My father (Don) introduced me (Dave) to wargames when Afrika Korps was the only North African game in town. Turnabout being fair play, I ordered him a copy of Afrika. He and my brother dug into the game right away, so I had a large and varied store of ideas to draw from in doing an article on the Italian phase of the campaign game. This article does not "crack the code" of Afrika or even pretend to be the definitive word on early game strategy. Rather, I'll share some of my Dad's observations (in italics) and the results I got when I applied them to the game. And although the game is essentially operational, not tactical, I win also add a few points about tactics and the way that Afrika's scale gives it a significantly different feel from from its Russian cousin, Stalingrad Pocket.

March, Eat, March, Eat ...

I like the aggressive Italian policy. In chess (another of Dad's absorbing passtimes), a gambit is an opening strategy by which a player risks material in order to gain an advantage in time or space. In the first six turns of Afrika, Italian material is easy to lose. With careful, unambitious play, the Axis player can avoid big trouble with the Italian Surrender Rule. But with some daring---the willingness to risk big losses----the Axis can take lots of ground before the Allies can mount strong opposition.

East of Bardia, the terrain gets narrow. When you get a chance to take ground, TAKE IT. If you lose a few divisions, so what?

Here's a bloodthirsty point: you need more troops to take ground than to defend your gains, so why not send more Italians into combat than you can afford to supply?

In the player's notes, Dean is of two minds about the fullblooded Italian onslaught. He points out that it's a good strategy so long as you can keep the troops fed, and then hints that the Allied player should tempt his opponent to overextend the Italians. Understandably, the Axis player will be wary, perhaps too wary. The ten Wiation is to bunch up with the Italians around your supply. But don't do it. Why not? Keep in mind that one Supply Point will sustain, at most, 4 Italian infantry divisions plus two smaller units. Plan accordingly, or you'll end up marching or shipping units out to starve somewhere. Oops.

Move your supplies around, and don't worry too much about using them up or even losing them. Keep in mind your actual supply needs and forget about any extra. Italian units sitting in Tripoli eating SPs will accomplish nothing. If you plan to march them onto the map, try trucking out some SPs into prepositioned dumps along the way, and keep the marching groups small enough to consume just one SP per turn. Remember too that the further you march from the west edge, the more truck points you need to keep a given reinforcement group alive.

An overland offensive, then, is difficult to push all the way to the combat zone east of Bardia. One way to ease the crunch is the Trento truck option. With that extra truck point, you can move 2 Supply Points 20MPs each.

I find I would much rather have that truck capacity than a motorized division. The Axis player also needs to make the best use coastal shipping. The ltalians need to move supplies as fast as possible, by truck and ship. Keep the supply cycle moving, and don't let supply points sit for a turn. To get this sort of optimal supply throughput, take another look at that simple but significant part of the Coastal Shipping rule (1.9a) that allows flexible combinations of land and sea movement. Trucking and shipping, though they look separate on the surface, are interlinked. The person who is skillful at combining these capabilities will win the game. Let's say the Axis is pushing the Allies back onto map B. Bardia's port capacity is inadequate at best. But with one shipping point plus one truck point, the Axis can float one SP into Tobruk and, assuming the Italians own the coast road, truck it far enough to feed units attacking Mersa Matruh. With good planning to combine trucking, shipping, and movement, the Axis can get units out there into ports and supply them.

Springtime for Hitler

Mersa Matruh is a good objective for the Italians. An Axis win by sudden death is rare. For that matter, early victory like this feels a historical. Maybe hindsight makes us unlikely to imagine an Italian victory in North Africa. It would have been a long shot, as the game makes clear. But Mersa Matruh is not an overly ambitious objective, and it's a good stepping-stone to victory. The port there is crummy, but every potential Supply Point is precious. At this point in the game, it's too early to think of holding the town to prevent an Allies win. But the Axis need to be playing in their opponent's back yard to maintain the credible threat of sudden death victory. The challenge in doing so is operating at the end of a stretched logistical tether. Mersa Matruh's port may supply the last, badly needed SP, and by holding it the Axis player automatically lengthens the Allies supply lines for any westward drive. You could do worse than be holding Mersa Matruh when the Afrika Korps shows up.

When the Germans get on the map, BOY do they move fast. As in chess, the whole point of the Italian gambit is to win the opening, not the whole game. Hit hard, even if a few critical combats call for more units than the Axis can supply. Clear map A and consolidate in the good defensive terrain of the El Alamein/Alam Haifa area. Pile in enough supply to last through turn 6 and hunker down. The Allies will be coming in force. But if Il Duce's boys can hand Der Furher's star performer a solid positional advantage, dominance of Map A and some key parts of Map B, Rommel should be able to call the shots, for a while at least. The downside of winning the Italian gambit is that the Axis will be operating far from Tripoli, while the Allies will be able to push supplies and reinforcements into the front line the same turn they arrive.

Then again, the downside of losing the gambit is worse: lots of Italians in the dead box but no territorial gains. More on this aspect in my sample game.

The Commonwealth Response

Say you're playing the Allies and you see the Italian Gambit coming at you. Your set-up looks rather weak, but you have a good supply of leg infantry coming as reinforcements. The British 7th Armoured has lots of set-up latitude, but I'd be conservative with it. If you use it to screen, the division won't survive long enough to make decent counterattacks. The Allies can move fast, but they can't afford to do so. Considering your turn I situation, your first job is to fight again another day, a day when combat losses and supply constraints have weakened the Italians, while your troops are thicker on the ground. Given the balance of forces and the sudden death victory conditions, the Allies should not start running around like the Rat Patrol. Then again, if the Italians are making a strong push, you don't need to be so aggressive. The way to defeat the Italian gambit is to be conservative, steady, and clever. Preserving and strengthening your forces, wait for the right moment to strike a big blow and unhinge your opponent's plans.

If you're playing the Allies, don't forget things. Don't get lazy. For example, the Allies have only one air point, which seems an almost insignificant resource when used for a single column shift or a mediocre bombardment. What the hell are you going to do with it? Barrage a port. if you're lucky, you can make things pretty miserable for the Axis. And how! A hit on Tobruk or Bardia at the right time can make some Italians evaporate. If the Axis player captures Mersa Matruh, he won't be foolish enough to trust in a lucky port capacity roll to keep the garrison supplied. But he's just as bad off if he can't get enough supply trucked over from his other ports.

The Allied player has to make the best of all his small advantages. Don't forget that you can rebuild :hose dead guys, especially dead British armour. Most of all, squeeze all the advantage you can out of the supply system. The Axis player is well aware that of his need for optimal supply handling, but the Allies might tend to forget the possibilizies of shipping. The guy who's the better quartermaster will probably win-even the Allies. Spread those supplies out and be ready to exploit. If you're lazy and keep your dumps in Alexandria, you pass up possible opportunities. It's easy enough to supply troops defending the Mersa Matruh area from dumps in Alexandria. And knowing how hungry the Italians are, you might want to keep your dumps back to guard against their capture. But by pushing SPs toward the front, you increase the range, and therefore the threat, of your mobile units. In the sample game I provide for this article, I enabled the 7th Armoured to turn a local advantage into a decisive counter strike by positioning SPs to support a deep exploitation-phase strike.

Tactics School

In the opening of Stalingrad Pocket the Romanians have to hold a broad front against slow-moving Soviet forces, so it makes sense for the Romanians to stack their divisions and use an interlocking ZOC deployment. Even if the Soviet armor does infiltrate between Romani an-occupied hexes, it will be difficult to supply, so any breakthrough will be limited, a threat to the front line but not to the rear areas. In Afrika the situation is reversed. Some of the best places to defend are the historical choke points with difficult terrain and a narrow frontage. But the attacker has some highly mobile units which, once they ooze through your front-line ZOCs, can drive deep. Follow-on units can lay a "carpet" through those ZOCs to allow a supply trace-and even trucked supply points-to sustain the blitzing units.

On defense, unlearn your SP habits and take a cue from Guderian's Blitzkrieg: if you want to hold a hex, garrison it. At least that way the guy will have to fight to dislodge you. But don't spread your units thin, or the other guy will break through with trivial overruns. Setup some units in traditional interlocking-ZOC position behind the line to bog down exploiting units. Italian and Commonwealth infantry divisions are good for holding aline or holding open the shoulders of a breakthrough, use mobile units to exploit through holes or to counterattack. The short scenarios on El Alamein are a good classroom for learning these tactics.

Attacking in Afrika is fun. Admitting that he tends toward conservative play, Dad says you have to be more free-wheeling. A conservative-style gamer will find the game hard to win. One daring tactical idea is to use exploitation-capable Italians to set up a "checkerboard" of ZOCs behind British lines to cut their supplies and slow them down. I made a variation on this trick work once. See my sample game, below, for how a high-mobility Italian stack gummed up the Allied works for a while.

In this game ZOCs have interesting effects. Each game turn represents a month, not mere days as in Stalingrad Pocket, and this choice of map and time scales emphasizes the open, sweeping feel of the North African campaign. Given the high movement rates of most units, ZOCs are a much flimsier barrier to movement than in most ZOC-based games. On the other hand, an unnegated EZOC is an absolute barrier to supply trace and truck movement. Unless the other guy throws up a wall of units anchored on impassible terrain, you can run all over the place. But using that high mobility and keeping your troops supplied calls for some fancy footwork and careful coordination of units, truck points, and shipping capacity. It's a game of movement and supply, and of allocating your supply. Mobility is a force multiplier, not because (as in GB) a higher movement allowance enables more overruns. It doesn't. But a highly mobile unit projects the threat of overrun much further, perhaps even into the opponent's soft underbelly: his dumps, his roads, and his ports.

Mind you, just about every unit in the game poses an overrun threat to the enemy front line. Figure A shows an Italian division poking through an EZOC and blasting a weak victim. (By the way, these illustrations show Axis units in gray, Allies in white, movement with thin arrows, overruns with hollow arrows, and regular combat with fat black arrows.) Follow-on units can open a supply line to this unit, which may be part of a big attack on the Allied infantry stack in the Combat Phase. Given the same sort of opportunity, a fast unit can skip the front-line combat and go for the other guy's logistical jugular, as illustrated in Figure B. If the target stack were a few MPs further away-too far away to supply the Allied units shown--the German motorized infantry would merely have to wait for the combat phase. Of course, they had better capture some of that supply, unless the Axis player has had the foresight to move up units to negate EZOCs and then truck through an SP.

Now let's say that, having looked at these examples, the other guy knows better than to leave empty hexes in his line. Rommel can help you break through the crust and exploit deep since he enables even units embedded in EZOCs to use exploitation movement The only consideration slowing down the breakthrough in Figure C is that old logistical tether. Remember, keeping SPs near the front can extend your range in the Exploitation Phase.

Most attacks have to succeed without Rommel's help. But the sequence of play itself helps the attacker. If you manage your forces properly, keeping a good number of units free of EZOCs and organizing your stacks, you can hit a hex three times in a row before the other guy can counterattack or even redeploy. The Axis units in Figure D gang up and use overruns plus regular combat to put their targets in double jeopardy. By not advancing after combat, the panzer division stays free for the exploitation phase.

How do you defend against such tactics? Remember that the examples above show what happens when coordinated attacks work right. Maybe the attacker will roll an inconclusive A1D1 or even suffer a bloody repulse. But you need not, and should not, trust to luck. As I mentioned above, some units positioned behind your front, with interlocking ZOCs, can bog down a breakthrough and make exploiting units very difficult to supply (and therefore easier to kill). General Colin Powell said of another desert opponent: "First we're going to cut him off, and then we're going to kill him." Well, if you can do the first to the Italians, the second is automatic. Second, remember that in mobile warfare, the most elegant defense is a sharp counterattack. If, flushed with victory, your opponent gets sloppy in the Exploitation Phase and fans out too much, find the weak points in his deployment and smash them. Remember, now it's your turn to run up to three attacks in a row.

A good defense has to be durable to take repeated poundings. Figure D shows that a thin line (1 unit per hex) is not much good. Neither, for that matter, is a weakly held box. Despite the D x2 benefit, a box full of wimps is not difficult to crack. You're wasting the SP it cost to build a box if you don't put inadequate strength. And if you build that box where you don't want to give ground, you'll need troops enough to survive taking the no-retreat option.

Boxes and cities, however, provide some protection against overruns. My pictures show attacks through perfectly clear terrain. The lesson to the defender: use terrain to your advantage. Escarpments are great for canalizing the enemy's attack and protecting your flanks. But it's not fun defending with your back up against an escarpment hexside. Mountain, rough, ridges, and wadis are wonderful. Sure, these terrain types give decent defensive benefits, but best of all, they protect against overruns. Use that terrain to deny your enemy CRT dice rolls. If he can hit you only once, he will kill fewer steps and he won't get very far before you have a chance to react. The best CRT modifier of all is not being attacked.

A similar idea applies when defending those all-important cities. Garrison the city, to be sure, and build a box if it lacks printed fortifications, but also deploy a ring of defenders outside the city to deny as many attacks as possible against the city hex itself. Make the other guy use up his steps and his attacking opportunities righting over clear terrain instead of pounding on your favorite port. Keeping his artillery out of bombardment range is a good idea too. Make him bleed for that objective, and maybe by the time he gets through the outer ring, his force will be too weak to do anything but die against your strong stack with its D x4 modifier.

Sample Game

Make no mistake, the Italian gambit can succeed. But let me relate the course of a solitaire game in which this strategy cost the Axis both ground and casualties, if only so you'll get a clear picture of the risks involved.

The Allies set up the 7th Armoured all in one hex for survivability. Therefore, nothing but a Nile delta hexside stood between Alexandria and the Italian Babini brigade plus the Maletti group on Turn 1. The Italians made a straight-ahead rush for Mersa Matruh with their forces on the Egyptian border; units further west consolidated to garrison ports and share supply efficiently. The Babin Waletti stack made a swing around the Allies' right flank, but, declining to commit suicide attacking Alexandria, used the "short hook" to stay within supply range. When the 7th Armoured rolled a lousy overrun, it failed to break out of the Italian envelopment. The Babini/Maletti force remained in position and cut the supply line from Alexandria to Mersa Matruh. Foot soldiers from both sides traded step losses around that town. The trouble was, the Brits rolled a zero port capacity for Mersa Matruh, so ammo and rations grew scarce for the defenders. They had to rely on a relief attempt by reinforcements from Alexandria.

Meanwhile, the Italians had a hard time maintaining the momentum of their first-turn strike because they were coordinating supply and unit groups to make sure everyone got fed. Shipping and port capacity were adequate, so long as some units hung back in the Tobruk area. I could have sent more units to the front, had I been willing to let them starve off after one turn of combat. That option is not as crazy as it sounds, if the fighting around Mersa Matruh is difficult. As it was, the Italians did take Mersa Matruh on Turn 3. In their following player-turn, the Allies finally destroyed the Babini/ Maleni stack and so gained a little elbow room. More importantly, they used that one air point to get a hit on the Tobruk port knocking its capacity down to zero after the Turn 4 Axis port capacity roll. Jolly good show!

Turn 4 was the turning point forthe Italians' fortunes. With no port capacity east of Benghazi, supplies were scarce. And in my eagerness to damage the Allies and take ground, I had spread some Axis forces out too far to make optimal use of my remaining supply points. Whole divisions ceased to be, about doubling the Axis casualty rate for the game in one fell swoop. The Allies then sought to magnify this disaster by cutting off and killing the remaining Italian force, which was still pretty considerable in terms of steps remaining. While the 7th Armoured swung around behind the Italians, infiltrated some ZOCs and wiped out an artillery park (3 units), the RAF bombed Mersa Matruh. A frontal assault against hex 2.17 was a bloody failure, but the Italians were still cut off, for supply purposes, by the Allies' ZOCs. I had pushed supply forward to sustain the British mobile units, and in the Exploitation Phase the good old 7th Armoured swung further west (to A54.19), threatening to bag a few more enemy units.

The port capacity roll for Mersa Matruh on Turn 5 was a 5, but a bombardment hit brought the capacity down to zero. The best the Axis could do was to ship one SP to Tobruk. The dilemma was whether to truck it, through a leaky British encirclement to the Mersa Matruh defenders and so let the forces in the Bardia/Tobruk area starve, or to pull back from the hard-won Mersa Matruh. The Axis opted to retreat, since the odds of keeping an isolated garrison alive in Mersa Matruh were next to nil. Trying to hold that gain would probably have cost the Axis Bardia and Tobruk, and the guy who has Tobruk will probably tie or win,- the guy who doesn't have it will probably lose. The Axis consolidated as well as possible on Bardia. Meanwhile, the forces left in Mersa Matruh, written off as goners in the supply phase, made a suicide breakout attempt. The attack was a bloody but futile 1:1 shot against the 14/70th Divsion and the Poles.

On Turn 6 the Italians were hunkering down on their start line, having suffered more casualties than they inflicted. They had played their gambit and lost. Kicking the ashes of their enemy's failure, the Allies combined some powerful Combat-Phase attacks with a dramatic Exploitation-Phase overrun by the fresh 2nd Armoured to take Bardia. Che mala fortuna! In the end, the Allies had suffered bad losses in the 7th Armoured and 4th Indian, while the surviving Italians comprised only a few infantry divisions, most of the Ariete Division, and a handful of artillery and AT battalions.

Luck, Skill, and Risk

Now it may seem that the Italian gambit came apart in this game because of a few unlucky port capacity rolls. Actually, the combination of an aggressive Italian posture, some poor luck, and some astute Allied action--port bombardment and manoeuvre against the Italians' immediate rear area-was what made the Axis bite the dust. Some gamers might complain that a small number of die rolls, those for Axis port capacity and coastal shipping, have a disproportionately great effect on the game's outcome. After all, a couple of bad rolls can wipe out the Italian army, right?

Well, the Axis player can work to minimize this danger, but only at the price of moving slowly enough to keep surplus supply near all his units for a rainy day. The Axis might try the "delayed Italian gambit'' in which he stocks up and pre-positions supply for a turn or two before launching his offensive. But by the time he jumps off, the Allies win be considerably stronger. I don't deny the strong random element injected by the supply rules. My point is that the Axis player has to gamble big if he wants to win big in the Italian phase of the game. If an early advantage is not important to you, then try a conservative approach and wait for the surrender rule to lift and the Afrika Korps to come charging over the hill. But an early Italian offensive will certainly lead to a more Free-wheeling opening. Win or lose, the Italian gambit is dramatic.