By now many of you must have already received your copy of Balkan Front, and perhaps even played it. The game contains a small gem, however, that is easily overlooked: the Plan Y scenario, detailing a hypothetical invasion of Yugoslavia by Italy.

The Italian Army lunges into Yugoslavia in a... Blitzkrieg?

I don't care for "alternative history" games, especially those involving NATO, nukes and Nazis. However, the Plan Y scenario in Balkan Front presents a situation which could have plausibly occurred Italy had long coveted much of Yugoslavia. Moreover, an Italian invasion of Yugoslavia was certainly no less feasible than the actual invasion of Greece. The Plan Y scenario is attractive on other levels as well. It has the smallest map area of any of the Europa games, lending to ease of play, and uses relatively few counters. In addition, it lets players use counters infrequently used in Europa, the Bulgarians and Yugoslavs (each destined to fall by the wayside quickly in the regular scenarios of Balkan Front), and also lets the Italians go on an extended offensive - a very rare occurrence.

Last, but certainly not least, the Plan Y scenario presents a very interesting strategic situation. The first time I played the game the Italians failed miserably. This irritated me, as I thought the Italians should have fared better, so I decided to write an article outlining optional rules to make the game more balanced.

Before doing this, I decided to play the game again, and in doing so showed myself the danger of leaping to conclusions. With a firmer grasp of Italian strategic goals, I led the Italians to a relatively quick triumph over Yugoslavia. This experience, of course, led me to pay more attention to Yugoslav defense, which led me to more playing, and so on.

The final result of this repeated playing was that I discovered that the Plan Y scenario is actually wellbalanced and very interesting. In addition, the notes I took during all this playing seemed to form the basis of an article on strategy for the scenario. And since I'm the guy who writes the strategy articles, I decided to put these scribblings to use.

What follows, therefore, is a strategic analysis of the Plan Y scenario, including evaluations of opposing forces, victory conditions, and strategic/operational options. Additionally, I have included a number of historically plausible optional rules for both sides to use. I should note that solitaire gaming formed the basis of my opinions on this scenario and so this article could conceivably be skewed to my own gaming prejudices. Moreover, this article does not take optional rules into consideration, since they are, of course, optional.

Plan Y? Because We Like It Italian Invasion of Yugoslavia 1939

Introduction
The Armies: Axis and Yugoslav
Victory
Axis Strategy
Yugoslav Strategy
Options