for transmission, the amount of time needed to complete a turn is close to that of a FTF game. Taking the example above for the 7th Panzer and 60th Motorized Infantry Divisions, the data base can be sorted by a unit's end hex location after combat and exploit. This will allow a player to double-check unit placements by sequential hex location.

All units in a given hex will be listed together. One major advantage of the data base is in moving units. In a FTF game, opponents get a little excited when players suddenly realize a move isn't going to work and start returning units to their original hexes.

Although quite legal to do this, many players still cringe when the new move suddenly offers opportunities which may not have seemed possible at first glance. Using the data base in PBEM, if a move doesn't look right - change it - the original positions are all recorded. I've found this method to be useful in getting every drop of value from every unit on the map, especially when conducting a scorched earth withdrawal.

Better Match

Personally I believe FTF play is sloppier than PBEM for a couple of reasons. First, FTF play induces burn- out. The major units get moved, but the polish is missing. Players tend to gloss over the support units. Instead of putting every unit on the map to work or in a position to get something done the next turn, after four or five hours of moving I tend to forget about the odd engineer or flak unit here and there. Especially so when doing the move at a friend's house. The desire to get to the combat sometimes cuts short the move. Not so with PBEM, because even after the move has been sent out electronically your opponent will still have to execute the move and ensure its legality. During this grace period you may double-check your move, making sure everything is just right.

A second reason PBEM yields a better played match than FTF becomes noticeable during combat. Many players work out the odds FTF without thinking of the results. In PBEM you have to declare which units will die in an exchange and which units will advance after combat..

This may not seem to be a big deal, but it does affect some attacks. Those players out there who criticize opponents for writing down combat odds before resolving the battles seem odd to me anyway. In a given combat phase the number of attacks can easily exceed fifty. My opponent is entitled to count out before the air phase what the possible odds are likely to be in any given combat. And rightly so, especially if the number of air factors sent to a given hex may greatly affect the odds. If nothing is documented before hand, only a fool would resolve patrol attacks and interceptions without knowing what might happen in combat.

Here is where PBEM shines, because this work is already done. Locally we write out the FTF combats anyway as a courtesy. We tried a few turns without the declarations of combat and air factors needed to raise the odds; it took several hours just to get to combat as each defender had to spend the time necessary trying to figure out where the attacks were likely to strike.

Granted, if SEwere played precisely by the rules as written, a defender wouldn't know where the attacks were going in until all the enemy air units had moved one at a time and all patrol attacks had been completed. Well, as I said before, when I'm rich and famous I'll have the time, but for now I look for ways to streamline some aspects of play (such as paying RPs for increasing rail cap as the move goes on rather than during the initial phase).

So for those out there with a limited desire for live-in opponents or who lack for local opponents, and for those out there willing to spend the time needed for top-level play; the computer connection to Europa is for you! Presently those of us on GEnie are beginning to work out the details for a PBEM match. As we move closer to the dream, the players will be ready!