By the time you read this, the new OCS rules (version 2.0) will be on the streets with the game Enemy at the Gates. Players found numerous rules to abuse in the original version (surrounding a dump instead of capturing it to keep it from hopping back to the enemy, for instance). Thus, besides a general cleaning-out of abuses, some new Concepts make their appearance. These concepts might cause gamers to pause. The new ideas run counter to the image of war (and play techniques) presented in most games: the supply costs of movement (fuel) and of combat, Admittedly, the latter is not new to the series. It originally existed in watered down form, but has been given new life and greater meaning.

The Cost of Movement

Virtually all wargames allow players to scoot units about as if the real commanders could move for the sake of movement any time they wanted. (An occasional game inflicts fatigue and stragglers on movement, or uses some ungodly, unplayable rules like Campaign for North Africa. In the OCS v2.0, fuel costs prohibit even the smallest movements by motorized or mechanized units unless you pay the correct fuel amount first. Players must take great care to move their units where they think they will need them. Only a fool would try the moth-like unit movements players commonly do in other games. Players scuttling back and forth in response to the smallest enemy movements is completely unrealistic. A Panzer Division cannot afford to, as Wellington put it, "run about like a wet hen."

The game makes no allowance for any sort of proportional fuel payment (move 1/4 the MA, pay 1/4 the fuel cost) and should not. Again, this is the result of the wargamer's sense of complete control. Moving a mobile division even a small distance is a major undertaking and one cannot accomplish it with the precise accountability gamers think they should be able to use. Some gamers move all their forces any time they want simply because they can. Real commanders cannot do this. Players may now find times when they would like to move a little, but cannot because they must conserve supplies for something more important.

The fuel costs do not apply to those units moving with leg movement points. Players can still play with them the usual way. The point of the revisions is to inhibit the willy-nilly movement of mobile forces (the gas-guzzlers) in the game, I am sure some will point out that in the leg moving units there are numerous vehicles, etc. "Shouldn't they pay for fuel, too?" I do not want the game to grow out of control and become as tedious as CNA. My answer is "Yes. But not in this game. "

The Cost of Combat

In most games, all units may attack if they are next to the enemy. In the OCS vI.0, units could attack with only a modest expense in combat supply. The cost was so modest that it was most efficient to use an entire corps to attack some poor little unit; the attackers could get an exploit result allowing them even more attacks in the Exploitation Phase. Even with the rather paltry supply expended on combat in OCS v 1.0, players found they could not attack everywhere they wanted; if they attacked all they could, they rapidly ran out of energy. This trait is stronger and more severe in the version 2.0.

Players have found the cheapest and easiest way to deal with the enemy is to kill him. This is an approach not borne out in real life, the inverse is. Resources spent on active combat operations (men, ammunition, equipment) never really return to the spending side in terms of the gains. If there is more fighting, there is more resource wastage. The least efficient way to deal with the enemy is to attack him to death.

In most games, apart from attacker losses (if any), there is no resource expenditure when units fight. So, why not fight all the time? This leads to another case of doing something just because you can. It also fuels peculiar calculations of those who always decide to attack at 1:4 because they can trade one-for-one losses most of the time with only one step to lose themselves. Besides these oddities, many games have the problem that the only cost of combat is loss of men and units. The OCS adds another element to the mix-combat supply. Even if your attack is successful, it will still cost you. It is that cost that the player must weigh and determine its worth.

Before, if you uncovered a juicy target, the owning player could write it off as dead. Now, the attacking player will have consider whether the attack is truly valuable. Over killing is now quite futile; why waste needed supply to slam a breakdown regiment with 35:1 odds when a single tank battalion could do the job? Real commanders do not allocate excessive force to the destruction of tiny units. They use the necessary force for the job. This is how it should be.

Players have learned an unfortunate lesson from games; "if you can attack it, you should." With the destruction of enemy forces as the sole object, players routinely attack anything they can. In reality, commanders must weigh the intense cost of any attack (lives, supply, equipment, unit well-being) against the possible benefits of the attack. These are not idle concerns to combat leaders. They cannot approach them in the flippant 'accountant- gone -mad' attitude wargamers display. You must direct every attack (and there can be relatively few of them) toward a higher objective than killing the odd little enemy unit. You need to have a plan. Your attack(s) must contribute to the overall plan in a direct way either as part of the actual plan of operations or, as a diversionary effort to distract the enemy's attention.

Many games end up turning on the killing machine and do not turn it off until the game ends. The result is that one side or the other (the one on the wrong end of the attrition curve) literally ceases to be. Real life is rarely like that. For every Cannae where it really happened, there are many instances where the enemy should not still exist (if it was a game), but somehow manages to struggle on. One early playtest game of EatG ended with the Soviet forces cut down to approximately 40 counters! The Soviet player claims the Germans were not in better shape and told me the game was fine. Pardon me, but a single Soviet Army equivalent left on the southern third of the entire Eastern Front is not fine. Had combat continued at that tempo in reality, how did the War in the East drag on so long? With this as the result of campaigning for merely five months, it would be too much to think any units (of either side) would survive through the 1942 campaign. The tempo of operations was vastly above that possible in reality yet the game report was that there was insufficient supply! No, the problem was not too little supply; it was too much-way too much. Attacking the enemy to death should be an option someone like Haig would devise, but should be so costly as to be inviable.

To play with the revised rules one must unlearn the feeling of total control from other games and choose not to do things because it is better. This is a tough lesson to learn and choosing not to do things is difficult. In EatG, players have complained that they "had" to expend all their supplies on barrages because they "knew" the enemy was coming and "couldn't just do nothing" about it. Perhaps. However, the correct answer is to make the tough choice; do only the barrages you must, not all you can. If your Panzer Division would do better two hexes from where it is, ask yourself if the move is worth its cost in fuel. Curse me if you like. However, the intended fuel cost for your two hex move is as much as if you moved flat out the whole distance you could. Why? Simply because the kind of precise control game players take for granted is not possible in reality. You cannot get the 800+ vehicles of a division to switch on, drive the 10 miles at convoy speeds, and shut down the minute they get there without any sort of starts and stops, repeated re-alignment after arrival, or multiple trips to and from the old positions. That thought shows an acute lack of appreciation for the problems of military unit movements. Ignoring these problems is common in most wargames. It is time gamers stopped accepting faulty versions of reality and started getting serious about looking at the reality of military operations.