To: Brian Adams

Re: The article "On the Horns of a Dilemma" and Africa Orientali in TEM #36. Don't give up on the arcane and obscure in Europa--it is alive and well in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan!

Even as we speak an Italian infantry group with a small motorized component has moved hundreds of miles south of Cairo and seized Aswan. An Indian and South African infantry corps holds a line across the ancient Nile River 110 miles (seven hexes) north of the 2nd Cataract at Wadi Halfa as a steady stream of reinforcements arrive at Port Sudan. The buildup has begun for the counterstroke that will drive Fascism out of the delta once and for all.

Fantasy? Not at all. For six months my opponent and I have been playing our War in the Desert campaign using two maps of the Sudan that link WitD to Africa Orientali.

Let me back up (about two and a half years) and explain. My friend and I are both veteran Europa players and, like Brian Adams, love the exotic, especially in the African and Mid-Eastern theaters where we game most often. This was our third campaign in the Western Desert and we agreed to include Torch, The Near East module, and several home-brewed rules and ideas we've read in TEM.

The game started badly for the Allies (yours truly) and soon got worse. By April of 1941 the British 8th Army had been annihilated outside of Bardia just east of Tobruk. Port Suez was captured, the 4th Indian Division was bottled up in Alexandria and most of the Delta was being overrun. One turn later Alexandria fell to a gutsy 2:1 assault that shook the balance of power all the way from Ankara to Tehran to Johannesburg.

A more disheartened (or sensible) player would have thrown in the towel, but I knew the British would have carried on. My opponent Don McCue, an archivist for the Los Angeles Library System and an impeccable foe, agreed to join me in researching what would have transpired if the British had been wiped out in the Delta. He began work on Turkey, Russia and Iran while I researched Syria and Iraq.

As we fought the Iraqi Revolt scenario and our research progressed, two major concepts emerged:

(1) Hitler's dream of Rommel coming up out of Egypt to meet Army Group South in the Caucasus was a possibility, but by no means a foregone conclusion, even given the decisive victory in the Delta. There would be many obstacles to overcome such as distance, time, the desert and a growing Allied army in Baghdad.

(2) In the event of a military collapse in Egypt, the British High Command had indeed planned and prepared for a strategic withdrawal not to Basra in the Persian Gulf, but up the Nile River to Khartoum. Suddenly the sleepy backwater of the Sudan would become the scene of one of the first and biggest Allied counteroffensives of the war.

Think of it! This is the land where Rudyard Kipling found 'Gunga Din,' where General Gordon fell to the fanatic hordes of the Mahdi Revolt of 1885, and where Kitchener avenged him 13 years later using the railroad and the machine gun. The land in which a young Lt. Winston Churchill would write his first book, entitled The River War.

The region is loaded with history. I convinced Don we needed to open up this theater as I believed the British would never have just 'left' that area. His response was, "Fine... you make the maps."

So I began a two-year journey into truly arcane references and maps of the region. I collected old maps, naval charts and magazine articles as my friend scoured the library system for any related information. The result was the production of two maps using the Europa scale from the southern edge of WitD map 19 to the Ethiopian border. These maps contain great terrain features like the Nile River itself and ancient names like Aswan and Luxor.

I also developed a 10-page set of rules which take into account the special conditions of the area. The rules enhance play and are easy to understand. For instance, I gave Port Sudan major port status and the country a rail capacity of 5. (Port Sudan had more shipping in 1936 than Massawa and was a far more modern facility.)

We discovered historical 'surprises' in this backwater too numerous to mention, but here are two tidbits. For you AO fans, there was no continuous rail line from Ethiopia to Alexandria in 1941, so you'll have to think twice about using rail between the two points. For my fellow fans of WitD, have you ever wondered if a sweep around the south side of the Qattara Depression to flank El Alamein was possible? Rommel thought so and stationed a recon unit at the Oasis of Farafurah, roughly 280 miles south of El Alamein to warn of such an attempt by Montgomery. (The Oasis was the very same place used as a winter resort by Cleopatra. As I said.. loaded with history.) Our new module makes a southern sweep difficult, but not impossible.

As you can guess by now my friend and I have had a 'splendid little war.' It is now the Aug I 41 turn. In other sectors the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions are now only 150 miles northwest of Baghdad, but with little infantry or air support. They are facing a dug-in infantry corps with plenty of fighter cover. Turkey has sent a few divisions, but only for the garrisoning of the now-abandoned oil fields of Kirkuk and Mosul. Imperial Iranian forces have lost their nerve in the face of a combined Soviet-Anglo invasion and the southern lend-lease line to Russia looks secured.

But wait... what's this... a failed die roll on a political table! Turkey, no longer constrained by British naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and under increased pressure from Berlin, launches an all-out invasion of the Caucasus! All this because of an Allied collapse in Egypt? You bet. Think about it long enough and you'll begin to see why.

In respect to Brian Adam's last thoughts on East Africa; I too long for a Collector Series title covering this area of the Red Sea. I'll bet I'm not the first Allied player to lose Egypt to the dreaded panzers. I now appeal to all those who, after losing the Nile Delta as I did, would like a second crack at Rommel. Write in. If there is enough interest maybe TEM will provide the space to share more of the research my partner and I have done.