Game Designers' Workshop (1978)
Design: Frank A. Chadwick
Art Direction: Paul R. Banner

Almost a year ago, Game Designers' Workshop came out with Operation Crusader, a "monster" game covering the British offensive in North Africa in the winter of 1941. Since North Africa has always been a favorite subject of mine, I rushed to get a copy so I could find out how the game worked.

After 12 hours or so of drudgery trying to find out how the game worked, and becoming more convinced with every hour that it didn't work at all, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered a brilliant design where I'd come to expect another Global War.

I have some complaints, but they can all be summarized under "hard to learn." The rest is roses.

But first the thorns. The 32 pages of rules are organized by topic rather than according to the sequence of play. Section V "contains a number of special rules which do not fit precisely into any of the previous categories"; in other words, "we couldn't work these rules in where they belonged, so here they are. Be sure to remember them when you're supposed to." The charts that come with the game give a new meaning to the term "playing aids" - "it's all here, except for some of the most important things you're least likely to remember!" For example, individual battles are far more likely to be resolved by one side or the other routing, yet the morale rules are never summarized. I found it necessary to construct my own Morale Chart, giving all the circumstances in which morale must be checked, the effects of failing a morale check, when and where units can recover, and the various modifiers affecting morale - after converting them all to a system affecting the die roll only. In the game, some plus modifiers are applied to the die roll, making the unit more likely to rout, while others are added to the unit's printed morale rating, making it less likely to rout. In my system all plus modifiers make a unit more likely to break, all minus modifiers reduce this risk. The potential for confusion can be reduced by adding all modifiers to the die roll as I do. Yet another problem: only four sentences are used to describe zones of control; admirable brevity, but the question as to whether or not a unit can move directly from one enemy zone of control to another was not resolved until the latest errata sheet, released in April 1979.

The secret to overcoming these not- insignificant obstacles is to begin with the Brevity scenario, which covers 35 hours/turns of the British attack (115-16 May 1941) on the Axis positions southwest of Bardia and Halfaya Pass. Aghast at the paucity of counters in this scenario, and in a $30 game to boot, I foolishly began with the Battleaxe scenario, with four times as many. The command control rules, I discovered, are very realistic. They impose a limit on the number of columns (battlegroups would be more exact; at most, they are a battalion reinforced by two companies, acting as a unit) that a player can effectively command. The simultaneous movement system requires a player to plot a turn in advance; i.e., before the current turn's movement is executed.

Engaged columns (those adjacent to the enemy) and columns stacked with leader counters are excepted from this restriction, and may plot for the current turn. The result, besides the expected unexpected meeting engagements, is that both players are frequently presented with golden opportunities, ripe plums to be snatched, if only: 1. they could figure out where all their units will be when they receive the orders to snatch (next turn); 2. they could project the tactical situation as those orders are executed (in two turns); and 3. if only navigation in the desert were less the hit and (mostly) miss proposition that it is in Crusader. If it sounds clumsy, so is battle. It was the elder von Moltke, I think, who observed: "plans are great, but they seldom survive contact with the enemy."

The resulting realism is startling. Highway to the Reich avoided the typical "last two minutes of the Super Bowl" syndrome - there's no tomorrow, so why the hell keep anything in reserve - by making disengagement costly. Crusader accomplishes the same end by allotting reserves their traditional functions. Once the battlelines are formed in the sharp, isolated actions characteristic of the fighting in the Western Desert, the individual engagement will usually be decided by a well-positioned uncommitted column entering the fray from flank or rear, and victory goes, as Napoleon predicted, to the side that last commits its reserve. For the realism produced by its movement system alone, Crusader is a landmark game, reproducing the principle effects of the fog of war, without requiring an umpire.

The combat and supply systems are equally realistic and innovative. Tacspeil, one of the longest running professional battalion level wargames, uses the concepts of mode (or for mations) and something called the index of combat effectiveness. Highway to the Reich was the first hobby wargame to make use of these concepts in a similar fashion, and Crusader improves on that commendable development. It provides eight modes to HTTR's three, and makes the effectiveness ratings of the latter seem childish in their simplicity by comparison. (Try closeassaulting an artillery battery with an infantry regiment in HTTR and you'll see what I mean.)

The Crusader modes are:

1. Bounding (a personal favorite), or more properly, advance by bounds, where half the force is halted in firing positions prepared to support the moving element.

2. Travelling, where the entire force is moving in cross-country formation with advance and flank guards.

3. Road, or trolling for ambush.

4. Assault, or move into their hex.

5. Stationary, or face the front three hexes.

6. Entering Laager, or circle the kampfwagons.

7. Laagered, or face 360 degrees.

8. Breaking Laager, or hope they're really gone.

Each unit's effectiveness is rated according to its ability to fire against armored targets (an anti-tank factor), against unarmored units in adjacent hexes (conventional fire), and against unarmored units in the same hex (assault fire). The proper fire factor is multiplied by the unit's current strength and divided by the target's defense factor to determine the odds ford the attack. Resulting casualties are in percentages; a 12 point unit taking 10% casualties loses one strength point and checks morale; a 4 point unit also taking 10% losses will lose no strength points, but still checks morale.

A Percentage Loss Chart to convert casualty percentages to SP losses according to the unit's strength is provided. I could easily spend another page praising the supply and tank recovery/repair rules, which make headquarters important for realistic reasons. I haven't had a chance to play with the air rules yet; they're used only in the third scenario, which looks like the Early Pacific Battles of land games, requiring 8 or so players. I could go on, but there's not much point in it.

For 8 years PanzerBlitz dominated the tactical level of the hobby until Squad Leader came along. For 5 years DNO/UNT has been the PanzerBlitz of the operational level. Now, appropriately, the Workshop has topped its own classic. Even though its scale is quite different, with hourly turns and 11/2 mile hexes, Crusader is to DNO what Squad Leader is to PanzerBlitz. Had it been a $10, onemap portrayal of the Brevity and Battleaxe operations, as it easily might have been, it would probably outsell DNO and be "game of the year." As it is, a five-map monster costing $30, and up against the solitaire player's understandable reluctance to buy a game that requires him to plot against himself, it will probably have to settle for a "Charlie" or two. It's the premier North Africa game and the most innovative World War II land combat system since Highway to the Reich.

Mike Colleran is the editor of Swabbers, an amateur wargaming magazine published 6 times a year. He is currently working on a multi-player game of the Battleaxe scenario of Crusader. Swabbers is available from Mike; write to Swabbers, Box 44, Tiffin, IA 52340. A one-year subscription, six issues, costs $4. Be sure to tell him where you heard about it.

More Crusader

Spotlight Review
New Morale Chart
On the Road to Tobruk
Engineering the Fall of Tobruk