Hell’s Highway is a strategic game of the Market-Garden campaign and was published by Victory Games in 1983. Victory Games were a subsidiary of Avalon Hill who themselves are now part of Multi-Man Publishing, but in these days of yore Victory were well known for producing quality games both in terms of components and of history. As you all will be aware Market-Garden was the failed attempt by Montgomery to force a crossing over the Rhine into Germany, and in hindsight does rather look like it didn’t have much of a chance of success.
Moving onto the game itself first of all you receive a box showing a paratrooper landing onto a large red swastika, not the most inspiring cover but not too bad. Inside are 520 counters, two maps, two player sheets, a rulebook, a dice and a useful counter storage tray. The map is the most striking of the components and one soon sees that it’s not going to be a game of manoeuvre as the map is only 17 hexes wide but very long stretching from Belgium all the way up to Arnhem and slightly beyond and actually including a bit of Germany. The map is a mass of colour as there are six types of ground terrain to take into account, more of this later. Along the side of the map are the holding boxes and entry points for the German reinforcements.
There are three levels of holding boxes for the German and these are a very good way to move units onto the map without giving too much prior information away to the Allies. Each of the German Corps has its own Command Reserve, which lead down to Operational Reserve areas, which then lead to the Tactical Reserve areas from which unit enter the map although mechanised units can enter straight from the Operational Reserve. So for example the 1st Parachute Army Command Reserve, which controls all the Eastern edge of the corridor, has four Operational Reserves that in turn hold a total of 14 Tactical Reserves. Most of the German Reinforcements arrive at the Operation Reserve level, but levels can be moved through in both directions which gives the German a big advantage in unit placement. I like this system a lot and notice it has also been used since notably in Breakout:Normandy.
The military counters come in 20 different type, so you have Armour, Tank Destroyers, Armoured Recon, Infantry, Artillery, Rocket Artillery amongst others; almost forgot all units are either motorised or non-motorised. I must admit this all is a bit too much detail for me, but never mind. Counters normally have their attack factor, size and any special capabilities on them, although artillery has a range as well and HQs have their own capabilities on them. All in all the counters are functional without being too fussy, but remember to read the rules and study the player sheet for possible important information. Each unit has a number of steps from one to a few with four, any with three or more have two counters, as units lose steps they also lose attack factors and often any special capabilities they may have had. HQs may have Engineers, AT weapons, Flak defences and Bridging Engineers. Engineers help in combat and can build entrenchments and fix stream bridges or rewire bridges for demolition, but don’t really have any command functions. AT weapons help against armoured units in combat, flak helps against Paratroopers landing and finally Bridging Engineers can repair all bridges and evacuate infantry across rivers. All these HQ capabilities extend out from the HQ depending on its range, which differs for each one. Individual units may have Heavy Weapons, which invoke heavier ZOC rules and Anti Tank capability.
The rulebook is 44 pages long and is in two columns, the right with the rules and the left with clarifications and oddly with exceptions I found it easy to miss things especially when looking through whilst playing, so read carefully. For example I didn’t spot until the fourth start that despite the rule saying that any units may start in the bridgehead that the five units of the IG/5/G must be placed in it at start. I like my rules to be together, so find having exceptions away from the main body of the rules slightly off putting. This is not mind boggling and others won’t have a problem with this. Of course I could be blaming somebody else for my inability to read rules! Unfortunately there is no sign of any historical commentary, which I always think should be included however basic. I had to go out and find a book on the subject, admittedly not too much of a hardship! There are also two short examples of combat included that are of some help. All I can say is read the rulebook and the player sheets very well and have a good look at the terrain chart before playing, it’s easy to miss important information.
The sequence of play is fairly standard with a weather phase then resupply, before the Allies and then the Germans take their turn. Each player turn comprises of: Air Phase, Command Phase, Movement Phase, Combat Phase and Communication Phase. It’s all fairly standard and with nothing to fear for most players.
Resupply is carried out every three turns (in the AM) and whereas the German amounts are set the Allied Paratroopers must dice to see how many they receive. Airpower is abstracted in the system, depending on the weather the Allies may receive up to 6 Tac points which may be used to bomb or interdict and 12 Airlifting points which not surprisingly are used to land the reinforcing units after the initial drop (as the Allies you must pray for clear weather). In the Command Phase all attacker’s disrupted markers for that side are removed. Then you have to decide which travel mode to put each unit in, Travel or Combat. All units have six movement points (the only easy part of movement), although if in travel mode and the road is clear of ZOC any motorised may move as far as it wants, this sounds good but rarely happens! Combat phase is self explanatory and I will go into the full ideas of this in a moment. The Communication Phase is used to check which if any of your troops are isolated from their mates! All your defender disrupted markers then come off and all bridge repair and entrenchments are completed. This goes on for possibly 26 turns, through AM, PM and night turns. AM is resupply, PM takes its chance of weather from the morning and Night means no planes, apart from that there is no difference between night and day.
Fire combat is a two step process with the defenders getting the chance to stop the attackers before the remaining attackers get their fire in. Combat in principle is very quick in that you check terrain for the unit being attacked and add a few modifiers and throw a dice and look up the result which could well be losses but more often ends in disruption, unless one can get a lot of units into combat; artillery comes in useful here. Disruption is useful as units can do nothing at all whilst disrupted. Unfortunately though in action it is a bit slow. The problem lies in the terrain chart. There are thirteen different grouping of units and six groups of terrain and within each cross reference there are four factor. This is as bad as it sounds and does slow the game down too much for my taste. To make it worse some of the factors seem a bit odd to me, it would seem the tanks are better in towns than infantry! So the paratroopers being all infantry will have major problems with a tank in Nijmegen for example, and there is a good chance of finding a tank sitting there.
Not to be controversial without giving an example. Two 82nd Paratrooper units plus an artillery unit in support attack a unit of armoured German infantry in the town of Nijmegen. This is a large attack and most won’t be this large. The American Paratroopers are in different hexes, too big to stack together, one in the City and the other in Broken but with a village in it as well. So the Germans get the first go. They decide to attack the American in the village so we find Paratroopers in Broken +3, but –1 for being in a village. We throw the dice and add 2, the Germans 5 strong so we would disrupt on a dice roll of 4+ otherwise nothing. Lets assume we didn’t affect the attackers so now it’s 14 attackers points, five for each Paratrooper and four for the Artillery, we look at the chart and see it’s 0 for Armoured Infantry defending. Throw the dice we see we need a six to cause a casualty or a retreat, and four or five to cause a Defender Disrupted. It’s a lot of work there to get a very possible nothing result, and please note that the 14 column is the third highest on the chart. Early on when the paratroopers almost have to attack singularly and did historically often over fairly open terrain it’s a bit of a nightmare. They will attack and end up disrupted and possibly open to a free counterattack, as disrupted units don’t get to fight back. Then to cap it all any German disruption markers will come off before the Americans attack again, so you may find yourself having to do the same attack again and again.
Attackers disrupted get their disruption cleared at the beginning of their turn, whereas defenders disruption is only cleared at the end of their turn, so not allowing them to attack. This means that as an attacker if you are disrupted your opponent will have a chance to hit you in his own turn. So one won’t see the Red Devils doing many counter attacks as it far too risky. I am not saying that I totally disagree with this as I agree that attacker is prone to many mishaps it’s just that attacking doesn’t seem to have many advantages. One way round this is the Air Attacks as planes attack at the beginning of the turn and may very well disrupt the unit and this will allow you to attack without risk of loss and with an increased chance of causing losses as disrupted units can’t retreat to offset losses. So one just waits for the planes to go in if the weather is good. This is all very odd to me.
A couple of interesting rules though in supply and detonating bridges. Supply is handled fairly abstracted in that it is only used up during combat and for certain HQ operations. Supply is consumed when a six is thrown during combat, and costs the number of units attacking plus the number of artillery steps supporting. So if the Germans attack with three units with two units of artillery supporting (four steps) and roll a six they will use seven units of supply. When one realises that the German track for the 2SS panzer Corps is 24 long and they only receive six Supply points per day this can seriously slow things down. You can still attack if you want with no supply but if you can’t pay the supply you take losses instead. So pray for fives when attacking and not too many sixes.
In one turn I threw three sixes in combat for 2SS and lost 16 supply points, I killed a few paratroopers but it slowed the Germans down for the next couple of turns (time is critical don’t forget) as they could not risk the big attacks that are needed if one hopes to clear a town. A good simple way of limiting the amount of actions that goes on. Bridge blowing is another good rule. The first time an Allied unit approaches a bridge the German can attempt to blow it, with different chances of success depending upon the road and whether it’s a stream, river or canal. A major road bridge over a river can’t be blown though as it couldn’t be repaired and so would end the game. A broken bridge on the main highway again slows one down, and whilst they can be repaired one would need to have a HQ nearby or delay would occur again. This in a interesting part of the game and can have serious effects on balance especially if too many of the main central road bridges are blown
There are five scenarios included although two of these are alternative histories. So one has the XXX Corps Breakout, the Besieged, the historical full campaign, a hidden airborne reinforcement campaign and a free deployment campaign. The Breakout is the easiest and quickest being just eight turns whereas all the rest are the full twenty six turns. I see from the Besieged that the XXX Corps should reach the northern half of the map by turn seven, not in my games it doesn’t!
How does it play then. Well here’s the rub. It’s big game and not at all fast and you will find yourself continually looking at the damned terrain chart for movement and combat. To write this review I played the game 6 times solo and twice with my mate, well that’s a bit of a misdemeanour actually. The problem was the Red Devils. The game starts as the first landings are made, so the first things one does as the allies is place the Paratroopers, whilst there is a 50% at least that each unit will land disrupted which means they won’t move on that so important first turn. As the design notes states “If you don’t get units into Arnhem on Turn Two, you will never be able to enter the city”. He’s right, unfortunately if the wrong units disrupt you are in major trouble. So in the total of eight starts there was a restart almost immediately in 5 of them. I would have really, and I mean really, had liked a scenario which started a turn later after all the Paratroopers landed and were on their way. I like the chaos factor but it’s a bit much after five or so hours play to realise that the three units who finally managed to get into Arnhem are about the be smashed with the XXX Corps still trying to reach Eindhoven!
After that in the three games that did get past the initial stages, two solo, how did it go. All in all it’s a bit too long and repetitive. As I stated with the multitude of unit types all having different defence factors and movement cost combined with the continually changing terrain you are looking at the chart a lot, unless of course you are good at remembering loads of factors, I know I am normally but this is all a bit to take in, (speaking as someone you learnt and retains all the ASL factors!). The combat is also a bit odd. I now that the Germans slowed down the advance by putting units in the way, but I feel in the game this is too impressive. All the Germans have to do is stick a tank or armoured infantry units in the woods and villages on the road and it takes far too long to take them out. With eight hour turns the combat isn’t bloody enough. My friend has played this game many times and says he hasn’t seen an Allied victory or close to one, I am not saying this is wrong but it is a long game to find that out.
Not to say all is bad. The campaign itself is one of the most interesting of the Second World Wars campaigns in my view and the game shows why. The Allies Paratroopers initially have to take the bridges but then hold them against some fierce opposition and hope that the XXX Corps tanks will get there before it’s too late. The Americans have a hard task as they have a lot of bridges to hold and the 82nd has a very tough nut in Nijmegen. The bridge blowing is fun and does change the game, groans can be heard at this point by one of the players as an important crossing is blown or not. Supply is well handled without being too over burdening. As with all Victory games it is well produced with the map being very good and the counters being of the highest standard and easy to read.
It’s the type of game where you need to play a bit to get the hang of it, especially for the Allies. The main road will end up full of tanks and artillery in one long jam and you really need to organise them properly, which is far easier to say than do. You need tanks up there, but you need the artillery as well, but HQs need to be around to assist in combat and repair the bridges. There are often other ways around which are not on the main roads, but the tanks and especially the artillery need to be on roads to move.
I do like the game, but feel that it in end the effort needed to play doesn’t really get its reward. If you like the subject matter and are prepared for a slow effort it’s good, but before I play it again I will rewrite the terrain chart and make it easier for me to look at quickly. I suppose the best I can say is that I definitely intend to have another go at this game, and thinks it worth another go. Not the most accessible game because of its length but if you have the time and inclination why not give it another go!
This is an old game, and one doesn’t see many old reviews in Perfidious Albion so I hope you don’t mind this review. I did of course get permission of our glorious editor before I wrote it, but as they say in all the best books the blame is all mine. Hope you enjoyed.
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© Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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