Totaler Krieg WWII boardgame Review by Russ Lockwood

First off, Games magazine named this one of about a half dozen best wargames of the year. What do they know? As it turns out: a lot, and too little. Secondly, it's taken us a year to crank out this review, mostly because it took so long to get three experienced wargamers to be able to meet and play. You see, this is a long game and takes a long time to play. And while not a complex game per se, it has a significant complexities to warrant considerable rule-book flipping. And thirdly, some of the rules and mechanisms are so damn clever, Totaler Krieg is quite impressive--but not so impressive that the players were clamoring for a replay. Short Version The short version is that this game rewards those who put in the time to learn and regularly play it, and I want to emphasize regularly. For hard core boardgamers who love WWII, this is a must buy. For more casual players, well, I offer less enthusiasm. Long Version Now let me begin at the beginning. Totaler Krieg contains a pair of 22x34" paper maps, 560 counters, 153 cards, 10 sheets, and two rules books. The hex map is functional with each hex about 60 miles across and each turn 30 or 60 days. Counters represent corps and armies, plus specialist HQs, air forces, navies, and so on. So far, so normal. The map: The swamps of Holland meet the Ardenne forest of Belgium and the Alps of many nations. Everything else is clear...or water. Green boxed cities (london, Paris, etc) represent strategic victory point hexes. The Strategic Cards represent various strategic options available to the player. You choose to play one on seasonal turns, and cleverly, the game forces you to select a card in advance, play a few turns, and then use the card. Thinking a head is a must--excellent mechanic. Turns are almost the usual re-inforcement, move, and combat sequence, with the cards affecting the flow. For example, certain cards give you more re-inforcements than others. Otehr cards allow you to take an additional combat segment. Still other cards are only allowed when certain conditions apply, for example "little war" versus "total war." Now, various rules prove to be cumbersome. It took us about an hour of careful reading to figure out how to launch an amphibious assault with paradrop support. We spent copious amounts of time flipping throughthe rules regarding minor country replacements and re-inforcements. the Force Pool confounded us at times. And so on. It's not that each rule is complex (indeed, the amphibious rule is deucedly clever), but that there are so many of them, and in som nay individual parts, and that rules and examples are scattered through both rulebooks, that making sense of them takes time. And if you don't play regularly, you'll find that you'll have to refresh your brain RAM each time. Cards (from top): Western Allies, German, Soviet. Dates at bottom were when they were historically "played," although you are free to play them anytime certain conditions are met. And yet, despite these criticisms, it seems to work, well, mostly OK. Yes, that's kind of a waffle, but in fits and starts we slogged our way through. Germany can overrun minor countries without too much trouble, while a united Britain and France can cause considerable combat consternation. And best of all, the card selection means you can alter your strategies. A Game One especially cool aspect is the chart-driven set up "Dice of Decision" for you to recreate the political chaos of the 20s and 30s. And I mean chaos. Anything goes. So we tested it to find out. We rolled lots of dice, consulted charts, and figured out what happened to Germany after WWI. Boy, were we surprised! Italy turned Communist and became a minor Soviet ally. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, and Turkey became German minor allies. Some minor country in between USSR and Turkey became a Western ally, as did Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Turkey declared war on France's Syrian colony (but after massive rules flipping we found that it was a special type of geographical/political region and couldn't be invaded without total war declaration, so Turkey went after that little Western democracy instead. Hungary and Poland declared war on Czechoslovakia, but were rebuffed outside Prague. France and Portugal decalred war on Spain and eventually captured it. The USSR grabbed the Baltic States and half of Poland. Then the Germans invaded and took Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia. The USSR was in the process of bashing Turkey. Then the Germans attacked France, overrunning the Netherlands and most of Belgium, but shifting French forces returned from now conquered Spain and though the French bent, they did not break in 1940--making it safely to the mud season of the late fall. Quite a year! That's where we called the game. It was pretty obvious that without Italy, Germany was in no position to threaten France or North Africa, and could not arm fast enough to knock out France as Britain put everything into an expanded BEF. A seclection of counters includes the RAF, Italian Navy, US A-bomb, French Maginot Line, and various countries' armor and infantry troops. All told, we spent 15-16 hours to do a game year in, well, about a year of real year. It was tough to get the same trio together more than once every 3 months, but if you could play once a week for an evening of 3-4 hours, you'd probably be able to do the six-year war in about 60 hours or so. Would We Set This Up Again? I suppose this is the big question, and the three of us gave a real guarded "yes." I say guarded because we all saw potential, but the time required pretty much precludes us doing this again. The re-learning curve is still pretty steep, but again, I figure if you play once a week, you'd probably be able to get a year done in about 10 hours, not the 15-16 we spent. So, if we would spend either a solid weekend gaming , then Totaler Krieg would be an option. Since we couldn't recall a recent time that we did this, I fear Totaler Krieg is destined for a sideline role due to our casual wargaming status. That's a shame, for some of the mechanisms are clever and Totaler Krieg deserves more time. Hard core gamers, or perhaps a dedicated cadre of solo gamers, will undoubtedly give it the time it needs, and be the better for it. Back to Historical Game Review List Back to Master Game Review List Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com