CWB Rules on the House

I must first off congratulate you on your Civil War, Brigade series games as I feel they are some of the most enjoyable games. In fact, I have to admit that my purchase of your second version of In their Quiet Fields some years ago [Ed note: He means the Revised Edition from 1991, not ITQFII.] has been directly responsible for a resurgence of my interest in gaming. I wish to offer you and other gainers a couple of simple "house" rules that may provide some additional fun.

First, the capturing of batteries was an important happening on Civil War battlefields. To simulate this in my games, I do the following:

1. If enemy guns are forced to roll on the Gun Loss Table due to a Close Combat, after the enemy makes the required roll, the attacking player makes a second roll on the table. The result of this second roll (Gun Capture Roll) represents the number of gun points captured, up to a maximum of the number lost by the enemy player.

2. If the enemy guns are forced to roll on the Gun Loss Table due to a forced retreat resulting from fire combat, repeat the procedure above, but in this case multiply the number of captured gun points by 1/2, rounding down.

3. If the enemy guns are forced to roll on the Gun Loss Table due to voluntary retreat, no Gun Capture Roll is made. It is assumed that the retreating forces will have been able to effectively disable any guns left behind.

Represent captured guns with a detached battery marker of the capturing side and the correct gun point marker. Control of these guns reverts to the corps of the capturing units. The capturing side is responsible for future ammo expenditures.

One thing that I find frustrating is when I am successful in obtaining a particularly devastating fire result (2+ casualties), unless these casualties combine with stragglers or wreck the brigade, there is no additional psychological impact on the defending unit for suffering so many casualties. To simulate this impact, I include a Heavy Fire Morale Modifier (HFMM). This is calculated like this:

HFMM = number of casualties (after rounding) -1

The resulting number is applied to the morale table as a downward shift. For example, a particular fire generates 2 1/2 casualties, which round up to 3. The formula above results in a shift of 2 rows down on the Morale Table.

[Ed note: When taking 1 1/2 or more casualties, only A-morale units have any hope of avoiding straggler losses. I consider these stragglers a reflection of unit morale, but this rule lets the effect show up in the unit's morale state also.]

I hope you and your readers enjoy these suggestions.

Italians in Africa

In response to the letter of Mr. Gruber in Ops 18, I wish to state some thoughts on the Italian initial options in Afrika.

Obviously the Italian player, already knowing the lesson of history, will, every time, stand still in Libya and fortify his position, waiting for Rommel and the DAK.

Inevitably the Commonwealth player will have a much harder time than O'Connor provided he is willing to attack the Italian forces in the first turns. The problem I foresee in using Mr. Gruber's solution is that the CW player will have even more advantages if he decides to perform a sitzkrieg, that is to say if he decides to fortify the El Alamein line and wait until his forces will become unstoppable, at least for the Italian Army with the German help (as exposed in the letter from Mr. Jehlen and Mr. Minshaw from Ops 16).

The facts behind Mr. Gruber's reasoning are strong, but not quite true; in fact Marshal Graziani postponed the offensive to Sidi el Barrani from July to mid-September. After that he repeatedly refused to attack Mersa Matruh, although frequently urged by Mussolini to do so, and was never sacked and probably never would have been. Il Duce was not so firm in his proposition as Der Fiffirer.

Another thing to consider is that the Italian Comando Supremo (Supreme Headquarters) repeatedly asked the Germans to send tanks, trucks, and armored cars to form an armored unit capable of dealing with its British counterpart. The first request was made from Marshal Balbo as early as June 20th, 1940.

The Germans always refused to issue only the armaments but repeatedly offered two panzer divisions to bolster the Italian attack. The first time the Germans offered their help was on August 3rd, 1940, during a discussion between General Marras (Italian Military attach6 in Berlin) and general Jodl. In this conversation Jodl refused for the nth time to hand over the tanks but proposed to send two panzer divisions to Libya. Marshal Badoglio refused the offer for fear of diminishing the "reputation" of the Italian Army.

On October 4th, 1940, Mussolini and Hitler met at Brennero pass, and Hitler convinced Mussolini to accept the offer of German troops for the fighting in North Africa, as reported by von Rintelen; in fact the following October 15th, 1940, General von Thoma arrived in Rome to study the feasibility of the employment of two panzer divisions in Libya. His report stated that the maximum and optimal number of divisions to accomplish the mission of conquering the Delta region would have been four, but I doubt that Hitler would have sent such a "big" force to such a "secondary" theater.

Graziani, urged by Badoglio, said that the presence of a German panzer division would have been of great help for the attack to Mersa Matruh, but that he doubted the political suitability of such an event; maybe, he said, the offer could be accepted after the conquest of Mersa Matruh.

Backed by this reply, Badoglio met Keitel at Innsbruck on November 14th; in the meantime the campaign in Greece turned into a disaster and Badoglio had, probably, already decided to resign his office; nevertheless he again refused the offer of the panzer divisions, saying that their help was only necessary after the fall of Mersa Matruh, a task that the 10 Armata could accomplish with her forces.

All this digression is to say that the Gentians were willing to send two divisions to Libya well before the O'Connor offensive, if only the Italians would have accepted their presence--in fact, leadership--in North Africa. I think that Mr. Gruber's idea of denying the arrival of the Germans if the Italians choose to stay in Libya is right but must be fine tuned. Here are my house rules:

The German reinforcements enter play only if:

a) The CW takes Tobruk or advances more than five hexes south or west of Tobruk while the Italian still holds the city. The German reinforcements begin arriving the very next turn.

b) The Italian takes Sidi el Barrani. The German reinforcements will arrive as scheduled in the rules. This happens even if the Italian will lose Sidi el Barrani before the Germans enter play, but only if he loses it by enemy action; a voluntary withdrawal would negate the Germans' arrival.

c) The Italian takes Mersa Matruh. The German reinforcements begin arriving the next turn.

The first rule is self explanatory and is identical to Mr. Gruber's.

The second and third rules need some explanation. The Italian must invade Egypt because that was the order of Comando Supremo, but after the conquest of Sidi el Barrani it was evident to everybody in Libya that moving further east would have been suicide, so Graziani postponed the planned attack to Mersa Matruh until the proper conditions could be met. That is to say until an armored unit comparable to the 7th Armoured would have been at hand (the Ariete in her original TO&E does not qualify). It is also true that Badoglio never would have accepted the presence of German ground units in Libya because of his anti-German feelings dating back to WWI. After the collapse of the Italian forces in Greece and the "sacking" of Badoglio, General Cavallero became Capo di Stato Maggiore Generale (Chief of General Staff); Cavallero was pro-German and probably would have accepted the help of the German divisions to reach an objective (the invasion of the Delta) which was obviously out of the Italians' capability.

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But if the Italians were so lucky to reach Mersa Matruh, probably, the lure of the conquest of Alexandria and the Suez Canal would have been strong enough to change even the mind of Marshal Badoglio about accepting the German help. The rule in Mr. Gruber's letter that negates also the arrival of the Italian reinforcements has no historical backup because those reinforcements were sent to bolster the 10' Annata for the invasion of Egypt and were sent although Graziani repeatedly postponed the attack. By the way, a quick in-and-out move across the Egyptian border would qualify as an "invasion" of Egypt.

[Ed note: The political influences on strategy laid out here are very interesting. The Germans would like to forestall any failure or stagnation by their Italian partners, so long as doing so won't require too many panzer divisions. But considerations of both national prestige and realpolitik make the Italians reluctant to accept German aid until they prove they can do all right without it.]