Second Front has now been out for some time and, if you are like me and have been spending several hours a week on the game, you are about halfway done with punching out the counters. In case you've been hiding under a rock (or a copy of Case White) for the past few months, you won't have failed to notice that Second Front contains-to use the metric system- about umpty-jillion counters. Everything from assault gun battalions to armored divisions is represented in the game. No unit too large or too small.

And why shouldn't this be the case? After all, isn't the Order of Battle the item that is really at the heart of the Europa system? If the Order of Battle were a beer, then you could probably honestly say, it just doesn't get any better than this. It is practically impossible to calculate the number of man-hours of research and cogitation that went into developing the Order of Battle for Second Front. And Second Front's OB represents only the most recent result of a trend towards more and more accurate OBs. The force deployments of games like Drang Nach Osten are happily a thing of the past. More than any element in the game system itself--even the vaunted AEC-- it is the Orders of Battle that distinguish a Europa game from any other operational game on the same subject. And as far as it goes, hurrah for that.

But stop and think for a minute. Is there any way in which this fastidious attention to detail, this painstaking recreation of the arrival of every infantry brigade, every bicycle battalion, every Me109E air unit actually hurts realism, actually detracts from the realistic modelling of operational combat in World War II? I think there is, and that the weakness lies in the realm of reinforcements. To put it briefly and bluntly, reinforcements are too predictable and too programmatic.

Let me give you an example. In the game Western Desert, the Axis player receives a motorized infantry regiment and a motorized antitank battalion on the Feb II turn. The following turn, he receives a German Panzer division headquarters, a Panzer regiment, and a motorized heavy AA battalion. Two turns later more German units arrive, and so forth. Why does he receive those units? The reason is that because of the stunning success of the historical Wavell/O'Connor offensive (or the stunning defeat of the Graziani offensive; take your pick), Hitler and the German High Command felt the need to shore up the southern flank of the Axis with a few German units.

Fair enough, and why not? What's a division or two between friends? In the game, a competent Allied player should be able to inflict a reasonably large defeat upon the Italian forces, especially if he is familiar with the first-turn strategies outlined in the newsletter ETO (and probably overdue for a reprinting somewhere) by John Astell and others. The Axis player will more than likely be in dire need of some German forces come early 1941. Lucky for him: the OB provides them.

But let's take an alternative example. In game terms, let us assume that the Allied player is quite incompetent and that the Axis player is very cagey and experienced. A misguided initial Allied attack results in heavy Allied casualties as well as heavy Italian casualties. Tobruk manages to hold out against a weakened Allied force. The Italians, though not necessarily strong enough to take the offensive, are nonetheless considerably better off than they were historically. There is no Italian disaster in North Africa: it is essentially a stalemate, probably more costly for the Allies than the Axis.

Now what happens, though? Why Rommel and his pals start arriving in North Africa. Undeterred by or perhaps unaware of the fact that the current situation does not warrant a bucket-brigade corps on the northern shores of the Dark Continent, the Germans nevertheless clamber onto the docks of Benghazi or Tobruk. Soon the clanking of German armor can be heard near El Alamein, but Montgomery, alas, is nowhere in sight.

A happy ending for the Axis player, at least, and he well may feel that he deserved those German reinforcements. That success should be rewarded is not a bad motto to live by. Still, the unsettling fact remains that historically, had the Italians been able to hold their own, those German units would have been used somewhere else-the Balkans, perhaps, or held in readiness for the onslaught against the Soviet Union. The Germans didn't want to send units to North Africa, they felt they had to.

So somewhere, we discover, the game system has failed us. It has ceased to model historical reality or probability, to the extent that it ever did. The historical situation went one way; the game, like Robert Frost, took the road less traveled. But the reinforcements remained the same. A reinforcement conductor, somewhere, was asleep at the switch!

Let me hasten to admit, lest a brickbat or two be thrown at me, that Western Desert, or Europa games more generally, are hardly the only games in which this unfortunate phenomenon arises. Indeed, the vast majority of operational wargames suffer by the same deterministic schedule of reinforcements and withdrawals. In Fortress Europa the German and Allied players alike have a set reinforcement schedule that funnels reinforcements into the theater at just the times that they arrived historically.

In The Ardennes a similar situation arises. The 101st Airborne always arrives on December 18, no matter whether you play the game five, ten, or a hundred times.

Strategic games, you'll notice, don't have this problem, at least not usually. This is because strategic World War IIgames generally have some sort of production system, whether via BRPs as in Advanced Third Reich, or production spirals as in A World in Flames. Moreover, the players control all the theaters. Therefore, they can reinforce or weaken any theater they choose, as cautiously or crazily as they deem fit.

In operational games, even grand-operational games such as the larger Europa games, the players do not have such leeway. They are not "in charge," they cannot dispose of unlimited resources. Circumstances beyond their control dictate the use of forces elsewhere, to cope with other threats not represented by the game. Unfortunately for the Soviet player of Guderian's Blitzkrieg, there are other German units opposing him not represented directly in the game, which are using up Soviet resources in men and material. Too bad; it would be nice to have those units. But war is hell.

Still, it is one thing for a game like Balkan Front to dictate the pressing needs of places elsewhere and call for the rapid withdrawal of fighting forces, and quite another thing for a game like Scorched Earth to always have the Germans withdraw the Frundsberg Panzer Division on every Jun II 44 turn of every game.

Of course, it is always easier to complain about a problem than it is to "fix" it. The first thing that is needed is to very precisely to define the problem. And as far as the Europa games go, the problem is twofold:

1. Units always arrive as reinforcements at the same time, every game.
2. The same units always arrive as reinforcements.

Let's take the first problem first. Unit arrivals are too predictable. Let's take a completely hypothetical example to see where we stand. In the game Second Scorched Balkan Front, the 51st Hyperwaffen Regiment arrives as a July II reinforcement. The game designer, Gary Gee Astell, discovered that the unit was created in the spring of that year, and was deemed fit for duty in early summer. It was shipped off to the front at the beginning of July and arrived at the scene of the crime just in time for the July II reinforcement phase. Voila! A good bit of research leads to an accurate time of arrival.

On the other hand, this is a game, and Clausewitz's notion of friction should operate on pencil and paper war just as much as war of flesh and blood. Is there any particular reason why in a game on the subject the faithful 51st should arrive every July II? What if, this time around, it took the high command longer to equip the forming 51st? Or perhaps there was a shipping shortage? Why should everything automatically operate like clockwork?

The answer is, it shouldn't. Sometimes, even in Europa games, things don't appear on schedule. Take those German reinforcements in Western Desert that I mentioned above. I neglected to mention that although they appear at the same time every game, they don't necessarily get to the area of play at the same time every game. You see, they appear in Europe, but somehow they've got to get across the Mediterranean-and get by the dreaded Malta Table. The result is that some units show up on time, others are delayed, and some even buy the farm. This is not only a nice simulation of the effects of Malta upon the North African campaign, but also a good exarnple of the friction surrounding reinforcements that is usually not represented in Europa games. Aside from the companion game of Torch, how often is this type of friction applied to reinforcements?

If we are going to free ourselves from the bonds of constrictive Orders of Battle, we are simply going to have to design OBs that are more random. Paradoxically, only by having Orders of Battle less tied to the exact Wstorical forces can we have the flexibility to more accurately simulate the ebb and flow of battle. I would like to suggest a term for the sort of system I am proposing: a Reactive Order of Battle, or ROOB.

A ROOB would interact with the other game elements to an extent greater than the traditional order of battle. There are two important elements that should be considered in a ROOB: Conditional/Flexible Reinforcements and Unpredictable Reinforcements.

Conditional/Flexible Reinforcements are those forces which would arrive only in response to certain events or conditions. Most games, and Europa is no exception, usually have a conditional reinforcement or two. In Second Front, for instance, the German player can activate certain Wehrkreis units if the Allied player does specific things. However, by no means all of the possibilities for creating Conditional/Flexible Reinforcements have been exhausted. I would suggest that our current OBs be gone over with a fine-toothed comb for those reinforcements (and withdrawals) that are dependent upon conditional events. For instance, to return to that Western Desert example once again, why not change the reinforcements so that their arrival is contingent upon Italian performance? Once the Italians take 'x' amount of REs in losses, there is a certain chance per turn that the German reinforcements will begin arriving in three turns (some might argue that this would cause the Italians to throw away forces in an attempt to trigger German intervention, but this could be prevented by a change in the victory point table).

There are other situations in Western Desert--indeed, in most Europa games save the very shortest--where Conditional/Flexible Reinforcements could be used to good effect. An even more powerful tool, which can be coupled with Conditional/Flexible Reinforcements, is Unpredictable Reinforcements, a term I chose over "Random Reinforcements" because the latter suggests a lack of rhyme or reason, while the former represents more of a lack of control.

In short, Unpredictable Reinforcements means forces for which the time of arrival (or departare) or even the exact units involved, cannot be determined by the players in advance. Unpredictable Reinforcements are also an attempt to throw a curve ball to Prob1em Number Two, listed above, namely that the same units always arrive.

Let's take our mythical 51st Hyperwaffen Brigade, and transform it from a traditional July Il entrant into an Unpredictable Reinforcement. Step One: We get rid of the July II predictability by designating a range of possibilities for its arrival. Let's say there is a slight chance it will arrive early, a good chance that it will arrive as it did historically, and somewhat of a chance it will arrive late.

We can designate a die roll for the July I turn. On a roll of 1, the player gets the 51 st that turn. On a 2-4 it will arrive on the July II turn as it did historically. On a 5 it will arrive on the August I turn, and horror of horrors, on a 6 it won't show up until August II.

An alternative way of simulating a similar situation is to have the player roll a die on the July I turn, and if he rolls a one, can get the unit that turn. If he doesn't, he must wait until the next turn to roll a die. That time, on a 1-3, he'll get the unit. If not, the following turn a 1-5 will give him the prize. Failing that, the next turn the unit will automatically arrive. Both procedures (or other ones that imaginative players and designers can easily devise, such as the one Chris Riches penned for TEM#38/39) insure that the players will never really be sure when the 51st Hyperwaffen will show up.

Step Two forces us to ask the question, "Why this particular unit?" It so happens that four Hyperwaffen Brigades were raised that month, and three of them sent to other theatres. They weren't all identical; some were stronger than others. Why not allow any of those brigades to be sent to this particular front? It is not as if the player -- representing the theater commander -- should have omniscient knowledge of the strength and abilities of his reinforcements. So for Step Two we decide that a random Hyperwaffen Brigade be delivered to the player, instead of the 51st.

To go from facetiousness to reality, we see that one Europa game sets up a completely Unpredictable Reinforcement. Here I refer to Marita-Merkur, the original Europa game on the invasion of the Balkans.

In this game, it is possible for the Germans to lend aid to their Italian allies. If certain conditions are met, the Axis player rolls a die for the possibility of German assistance. Once it is determined that assistance may be lent, a second die is rolled. This second die roll determines what units may be sent to assist. Depending on the die roll, the result may be a mountain division, a light infantry division, an infantry division, or an infantry division plus an artillery unit. The Axis player has no way of predicting in advance whether the Italian player will get those reinforcements, nor exactly what those reinforcements will consist of. Sadly, some unpredictability was removed in Balkan Front when rules changes allowed the Axis player to pick and choose these reinforcements.

Other World War II games have also offered Unpredictable Reinforcements; one example is PanzerArmee Afrika, which offered the possibility of the introduction of units into North Africa which, historically, were not there (such as the First U.S. Armored Division). It is interesting to note that for both Merita-Merkur and PanzerArmee Afrika, the units that made up the Unpredictable Reinforcements in the game were units that were, essentially, hypothetical. In neither case did the designer make the conceptual leap to making historical units potentially unpredictable.

Some Orders of Battle are less suited for Unpredictable Reinforcements than others. For instance, tiny countries (Finland and Greece, for instance) offer the possibility of random times for the appearance of reinforcements, but not really the possibility of different reinforcements appearing. Variable reinforcements are much more feasible for those situations in which only part of a country's entire array of force is depicted in the game in question.

Many readers will no doubt by now have already realized that to design a complete ROOB would be a tremendous undertaking, especially for the monster games like Second Front or Scorched Earth. It would also slow down play tremendously to roll for the possible arrival of every one of twenty Red Army divisions in a given turn.

Nevertheless, even the introduction of a few ROOB elements would enhance unpredictability, decrease player omniscience, and increase historicity. Why should the Soviet Player be able to count on the arrival of the Second Front at the same time, every game of Scorched Earth. For that matter, why should the German player rest secure in the knowledge that his front will not be denuded of some very valuable units until June 1944?

The fact that both players can act on this knowledge and plan accordingly removes spontaneity and, paradoxically, historical accuracy from the game. Smaller games like Western Desert or Torch, with their small counter density, could actually be converted over to a ROOB in their entirety.

One other area where the ROOB should be considered seriously is in the area of scenarios, both for future games and in The Europa Magazine. Scenarios, since they are usually by definition smaller scale than the large games, are an especially inviting arena in which to test the concepts of ROOBs. Imagine the Leningrad: 1941 scenario if neither player was aware in advance of the nature or number of his reinforcements! ROOBs might also exist side- by-side with more traditional OBs, so that players could choose either one, depending upon their like or dislike of flexibility.

Perhaps I should conclude with the statement that this article has not been a wild clarion call for the utter abandonment of a principle that most Europa players hold dear, one that has existed now for decades. But perhaps this article can alert Europaphiles to the notion that there may in fact be different ways of portraying the arrival of reinforcements, and that these new ways may add the desired qualities of unpredictability and spontaneity to the game system. As the Europa system continues to evolve, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not its OB system should evolve as well.