GR/D has opened the long-awaited Second Front! With initial work begun in 1987, and design in earnest underway in 1989, Second Front must have had one of the longest development periods of any commercial wargame.

Over the next few issues of the magazine, I plan to cover the nuts and bolts behind the research, design, and development of the game.

Cut Rules

In the course of designing a Europa game, I typically test out more rules that those which get published. Among many reasons for cutting a rule, one is that the cut rule adds to the complexity of the game more than it adds to the simulation value. Second Front was no exception-if anything, I may not have cut enough! Rules cut for this reason in Second Front include:

Carpet Bombing of Cities:

If a dot or major city hex is the target of a carpet bombing mission (Rule 26C2d), then the hex is affected for the remainder of the player turn as follows: units that enter a carpetbombed dot or major-city hex, through movement in the exploitation phase, must immediately cease movement (may not spend further MPs) for the remainder of the phase.

Note: High-intensity bombing of cities created such devastation that it significantly impeded the advance of ground troops. However, for game purposes, this rule had little practical effect, as the general effects of devastation (no advance after combat into any carpet-bombed hex, triple movement costs in the exploitation phase) were sufficient without the need to introduce another case to remember.

Allied Strategic Basing in France:

Allied strategic air forces in the ETO (Rule 26C1) may have their bases placed in France, once the following conditions are met: 1) There are no Axis units in regular supply on maps 26 and 27, and 2) There are no Axis units in regular supply in France, Belgium, or Luxembourg. Place a base in France similar to the way a base is placed in Italy. The first time the Allied player places a strategic air force's base in France, he must spend 15 resource points (to build the infrastructure necessary to support massive strategic air operations in France). These resources points must be in France, unisolated.

Note: This rule attempted to show that Allied strategic air forces could and possible would have eventually started using bases in France to bomb Germany. In play, however, it was almost always worth keeping the bases in Britain and saving the resource points for other uses.

Allied Co-Operation Additions

(Rule 43E): 1) South African air units may not operate outside the MTO. 2) From Mar 144 on, Allied Italian fighters may not fly bombing missions against target hexes in Italy.

Note: The Allied co-operation rule was a distillation of the many squabblings, misunderstandings, and rivalries among the Allies. The above two effects just barely missed the cut for the rule. Both codify historical effects/events, but both made little or no worthwhile difference to the play of the game.

Axis Co-Operation

(no rule in SF): An Axis cooperation rule, which divided Axis forces in contingents and then imposed penalties for intercontingent operations (as per the Allies) will eventually appear in Europa. The only significant difference with the Allied rule is that the German contingent may operate with any other Axis contingent without penalty.

Note: In Second Front, the only contingents would be German, Italian, and RSI Italian. With the German- contingent exemption, this meant that the rule would have no effect (since it is impossible to have the Italian contingent and the RSI Italian contingent in play at the same time). Elsewhere in Europa, this rule will have significance. For example, in FitE/SE, each national force will be a contingent, and thus penalties would occur for Italian-Romanian co-operation.

German Force Differentiation:

For replacement purposes, treat Eastern Troop forces and German Army foreign contingents as their own nationalities, separate from all other German forces.

Note: While this is a valid historical distinctionGerman recruits from Bavaria, for example, were extremely unlikely to be used to replace losses in an Azeri Eastern Troops unit-it has no significant impact on play.

Incremental Construction of Temporary Airfields.

When building a temporary airfield (Rule 14AI), a construction unit may build it incrementally:

1) It may spend 2 MPs and build a temporary airfield with a capacity of 1. Place a temporary airfield marker in the hex and place two hits on it to show that its capacity is 1.

2) It may spend 4 MPs and build a temporary airfield with a capacity of 2. Place a temporary airfield marker in the hex and place one hit on it to show that its capacity is 2.

Once built at a capacity of 1 or 2, the temporary airfield may be built up to its standard capacity of 3 through the airbase repair rules (Rule 14A1).

Note: While this rule is occasionally useful in games with low-unit densities, such as Western Desert, it is trivial in almost all cases in games with lots of units. There's about 200 units that have construction ability in Second Front, so guess which category this game falls in!

Additional Air Unit Rules:

1) All code S, V, and M air units have their bombing strengths halved when not flying naval-unit bombing missions.

2) Allied P-47s, P-38s, and P-5 Is are limited to a range of 16 hexes (or their printed movement rating, whichever is less) when flying bombing missions.

3) Only a Halfx C air unit may tow a Hamilcar glider.

Note: None of these were judged significant enough to be included in the game.

Some Commonly Asked Questions

The following questions and observations often came up during the playtest:

The weather table lists both "snow" and "winter" weather What's the difference?

Snow is fairly obvious-significant snow cover on the ground, cold temperatures, and fairly frequent snow storms. In Europa territory, these conditions occur most often in northern and eastern Europe during the winter months. The "winter" weather condition covers typical western European winter conditions: rainy, muddy weather with occasional frost or snowy spells, and snow in the mountains.

The rules state that Italy joins the Allies upon surrender Actually, Italy fought as a co-belligerent, as the Allied nations refused to let Italy join them directly.

Yes. This was a significant historical distinction (for political reasons), but it is trivial for game purposes' Although nominally a separate co-belligerent at war with Germany, in practice the forces of the legitimate Italian government operated in support of and under control of Allied forces.

Also, isn't "RSI Italian" redundant? The "I" in "RSI" stands for Italian.

Yes, but it makes things exceedingly clear to phrase it that way. "RSI" means the Italian Social Republic, which was a fascist puppet state set up in Northern Italy once the legitimate Italian government surrendered to the Allies. I needed a way to differentiate between the two types of Italian forces, and this seemed the best way. The RSI couldn't simple be called "Axis Italian" or "Fascist Italian," since the pre-surrender legitimate government was also both Axis and Fascist. Calling them "Republican Italian" is confusing, since you'd think "republicans" would be on the Allied side, not the Axis-besides, the republic was a republic only in name, not reality. "RS Italian" could have worked, but it looks rather ugly, since the abbreviation was always "RSI."

Do RSI Italian forces remain in play even after all of Italy has been overrun by the Allies?

Yes. Remember, the RSI was a puppet government, with the Germans running things behind the scenes, so the RSI government actually mattered little to its forces in the field. Also, many soldiers in the RSI forces were pro-Axis extremists, who feared what would happen to them should they surrender.

In planning an airborne operation (Rule 24C), such as an eight-regiment drop, may various components of a special operation be postponed or canceled without having to scrap the entire operation?

A strict reading of the planning rule reveals that each unit is planned separately and thus can be postponed or canceled by itself.

In port destruction (Rule 30M), does a port take damage if the Allies walk into an unoccupied but Axis- owned port?

You bet. The Germans had port destruction preparations and detachments all over the place to prevent the Allies from unexpectedly grabbing a port.

Is there a limit to the number of naval units that can be stacked in a hex?

Theoretically? Sure. A (sea) hex is well over 6 billion square feet in extent. Generously assuming that the average ship takes up 100 feet by 50 feet, you could physically fit well over I million ships in the hex. OK, that's just parking them there, so let's say with sufficient navigational controls a ship needs 100 times its area to be able to maneuver: 10,000 ships. This is still pretty tight, but giving 1,000 times the space still yields 1,000 ships per hex, so for practical effects we can ignore naval stacking.

Is there a limit to the number of ground units that can be put in an overstack?

An answer similar to the one above suggests itself. There's some theoretically maximum limit of 11 packing them in" and there's some practical limit if you leave enough space for them to move around and whatnot. However, the practical limit is high enough that we can ignore it. If you put your entire ground forces in an overstack, you'd be stretching things, but in practical play things like that rarely happen (and rarely matter if they do-OK, the entire US Army is now in an overstack; now what are you going to do?). Adding a rule to catch the extremely occasional rules abuse is hardly worth forcing players to count overstack REs all the time to make sure things are legal.

Will GR/D attempt to put out some Play-by-Mail rules for Second Front? It is very obvious that SFs Rules-as-Written will not work for PBM.

GR/D intends to produce Play-by-Mail instructions for Second Front. This is scheduled as part of "Dispatches," the Europa PBM kit now undergoing final development.