Kerry Anderson for Pacific Rim Kerry Anderson is striving to produce games on First World War trench warfare that are both playable and enjoyable. Some may think this an impossible task. He has already proved it is not with his excellent Ypres 1915 (MIH/CH). Vimy Ridge covers the Canadian assault that finally captured the position after previous British and French attempts had failed. The game covers the entire battle from the first Artillery barrage to the fall of the final objective. The game comes with short rules, two hundred unit counters, map and tables card. The map looks a bit of a mess at first. It has various lines printed on it for trenches, barbed wire, the different areas the Allied creeping barrage reaches on certain game turns, divisional set up areas, all in addition to terrain and one or two other items. Once I started playing the game, however, the map did become less of an issue and I found it more of a help than a hindrance. The unit counters do not feature either combat strength or movement factors. Instead they show the type of unit, mainly infantry but also MG, trench mortar and a small number of tanks, plus the number of companies in a unit and its designation. One side of the counter represents the unit entrenched with the reverse showing the exposed as it moves across open ground. Stacking allows a number of exposed, entrenched and underground units to all occupy the same hex. This may result in the odd unwieldy stack but I found such instances rare. A game turn commences with the Canadian movement phase. Units that are neither suppressed by previous German fire, or still engaged in a previous melee, may move. The game map is split into a bombarded and unbombarded area. Most of the game is fought over the bombarded area. Units that commence movement in the bombarded area die roll on a chart to determine their movement points for the phase. Kerry justifies this in his designer notes as reflecting the stress of battle making the troops undependable, panic and fog of war fudged into one. This works well in effect but sadly has a downside, very high wristage. Units that exit enemy zone of control are subject to opportunity fire. The German fire phase follows. A player finds the correct column combining his unit type with fire strength and range. This is then cross-referenced with the number of companies in the target unit, which will be between one and four. A die is rolled and modified for terrain and either the firing or target unit being suppressed. This will result is a number of companies being eliminated. The loss of a company from a unit is recorded with a strength marker. Units that suffer losses then roll to check morale with suppression and rout being the result of failure. Morale is recorded at formation rather than individual unit level. The German player now removes suppression markers from his units; these will have existed from the previous game turn. Finally, the Canadian player finishes his player turn with the melee phase. Melee is resolved between units sharing the same hex and is odds based. The odds are based on the number of companies per side. Results are losses to one or both sides with the defender surrendering at high odds. More morale checks follow. The German player simply exchange roles with the Canadian player for his player turn. The Canadian player also resolves his creeping barrage on certain game turns during his fire phase. Every German occupied hex in the targeted area is barraged individually with losses and more morale checks resulting. In addition the Canadian has two tunnel mines which explode under German positions at games start. Kerry has managed to produce a playable game, playable by those not afraid of high wristage that is. Unfortunately I did not find it an enjoyable experience. The game comprises of a creeping barrage blowing a lot of German units to smithereens. Canadians then advance through the gaps and mop up the remaining Germans. They advance only far enough to prevent them being caught up in the next barrage. Once this takes place the process is repeated. After a few turns the ridge is captured. This seems a reasonable simulation of events but as a game is not much fun. The German side, in spite of the odd strong point holding out for a few turns, is very depressing to play. I can only recommend this game as a solo exercise for those with a strong interest in the topic who are not put off by the amount of die rolling required. Back to Perfidious Albion #102 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 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