That got your attention, didn't it?

First the guy slams Grand Europa, and now he's going to trash the whole system. Well, hold on to your word processors, folks, and read on, because believe it or not, I like Europa.

So do a lot of other people. Well, perhaps I should be more specific. A lot of people like a lot of parts of Europa. Few people, however, seem to like the whole thing. Europa seems to be a series born to be tinkered with. Those Europa enthusiasts who are only familiar with this magazine, and not an of those which have gone before, such as Bill Stone's newsletter, E.T.O., may not realize to what extent this is true. Garners who are familiar with the Europa material out there, however, are well aware of this tendency. Hell, they created it.

I have always been cognizant of the fact that many Europa gamers enjoy "messing with the system," (hereafter abbreviated as MWTS). I realize that I belong in a distinct minority because I prefer playing with "rules as written" (RAW). Well, okay, most of the rules as written. I did not realize until very recently, however, exactly how much of a minority I actually was.

I was brought to reality at the recent Origins and E-uropafest. Although unfortunately typical convention mess-ups made the Europafest somewhat less than ideal, the turn-out was still very large. Europafest was combined with Origins, creating a double draw, and since Origins was back on the East Coast, it was more accessible to more people than was Atlanta. Thus, there were more Europa enthusiasts than you could shake a pair of tweezers at.

And they all had a plan. The Europa players all had their rules modifications. For a minute there I thought rules changes were a necessity to get into the convention, so I hastily scribbled something down about the patrol rules. Luckily, they didn't prove necessary, although they were required to get a seat at the banquet.

You may think I'm exaggerating. Far from it. To start tamely, not a single Europa game that I witnessed being played at the convention used RAW. House rules of various sorts abounded. Okay, that's not too bad. There are a number of house rules that are eminently sensible, and if they increase your enjoyment of the game, who am I to complain?

But let's get on with some more egregious examples of MWTS. Not immune to the syndrome was my boss, Rick Gayler, who at a seminar announced the existence of a small coterie of Europa enthusiasts, including himself, who were dedicated to the proposition that not all Europa rules were equal, that in fact there were a couple which sort of stank and simply cried out for revising. However, the examples he gave were minor in extent, and generally involved those few rules that have suffered widespread disuse because of their problems, such as the patrol rule. Rick (and the accomplices he named, who included [cough, cough] a certain contributing editor) liked the major parts of the Europa system.

Not all attendees could say the same. They came to Origins like pilgrims to Mecca, from all directions and all corners of the globe. One can imagine a mystical voice speaking to John Astell about the Europa rules: "If you revise them, they will come."

One major example of MWTS was the lovechild of a group of West Toronto gamers that included among their number Trefor Thomas, Len Turkevics, Steve Miosich, and the otherwise perfectly respectable David Hughes.

Our northern neighbors decided to MWTS by devising a new combat system. According to the literature they distributed, repeated playings of FiTEISEITU led their group to believe that the games did not provide a "correct flavour" of casualties and combat flow, particularly in 1943. Similarly, playtests of Second Front did not give historical results for the campaign in Italy. No halfmeasures for this group, they took the bull by the horns and threw it out of the pasture.

The Toronto system suggests forgetting about a combat results table. Instead, combat is resolved by each side rolling a ten-sided die. The results, modified by terrain, air, AEC, etc., and multiplied by ten, are the percent of the rolling side's attack/defence strength inflicted on the opposing side. The Toronto players describe their system in a short, four-page draft which includes all the modifications, as well as an involved example.

Could this work? I don't know; they seem happy with it. While this would mean I would never again have to worry about rolling an NE (oops, sorry, an AS), there is something in me which waxes nostalgic about the combat results table. Not to mention that the combat system impinges upon every other single element of the Europa system.

Master Europa

The answer to that, then, is to change the whole system. This was the goal of another group of Europa players, led by Tom Johnson and Joe Hayes, who have completely rewritten all of Europa. Their rules, called Master Europa Rules include comprehensive rules for ground, naval, and air campaigns. Needless to say, they are huge.

And, as Tom Johnson told me as he used both hands to hand me a copy, "You can't start in the middle. You can't skim sections. You have to start at the beginning: the rules have all been changed."

Tom exaggerated for effect, a little anyway; the rules are in general very recognizable and in many cases substantially the same as RAW. However, when Tom and Joe MWTS, they don't do it in half measure. Master Europa bases the stacking limit on the number of REs in a hex, for instance, rather than the number of divisional and non-divisional units as in RAW. Like the Toronto group, the "Masters" could not avoid the temptation that changing the combat system provided. While the "Master Rules" have a combat results chart, it is somewhat different, with an additional result, the dreaded Attacker/Defender Quartered result.

The "Master Rules" also include the common house rule which Uses percentile dice to determine odds rounding.

Tom and Joe make other changes as well. Among other things, they drop the patrol rule entirely, they change the air-to-air combat table and the antiaircraft fire table, they allow only a certain percentage of air units in a hex to bomb their target, and they change the fortification rules. They also include "national rules" for a number of countries, which include specialized information.

All in all, not a bad job. Some of the changes they propose actually seem to make a great deal of common sense (the hardest type to find). On the other hand, they must have had a lot of free time on their hands, judging by the amount required simply to type the darned thing, much less devise it in the first place.

Soviet Asia

Tom and Joe don't take the prize when it comes to manhours, though. That Origins award goes to Dennis Dubberley, who waltzed in with Soviet Asia. This monsterpiece was a huge (tenmap) demonstration scenario of the 1945 Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The maps included Soviet Asia, Manchuria and Northern China, and the Japanese home islands. All of the maps were of professional quality and took, according to Dennis, about 35 man-hours each to produce. There were hundreds of nicely done counters, too, including a gratuitous mushroom-shaped cloud counter on a certain Japanese city.

Soviet Asia, as envisioned by Dennis, would use the Europa rules, but "fixed." You guessed it; Dennis wants to MWTS. Some of the changes he suggested were incredibly simple -- the "why on earth didn't they think of that years ago" variety -- others were altogether more sinister and obscure. But even Dennis-who himself was responsible for an official Europa title, The Urals, could not help but succumb to the siren call of MWTS.

The above examples were only some of the most visible examples at Origins, however.

Far more common were comments like, "Yeah, I left it at home, but I've got this great redesign of the armor effects system," or "Yeah, we play straight Europa, except we changed the air system around some. Oh, and we eliminate battalions." Several comments I heard during my very brief stint at manning the GRD booth amounted to: "Europa? Yeah, that was a great system, once we fixed it."

At the convention I got a chance to look at a submission sent to GRD, a proposed rules set for a Balkan partisan game. The rules were very detailed and well-thought-out, but the author could not resist tweaking elements of the system. Among the systems tweaked was, once again, the combat system; the author of these rules substituted a system of his own design, completely different from the one used for the past fifteen years.

The submission was from Russ Wynne, an Australian; they're even doing this on different continents.

I don't want any of the people whose names or ideas I have used above to get the idea that I am ridiculing them or their ideas, nor that my ribbing has been anything more than gentle. On the contrary, many of these people are rendering Europa a much appreciated service. They are in part responsible for what Europa is today; only with rigorous selfinspection can the system continue to grow and improve. Many of these proposed changes can be good rules drafts.

Supermarina II, for instance, an unofficial set of naval rules published in this magazine last issue for scrutiny and comment, came originally from the "Master Rules" set. Whether or not these rules ever become official, they have already provided an important service in opening up a forum for discussion. Supermarina IIBut even when rules modifications don't work, they are sometimes valuable. I have seen proposed changes for many rules that were far less realistic than the ones they sought to replace. However, the only way I could determine this was to ponder the intent and effect of the original rules. They made me question the foundations of the system, to consider elements not as rules of a game, but as interlocking parts of a sophisticated model. They have helped me understand how Europa works-and sometimes doesn't work-as a simulation.

Still, any sane person has to wonder when enough is enough. Arguing air ratings--whether or not a P-51 should be rated higher than a FW190--is one thing, arguing combat systems is another. I cannot help but feel sympathy for John Astell as he is confronted by the umpteenth gamer with a new (fill in the blank) system.

What's wrong with Europa?

Let's look at the major subsystems:

Movement

Europa uses a movement system that has been tested by hundreds of wargames. Advances in the state of the art suggest that perhaps the exploitation phase could be more sophisticated, with limited infantry movement, but just about everything else works fine. A reaction phase would be more realistic, but you couldn't insert one without changing every single other element about Europa. The two-tiered rail system has just been introduced, so it might well prove to have some bugs.

Combat

This seems to be people's favorite thing to change, but really, what's wrong with it? It somehow manages to simulate combat in such varied places as Russia, the Western Desert, France, and the Balkans remarkably well. It has been gradually improved over time, to boot.

There are probably endless minor things that you could add, such as the aforementioned percentile dice house rule, but these merely further refine the system.

Air

The air system has a few minor kinks; the patrol rule is my personal pet peeve. The way air units move, i.e., one at a time, is also decidedly unrealistic. However, the air system in Europa is probably the best air system in any operational level World War II game.

Naval

Well, we don't have one yet, do we? But in true Europa tinkering fashion, we have several unofficial and semiofficial systems, and many more proposals out there.

Other Systems

Ironically, the system that is perhaps the weakest system in Europa, the replacement system, gets absolutely no attention from players. The system is unstandardized and doesn't always accurately reflect the nature of both battlefield casualties and mobilization. MWTSers seem to be drawn to the more exciting fields of rules-writing.

Most of the other systems are reasonably well thought-out: engineering, supply, weather, etc. There is an ant problem, and paratroops still have kinks, too, and will, so long as they can be dropped practically anywhere. But there aren't really that many problems.

In fact, when you look at the entire system, you won't find that many problems. Certainly far fewer than any comparable games. Europa is well-designed; it has benefited from years of evolution, good designers, and input from hordes of playtesters and players. In many areas, those who MWTS mess with a system that simply isn't broken.

What is wrong with Europa? Sorry to disappoint anybody, but the answer is: not very much.