Over the years several games have tried to cover the whole of the European Theatre in WW2 and a few have tried to cover the whole war. Only WIF and Third Reich seem to have stood the test of time. In the last two years there have been several new entrants into this area. A German entrant is the 'Empires of the Apocalypse' series by UGGames. They started with 'Morsecode' covering Western Europe, then 'Triumph and Fall of the Desert Fox' which covers North Africa and are shortly to release 'Cold Days in Hell' covering the Eastern Front. They also plan to produce a further part covering the Asian and Pacific Theatres. UGGames is run by Udo Grebe. Udo is an experienced wargamer who has clearly been working on this design for several years along with various regular players. He's clearly taking this seriously and is doing some heavy marketing of the Empires series. While this might be a first time game company he appears to be making a serious effort to work to a high standard and produce a professional product. These comments are based largely on playing T&F. I can't call this a proper review as clearly T&F is only a small part of the overall game. T&F gives a good indication as to the rules and tactics but there are limitations. You really need to be playing a major front like France or Russia, with a large number of units, to get the true feel. Unfortunately, without paying an exorbitant amount of postage I couldn't get my hands on a copy of Morsecode. Seeing a copy of T&F in the shops it seemed like a quick, cheap way to get a general idea of the overall game system. On this scale I never really thought T&F would work as a stand alone game and I was right. You can't recreate the North African campaign on this scale. In the El Alamein scenario for example the British have nine land combat units on the board. I tried the scenarios and they don't really work. As part of an overall European wargame it is required. In general terms Empires is comparable to WIF (references are to 6th edition) and WIF players will find many of the concepts similar. Presumably it is aimed largely at players dissatisfied with various features of WIF. There is no doubt that there is a market for a good European Theatre game. Empires is very much an attempt to produce a better version of WIF. Morsecode consists of one conventional sized map and 1,280 counters. T&F has three small maps for North Africa and Spain plus mini maps for Africa ands the Americas and 280 counters. Cold Days in Hell is scheduled to have around 1,300 counters and four medium sized map sections. Overall the three Empires games have approx 2,800 counters for the Europe game. WIF has 1,400 counters for both Europe and Asia. Unit counters are roughly the same. The standard unit represents approximately two divisions. It would be interesting to see how counter density works out. In theory there should be roughly the same number of land combat units in both games. Air units may account for part of the difference in counter numbers. In T&F at least there seem to be more air units than you would have in WIF. Air units in Empires represent from 100 to 400 planes. Doing some checks on the T&F game the air units equalled about 100 planes. In WIF a plane counter represents 250 to 400 planes. On the other hand there appear to be far less naval units. In WIF naval units represent two capital ships or four cruisers. In Empires the units are a mixed naval squadron of 10 to 25 ships. A B/C unit represents battleships and heavy cruisers, plus escorts. The other naval units are Carriers, Destroyers (which includes light Cruisers and destroyers) and Submarines. The rules and counters only give a general idea of what is in each force. For B/C's the counter is given the name of a battleship but it presumably represents at least 2 capital ships and several cruisers. Destroyers and Submarines are not named. The map scale is 25 miles per hex compared to WIF's 100km (62.5 miles) per hex. Overall you have a much bigger playing area. At a guess I'd say the map area for the European theatre of Empires will be 50% bigger than all of WIF! It's going to take a pretty big table to play the that, let alone adding on a Pacific game. Given the difference in map scale the turn length is a bit surprising, with each turn lasting one month. In WIF you expect to get around three impulses per side in a two month turn. Movement allowances between the two games are roughly the same. In Empires movement cost along roads is halved and tanks do have a second movement phase. Nevertheless I felt the end result is that the pace of movement and combat is too low in Empires and slower than WIF. The map itself is reasonable. Some players may find the some of the colours, particularly the blue of the sea, a bit too strong, but overall I thought the colours are good. There are quite a few bits of information printed on the map. Cities can have factories, coastal fortresses, anti aircraft capacity. These are depicted by appropriate illustrations and capacity ratings. Terrain is depicted well and there is a good range of terrain types. In T&F there is remarkably little desert terrain though. I couldn't find a really detailed map of the area but did refer to some very reliable North African games and books I have. They show much of the interior as being covered by wide areas of desert. In T&F though most of this is clear terrain. One hex that is designated as desert in T&F is the hex immediately south of Tobruk. I have never yet seen this designated as desert or read any indication that it was anything other than flat, stony and fairly hard packed. It was a significant depot and base area for the Axis when besieging Tobruk. One thing to note about the map hexes and the counters is that they are smaller than normal. Compared to a standard 13mm (3/8 inch counter) these are 1mm smaller. The map hexes are about 90% of the size of a standard hex. This presumably was a deliberate design decision to get a bigger area into the map space available. The price of Empires reflects the bigger game. The Empires European theatre package alone looks to cost about 50% more than WIF, which covers the entire war. Combat counters Given the smaller counters, the amount of detail and illustrations on the counters is restricted. The combat units use mini drawing of an infantryman, tank, plane etc. The various combat and movement factors are given an additional background colour, which is unnecessary. If anything, it makes the counters more cluttered and harder to read. It is also an unnecessary printing cost. Some people may disapprove of the rather simplistic illustrations but the reaction of those I asked seemed to be that they were acceptable. Land unit types There are very few land unit types in the game. The vast majority of the units are Tank and Infantry. To supplement this there are; Recon, HQ's, Engineers and Paratroopers. Other games in the series have Militia. Again a key factor here seems to have been a desire not to confuse players by having too many different unit types. Udo seems to disapprove of WIF with its wide variety of Tank, Mechanised, Motorised, Infantry, Garrison, Militia etc units. Sweeping all 'infantry' into one unit type however does limit a players capabilities. It also creates the sort of minor anomaly that some players may find difficult to accept. One interesting illustration are the Recon units. Empires has grouped Cavalry and Armoured Cars into the same unit type, with a Cavalryman as their illustration. The result is: The USA and Britain both have Cavalry counters running around the North African desert. These Cavalry (Armoured Car) units suffer lower attrition in swamps. This isn't just an academic point. Much to the outrage of my opponent I put the British 'Cavalry' unit into the swamp at Mersa Brugha just to prove the point. Quite why cavalry would get reduced attrition in swamps is a bit puzzling. Surely they wouldn't find much to eat, horses seem to prefer open grassland? The production costs for 'Armoured Cars' and 'Cavalry' are the same. Each land unit has separate attack and defence strengths. Any losses are recorded by placing a strength point marker underneath the unit to record the defence strength lost. Once the defence strength gets down to zero the unit is removed. Marker Counters The marker counters are extremely utilitarian, simple, black outline drawings on a white background Economy in production seems to have been a motivation here. However, having played lots of Vae Victis games recently, with their magnificent counters, perhaps I've become a bit spoilt. The replacement point marker looks like those little signs on a toilet door. The airfield symbol is unusual. Most games seem to use a standard symbol of two crossed runways for airfields. UGG have used something that looks like an adjustable spanner and nothing like an airfield. There are a few cases where specific markers would have been useful. More surprisingly, they haven't really used both sides of the markers. Most games print different symbols or values on the two sides of the counters. This is particularly important where the markers represent specific values ie number of supply points. With T&F most of the counters have the same symbol and value on both sides of the counter. Effectively they have halved the number of markers potentially available. At the same time a few counters which are meant to be blank on the back actually have other symbols on them! This applies to a few airfield and fort markers. They are placed face down when construction begins and turned upright at the end of the turn. However some of them have supply markers on the back. Ideally they should have had an under construction symbol on the back. Rules The rules are a difficulty for T&F. To start with it has a language problem. The T&F rules appear to have been translated from the German by somebody who spoke reasonably good English. The result is readable but at times quite difficult to follow and many readers will probably flinch at some of the convoluted language. Some of the terminology used is wrong. The bigger problem is that the rules are badly written to start with. They don't appear to have been independently reviewed by an outsider. I'm a great believer in 'blind testing' of games and rules. Having the designer supervising play testing means many rules issues are resolved verbally as 'obvious'. That appears to be the case here. I've played a wide range of wargames over many years and am used to having to work out various vague rules or decide what to do in situations the rules don't cover etc. Nevertheless T&F was hard work and we struggled with many of the rules. I sent Udo 5 pages of rules questions admittedly that included some general design queries and a few pretty obscure rules problems. There was however a lot of serious questions in there. He felt that in some cases the answers were 'obvious' and that many of my questions were unreasonable. To give Udo credit he has, in general, been willing to revise and clarify rules and recognises the importance of this. He has made a number of changes to the rules over time to reflect some of the more obvious problems. Later games in the Empires series will use a new rule book . He did send me a draft version of that. This is a considerable improvement, the English is far better and the rules have certainly been improved. Even so, that still needs some work to clarify some of the rules and add missing points. I made a few suggestions on rewording that. Udo has clearly been keen to keep the rules to a minimum and avoid complexity. This however is a technique that can backfire. Firstly, shorter rules can just lead to more rules arguments and time wasting. Secondly there is a bit of a contradiction. Compared to WIF, Empires 'simplifies' a few areas, but overall it has become a far more complex game. Finally there is the question of what do you really save. Combat and movement probably only forms about 25% of the rules. A couple of extra pages of clarifications is hardly a major burden. Scenarios There were a number of points about the T&F scenarios that could be improved. A start date is given for each scenario, but no end date is specified. My expectation is that a scenario will normally cover only a limited period of a campaign. I had to write to Udo about this to and was told that you use the campaign victory conditions ie the game ends in 1942 or when one side achieves an automatic victory. Similarly the scenarios start at a specified date. The set up lists the units and resources available at the start. The first part of the each turn however is a common phase in which each side takes reinforcements and resources. There are charts which lists these reinforcements for each turn. What it doesn't make clear is the fact that the set up for the scenario already includes that turns replacements and resources. This however was 'obvious' according to Udo. Movement This is fairly conventional. Land combat Combat is very different from most other games. The attacker moves their units into the defending hex. A battle is fought as a number of rounds. Each battle requires the expenditure of a supply point, regardless of the number of units or how many rounds it lasts. Each round involves combat between one unit from each side. Both sides pick a unit. The attack or defence strengths are compared and the difference becomes the combat differential. The attacker then rolls on the combat results table to determine the losses. The results are primarily in terms of strength points but there are some retreat results. Each side can take losses, which are given as strength point losses. A defender can take an extra strength point loss rather than retreat. After a round of combat each side can swap the 'lead' unit with other units stacked in that hex around to fight the next round. Thus if the defender has only one unit and the attacker has three, then the attacker can fight each of these units in succession against the single defending unit. Alternatively the defender could swap between units if they have two or more. There is no limit on the number of rounds nor on how often you can swap the 'lead' unit. Thus if there are a 2 or 3 units per side a battle could last many rounds. The terrain modifiers simply add or subtract one or two points to a units attack or defence strength. This is not a percentage change and therefore does not take into account the strength of the unit involved. Attacking across a river reduces the attack strength by –1 regardless of whether the unit is a large tank unit or a weak infantry unit. A strange rule that I suspect many people will find hard to accept. A surprising feature is that the defending units have the opportunity to voluntarily retreat after the first round, at no penalty. It would be interesting to see the effect of this in one of the bigger games, where players have plenty of units and can afford to trade space for time. It is a rule I have considerable reservations about. Put out a screen of good units, let the enemy advance onto the screen and then simply retreat after the first round. Effectively the defender has caused the attacker to waste a month and burn up supply. On historical basis I can find little justification for this ability to retreat. The attacker may have massed superiority of forces, all of which presumably are committed to the attack. The defender however is able to slip away after fighting only a portion of the attacking force. Certainly this did happen to at times. It depended on a number of factors though; excellent timing, good troops, mobility and timing. Even then the retreats tended to merely blunt the full force of the initial attack. The defenders still had to undergo a major assault by most of the attacking force. Any defender can retreat, regardless of its abilities compared to the attacker. Thus a weak 'leg' infantry corp with a movement factor of 4 can retreat even when being attacked by a strong 'mechanised' infantry force of several corp with a movement factor of 6. Surely there ought to some restriction on this ability to retreat? Perhaps the defender can only retreat after being attacked once by all the attacking units. Part of the problem lies in having a single infantry type. Others may have a different view of this rule and its relevance. There are some ways to alleviate this tactic. The principal one is tank combat but the effectiveness of this is limited by how many tank units a player has and the supply status. Given a strong tank force massed in one area then the screen defence may not be effective. Tank Combat Tank units can engage in combat during their move. Really this is just a more powerful overrun system. The units fight at full strength and there are no minimum odds. The catch is that each round of combat costs one movement point (for the entire stack) and one supply point. The attacker can fight multiple rounds until they have no more movement left. It does give you the chance to chew a big hole out of a defending line but does burn up supply. There are a couple of odd features here. You can move several tanks into a hex. The first tank fights the defending unit. The defender then has the chance to retreat even before the other tank units get to attack. Sure, they can then advance into the hex the defender has retreated too but I would expect them all to get a chance to attack in the first hex. If the defender does stay in the initial hex then each of the tank units attacks separately. Each combat round by each tank however uses up one MP for the ENTIRE stack. Reserves We didn't use this rule. Partly because we couldn't understand it. Udo sent us an example of play but even that we found unclear. In addition we thought it made Reserves too powerful, although in T&F you don't really have enough units to use Reserves effectively anyway. Units can be placed in Reserve mode. To do this they have to start the turn adjacent to a HQ. Neither they nor the HQ may move during the turn. Unfortunately there are no Reserve markers to assist in this, which will make it very difficult to remember which units are in Reserve in a big game. It is the sort of thing that has the potential to cause many arguments about what units were in Reserve and whether the other side knew this. A few counters marked 'Forming Reserve' and 'Reserve' would have been very useful. Reserves may have sacrificed an entire turn but they get to move an entire turn when released. They can move in the Attackers Exploitation Phase after combat. This gives a pretty powerful potential to exploit holes in the defenders lines. Alternatively Reserves can be used to reinforce defending hexes. That is a fairly common rule in games. My recollection is that several games use a system whereby they can do a half move in their normal movement phase and then a half move in the reserve or exploitation phase. In Empires however the reserve units can do a full move. Bear in mind these are monthly turns. So the reserve is doing it's entire months turn in response to an enemy attack. Certainly skilful use of reserves blunted many an attack but this movement capacity seems excessive. The drawback to reserves is that you lose a movement phase but even so this seems an extraordinary powerful option. Blocks Another optional rule we skipped was the ability to 'block' enemy moves. Under this rule a defending unit can, under certain circumstances, move into the path of a moving unit. This seemed as if it was going to slow the game down and add further complexity to the decision making process. We rather doubted it's historical accuracy as well. Naval System Empires has a detailed naval system. In T&F however the nature of the scenario means there is no real naval activity and the rules simply deal with the British moving a few ships around and no combat other that air attacks on Malta convoys. From the draft rules I was sent it was possible to form a general idea of the full naval system, which is a quite sophisticated. Movement and combat looks reasonable and fairly straightforward, certainly a considerable improvement on WIFs ghastly area/box movement and combat. Having said that the search rules look a lot more cumbersome. Realistic perhaps, but time consuming, complex and with numerous dice rolls. Air System Again there are strong similarities to WIF here. There are separate counters for fighters and bombers. Each counter has ratings for air to air combat, ground attack, naval attack and strategic bombadment. Sound familiar? The weak spot is that each plane type has the same range ie all fighters can fly 8 hexes, tactical bombers 12 hexes and strategic 20 hexes. The air to air combat system is done on the same differential basis. Unlike WIF with it's multiple rounds of combat the Empires system is far simpler and easy to play. Fighters engage in combat and each gets one shot at an enemy fighters. Each surviving fighter can then make one attack on an enemy bomber. Production Empires has a detailed production system. T&F however uses a cut down version of this so it's not a good guide. From the draft series rules though production is fairly complex. You ship resources to a factory. Each factory then produces a mix of manpower, material and supply. Oil resources provide a bonus in producing supply. To produce combat units it requires varying quantities of manpower and material and occasionally supply as well. It's probably a far more realistic system but also more complicated. Several of the production costs seemed rather unusual to me. A fighter unit for example has a very low material cost but is as expensive in manpower as an infantry unit. Material is used for other things besides building units. You need an engineer unit plus material to build most installations ie railways, fortifications, air bases. Supply is very important and required for combat and tank battles. Conclusion Is it a WIF alternative? WIF certainly has problems and many people clearly dislike it, with good reason. The WIF naval movement system is somewhat dubious and naval combat system is woefully slow and complex. Air to air combat is also too slow with its multiple rounds. Many people may dislike the impulse system and the indeterminate number of impulses in a turn. I have never really approved of the idea of having to choose between Land, Air, Naval or Combined impulses. In our opinion, WIF has a serious play balance problem and heavily favours the Axis. On that scale though any game is going to be reasonably complex and difficult to recreate. We are, after all, trying to simulate a global war involving millions of personnel, vast resources, massive battles, air, land and sea warfare, the political complexity of dozens of nations etc. There is a lot to be said for the Empires system and it will appeal to quite a few people. Certainly Empires has tried to make some improvements in playability. The air and naval systems are far better than WIF. Tank combat is a good concept. Nevertheless some players may be concerned about some aspects of the game; land combat system and length, ability of units to retreat, reserve capability, rules problems, lack of unit types. It also has a few good political rules and appears to have a more sophisticated system than WIF. One I like, is that while the Germans can attempt to force an early peace on France and set up Vichy France, this is not guaranteed. The WIF system, whereby if the Germans took Paris they could automatically declare Vichy France always seemed wrong to me. Empires has much to commend it but bear in mind it is an even bigger game than WIF and in the long run just as complex. Possibly players may prefer Empires for its scenarios rather than as a campaign. Back to Perfidious Albion #100 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. 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