Command magazine The quality of their work has improved considerably of late. The magazine itself has always been pretty good. The last six or so issues however have been extremely interesting with a lot of good articles. The games seem to have improved considerably as well. Having said that I cannot say there are many that really strike me as being worth repeated playing. I played a couple of games of Midway recently which to my mind is one of the best games they have done. Cannot understand why they do not try something similar on the Guadalcanal battles. With only a certain amount of time to play games you cannot try everything that comes along. Some games never get a chance. Hypothetical subjects rarely appeal to me, so you can forget them for a start. We tried the Wave of Terror (Battle of the Bulge) game. It is not a bad system. It has two problems. The Allies do not really get caught by surprise and the Germans have little hope of blasting across the map. It is also too long. There are a lot of units to shift around and because of the stacking rules you have to plan your moves carefully. The result is it is very slow and rather tedious without sufficient challenge or tension to make the effort worthwhile. Blitzkrieg 1940 is smaller and more manageable. Surprisingly enough it seemed a tough game for the Germans. Most games on this subject tend to be hopelessly one sided. In this case the French have a good chance of blocking the German drive at an early stage. It gives enough time to put together a strong defensive line with the Allied armies. The trouble is Command does not like 'idiocy' rules. Of course no Allied player is going to leave a weak spot the way the French did. We tried the game once and packed it in after two turns as the Germans found themselves facing a wall of French units sitting behind a river. A second game lasted a bit longer but ended when the Germans had taken heavy losses, failed to knock out Belgium and were still faced with a strong Allied army defending a good river line. It clearly is a lot harder than it looks. The Allies are always criticised for advancing the Dyle river in Belgium. In the game however you can see why they did it. It is the best defensive line. The secret of course is to ensure that the Germans do not get across the Meuse as they did. That is actually fairly easy. No Allied player is ever going to be as stupid as the French generals. (CHV: but neither is he going to pass first out of St Cyr, I think stupid is harsh, these people were on the wrong foot throughout the match, thanks to German dash). For the Allies its important to sacrifice a few units in forward positions to slow the Germans down. A few small Belgian or French units can buy vital time as there is no overrun rule. In the meantime they build a defensive line. This can incorporate half of Belgium and keep the latter in the war. The dummy German units are confusing but eventually they have to reveal the main thrust. After that its a case of keeping that sector strong. The Germans have to pose a threat right across the front. Never let the French strip the Maginot line and concentrate units in the north. Keep up the pressure in several places. Holland is fairly unimportant. The first priority seems to be to get deep into Belgium and across the Dyle. If the Allies can get a defensive line there and along the Meuse the Germans have a real problem. Shiloh puzzles me a bit. We started a game but have not had a chance to continue. Command seems to have done something very out of character, which is to add a lot of chrome to a basic system. It is also inconsistent. They have put a lot of detail in some areas and glossed over others. The combat system is terribly fiddling; intensity level, die roll modifiers, volley/charge markers (which could easily have been left out). Recovering from disruption and losses has a number of options and I think it could have been streamlined. Yet there a number of things they omit. Commanders allow you to conduct a range of different option but have no effect on movement. Ranged artillery and rifle fire have the same effect regardless of the range and strength of the firing unit. The chrome is all very well but it all just slows the game down and unfortunately it strikes me as a longish game anyway. The combat system is rather different to most and takes a bit of getting used to. There are two types of combat, melee and ranged fire. Studying the (melee) combat table it is advantageous, as it was historically, to disrupt units with ranged fire first. The trouble is that the sequence of play is that you do melee first and then ranged fire. This clearly gives the defender time to withdraw or reorganise his lines to lessen the effect. Given that the couplets are only 20 minutes long I am not sure that they could withdraw units in that time scale. If they tried then the opposing units would presumably attempt an assault. In addition, given the state of training and general competence its hard to believe that the forces involved could rotate units in such a way. The initial Confederate assault seemed to cause only light casualties. Historically the Confederates badly smashed several Union regiments on the first couplet of the game. Here however they may not even get into contact with the Union on the first couplet! The Union can set up so far back it will take till the second couplet for any serious Confederate attack. Due to the sequence of play they will have to go straight in with a melee combat against undisrupted Union units. It seemed to us that the Union was not under any significant combat disadvantage initially. They do have some disadvantages but not enough to reflect the surprise of the Confederate assault. Part of the reason we lost interest was that the Union suffered few casualties and started to fall back steadily. It was clear they were going to establish at an early stage a solid defence line that gave the Confederates no chance of success. The Confederates just cannot do enough damage early on. ZOCs do limit the Union units ability to fall back but again this is difficult to implement due to the sequence of play. The melee combat phase really should be after the ranged fire phase. Krieg! This is a game that seems to have attracted quite a lot of attention and I assume most people know a fair bit about it. To summarise its a mini game on the European theatre of WW2. There are four quarters per year, the summer quarter has three turns and the rest two turns. There are actually three sides, Axis, Western Allied and Soviet although probably the latter will be played by one person in most games. Hexes cover approx. 60 miles each. Each unit represent either a corp or an army. The distinctive feature of the game is the use of cards, which have a vital impact on many areas of the game. To understand the game properly we have to have a quick look at these. Each side has its own set of unique cards. They each have to play a card in their first turn of each quarter. The cards serve a number of roles, they specify the reinforcements that arrive that quarter, determine the occurrence of political events and have a profound influence on activities you can undertake during a quarter. An important feature to remember is that cards have to be selected one quarter in advance. It makes it very difficult to react to another sides cards. I rather felt that too much had been built into the cards and perhaps some aspects should be dealt with in another way. There are two types of card, 'Limited' war and 'Total' war. No Total war cards can be played until the Axis play one first. Cards can also be either Blitz or Standard. Each card specifies a limited set of conditions that can be utilised that turn. These conditions are not automatic. In many cases the player has to roll a dice to see whether the option is successfully implemented or what actual event occurs, if any. The Axis have 12 Limited war cards for example as follows; Standard 3 * Treaty - Allows a minor country to join the Axis side. Roll a dice to see whether this occurs or possibly roll on another table to see if there is a diplomatic incident. 1 * Peace offer - Axis can try to reach a peace with either the Western Allies or the Soviets 1 * Mobilisation - Raise extra troops and add Total War cards to Axis hand. Blitz 4 * Ultimatum - Can attempt to declare war on a minor country. If successful the Axis get a Blitz turn.. 3 * French, British or Soviet Ultimatum - All give potential bonuses if certain conditions are met in the turn these cards are played. Axis automatically get a Blitz turn. A standard turn is fairly conventional; movement, combat and reserve movement. The big advantage of the Blitz turn is that the player gets, in effect, two combat phases. The first is the Blitz attack and has the added bonus that all attacks using armour get a column shift in their favour. Given the scale of the game the blitz turns are vital to knock out an opponent in the required time frame. For example if the Axis play the French Ultimatum card at the start of the summer quarter of 1940 they have three turns to occupy Paris and bring about the collapse of France. If not France fights on. Air and naval power all handled fairly abstractly and I quite like the systems. There are no naval counters other than a limited number of transports. In effect the game pretty much assumes Western Allied control of the sea. It is airpower that can affect the ability of either side to use naval movement. Perhaps the Axis ability to control sea areas is a bit too high. Nevertheless it works well and has the great advantage of being extremely simple. Having waded through the tedium of the Naval rules for World in Flames these are an absolute joy. WIF takes huge numbers of naval counters and vast amounts of time to produce a system that is inferior to Krieg's. Each side has only a few air units which have to fulfil a number of diverse roles. They can be used for; combat support, blocking enemy port capacity, enhancing friendly naval transport, conducting amphibious invasions and blocking naval supply. Using airpower is a key decision as there can be some hard choices to make as to how to deploy it. Ground units come at two levels. Most units at the start are at corp level. As the games goes on you acquire army level units and can build these by merging several corps. This is valuable because stacking is always restricted to three units. The values of the army level units are also greater than their individual components. Krieg has a fairly wide range of unit types for such a small game. As a result the rules and confusion in regard to building up and breaking units are more work than you would expect. There is a wide range of simple but effective rules on various features. Examples are the rate of unit replacement, the effect of strategic bombing, US entry, various political sub options that can occur and have a complex effect on the economic war. Lets just say that the designers have done some creative thinking. One to mention, as it is important in the course of play, are the victory cities. Each side has specific victory cities, which are colour coded. There are some clever ideas here. Oslo is an Allied victory city. If the Axis capture this it is too their advantage. Narvik however is an Axis victory city. If the Axis attack Norway they have to make sure they can capture Narvik. Otherwise the Allies move in and nullify the advantage of the Axis taking Oslo. The victory cities have another importance. Depending on the number a side has captured they gain die roll modifiers for certain actions. This becomes very important. Combat is fairly standard. The results are given as a mixture of retreat and step loss results. Retreats cannot normally be converted and taken as step losses. The main exception here is if the defender has a HQ providing support to the combat. In that case the defender must lose steps, at the rate of one step per hex retreated, until it has satisfied the retreat result. This is a successful way to hold onto key positions. Unfortunately you do not have enough HQ's to always sustain such a tactic, particularly if the attacker takes a Blitz turn. The retreat rule does contain one feature that many players may not like. Units only retreat the required number of hexes and there is no displacement. If you are overstacked at the end of the retreat then you eliminate excess units. To make this worse you pick up and also retreat any units that you retreat through in a two or three hex retreat. The result can be a disaster. Some fronts are fairly confined, France and North Africa. An unlucky retreat here can rip a huge hole in the line, destroying units that were in no danger whatsoever. The worst example we had was a weak British attack in North Africa which forced a two hex retreat on the Axis. The only way they could go was back through two fully stacked hexes. End result, half of the Axis forces in North Africa destroyed by a force less than a third of their size. Another exception to the 'must retreat' rule is where the defender is in a city. Fair enough. If however you retreat through a city then you pick up any defending units and force them to retreat. Again this can lead to some odd situations. A big Russian force defending outside Moscow, with a large garrison in the city itself. The covering force was forced to retreat right through Moscow, picked up its defenders, lost half the stack due to over stacking and the Germans advanced into an empty city. I was the attacker on both occasions so I should be grateful. Nevertheless it is a rule I do not like as it leads to some extremely unfair situations with one side being unreasonably hurt by a single attack. The need to avoid such situations can also act as a severe handicap to players. Politics are handled through the card system. They can be pretty volatile. The Balkans usually seemed to turn into a chaos of little nations squabbling with each other or supporting one side or the other. Overall the game plays quite well but to my mind, it has some odd rules and oversights. These can lead to a number of situations that are difficult to accept. They are too simplistic, too easy to manipulate in a few cases and historically unrealistic. Now I know this is a fairly basic level game but even making that allowance it is hard to accept some of the things that can happen. The annoying thing is it wouldn't have taken a lot of work to improve these problems. These are the main points we picked up; 1.There are two ways to declare war on a minor country. You can do it automatically at the end of a side's turn so that they can attack in their next turn. This gives the opposing sides the opportunity to ship units in to support the minor country. The other option, and this particularly applies to Germany early in the war, is to play an Ultimatum card. This is played at the start of the turn and also enables them to conduct a blitz turn if successful. It has a major drawback though. If Germany play an Ultimatum card and fails to declare war it can severely restrict their prospects in the game. The two main examples here are Poland & Belgium. If the German Ultimatum does not succeed then that turn is completely wasted, although it can declare war at the end of the current turn as an alternative. Given the low number of turns though the loss of a single turn can be crippling. It is even worse than that. The chances are they will not get a Blitz turn for this delayed attack. The timing of these early attacks is such that in many cases the subsequent turn will be mud when they cannot do a Blitz turn anyway and the defender has a combat bonus. 2.Norway can be taken by the Germans but only by using up all their air support units. These won't be back in time to help the attack on France where they are vital. 3.There are a number of rules which could have been clarified. In the case of France their North African territories and Syria are treated as part of the home country. This is pretty important. If the Axis fail to meet the conditions of the French Ultimatum card then France fights on. As long as it can trace supply to a 'home country' city its units are in supply. Our assumption was that in this case 'home country' meant mainland France. On querying this we were told that all the French territory counts as 'home country'. 4.One aspect that really threw us was the question of declaring war. The rules say that in the War & Peace Segment the phasing player can declare war on a minor country or countries. It then goes on to say the Allied player can only declare war if Total War has broken out. There does not appear to be anything that says when the Allied player can declare actually war on Germany! There are complex rules about Nazi Soviet Pact or Appeasement and what each side can do. If these are lifted the Allies and Soviets can attack German units but how can they do so if they haven't declared war! It turns out that major powers do not need to declare war on each other! In effect they are at war from the start of the game. The Nazi Soviet Pact or Appeasement restrictions prevent each side from actually doing anything about this state of war. It would be nice if they actually explained this somewhere in the rules. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that major powers do not need to declare war on each other. This was a bit confusing to say the least. 5.The 'Finest Hour' Air Support unit. The British get this if the Axis control 3 Allied Strategic Cities. What happens if the Axis have only two Allied Strategic Cities (so the counter still reads Allied Crusade) and then invades Britain? Presumably the idea is to help defend Britain. Unfortunately its too easy for the Axis to avoid the trigger for this unit. The unit may eventually be released but only when it is too late to be any use! 6.On a similar note card 5 'Home Defence' gives the British only 1 extra infantry if Britain is invaded. That's assuming they have actually played the 'Home Defence' card. It gets the same replacements if the Axis attack Malta! What about the Home Guard? Surely Britain ought to get more infantry if the home country itself is invaded, whether it has played a card or not, as do the Soviets. 7.The Soviets have a number of Border Dispute cards. These allow them to seize various border hexes with Finland, Rumania and the Baltic States. In actual fact the way the system works they are probably far better off if they do not play the Border Dispute cards against Rumania and possibly Finland as well. If they take the Border Dispute then the Soviets get a little extra territory. They also get an avowed enemy. When Germany plays the 'Barbarossa' card then they can automatically bring in as allies any minor country that is, Finland & Rumania, which had to cede border hexes to the Soviets. If the Soviets do not play the 'Border Disputes' then it is extremely difficult for Germany to get either of these two countries into the war. It could only be done by playing a series of Treaty cards to swing neighbours over first and then a Treaty card to bring Rumania and Finland themselves in. This all is unpredictable and will take a lot of time. 8.It seemed to us that there are couple of ways that the Germans can take or neutralise the Baltic States. The Germans can declare war in the War and Peace segment of turn 1 which gives Germany the opportunity to declare the Baltic States a Western Ally. They move in conquer it and then withdraw. There is an alternative. They can declare war on the Baltic States and make it a Soviet Ally but not actually move a German unit into the Baltic States. The Baltic States are no longer neutral and there are no German units in there. In neither case are the Soviets able to respond. They do have a card which allows them to scrap the Nazi Soviet pact but this only works if German units are in the Baltic States when the card is played. 9.Spain is an interesting place. If the Axis succeed with a French ultimatum then they can automatically bring a minor country adjacent to France into the war. This was presumably meant as a way to bring Italy in but as the designers note you can also use it to bring Spain in. Spain is normally difficult to bring in as an Axis minor country. The cards only allow you to attempt to influence countries that a major power or its controlled minors are adjacent to. Germany is already adjacent to Italy but would have to convert Vichy France before it could attempt to influence Spain. The obvious thing to do is to take Spain as the automatic option. This gives the Axis the opportunity to take out Gibraltar and Lisbon, both Allied victory cities. It seems a bit strange that Germany cannot do a Treaty directly with Spain. This was a serious possibility but in the game it is quite hard to achieve. It seems a bit contradictory therefore that Germany can automatically take Spain as a free ally after a French Collapse. There is then a high prospect of bringing Italy into the war anyway via a Treaty. Surely you should have to roll to bring any country into the war. Automatic entry removes any question of risk and makes certain strategies. 10.Here we have a game stretching from the Arctic to the North African desert. What do we have, three types of weather; clear, mud and snow and no weather zones! When it snows, it snows everywhere to the same degree (except a few places in North Africa). OK, keep it simple but this is ridiculous. 11.You may look at the cards and think they offer a wide range of options. It is not as good as it seems. Germany is actually quite restricted early in the game. There are only 12 Limited war cards. If the Germans decided to take out France, then hit Britain and go for the Soviets in 1942 then they need to use 11 limited war cards. If they use a Total war card then the Soviets can start to use their Total War cards, which is not a good thing for the Germans. Really the Axis should have been given at least 15 limited war cards. As it is they really do have a limited range of options. (CHV: Which of course is what they had in reality, or such is the thesis of the designer. Kreig! Has gone more strongly than any game I know into counter-factual territory and here the interaction between what they thought could be done and what was done (together with what actually could have been done) is going to produce lively arguments). Those are things we thought were errors. Obviously others may not really care. A lot of it comes down to what an individual wants from a game. There is no doubt that Krieg is a fast, fun game and easy to play. I have a lot of respect for it, would recommend it to people and will certainly be playing it again. Perhaps you can query some features but there is no doubt that the designers have put in a lot of work and made a serious attempt to produce a good game. They answered my long list of queries promptly and in detail, which impressed me. Having said that I feel a sense of frustration, because for me the game could have been a lot better with very little extra work. Krieg is a worthwhile game that had the potential to be a very good game. Battle for North Africa (No more Mr Politenessman?) Yet another game on the North African campaign. Should I buy this I wondered. Yes, why not it looks as if they have some good ideas and I have always been a sucker for the that campaign. 'Sucker' was the right word! This is without a doubt one of the worst games I have played in years. It is an absolute disgrace that the publishers could have even released a game so superficial and so full of flaws. Sure the map looks nice and the counters are OK but wait till you get to the rules! Rules, you are kidding. After reading them I came to the conclusion that GMT had got mixed up and sent a first draft of the rules to the publishers by mistake instead of the final copy. The rules are superficial, badly written and contain a number of flaws. I gather there is extensive errata for the game. GMT however couldn't even be bothered to reply to the two requests for errata I sent them. (CHV: Richard Berg is unrepentant on this issue but Gene Billingsley has indicated he will be redoing the game.) The unpredictable movement system is a key feature of the game. Now I'm all for random movement systems, if done correctly and in the right context. Neither of those criteria apply here. There are two movement phases. In the Primary phase only certain units can move. Each division has two activation chits, some of the better units have three. At the start of the turn you select which activation chits you want to use during that turn. Each activation chit costs a number of Resource Points to use. You have only a limited supply of the latter each turn. Choosing which activation chits to use can be a challenge. The chits are then drawn one at a time until only one is left and the Primary phase ends. As each chit is drawn it allows the appropriate division to move and fight. There are opportunities to use leaders and activate several divisions at once but these are limited. Basically therefore each side has only one division moving at any one time. This creates a number of problems. Co-ordinated moves become extremely hard to undertake and unpredictable. You can move one division and find that the others will not move for some time. This can create huge holes in each sides lines that become ripe for exploitation. You might want to conduct a strategic withdrawal across the front. One division may be able to retreat but the others are stuck waiting for their chit to be picked. In the meantime your opponent swings in and cuts off a large slab of your forces. Now this really didn't happen. Leaders were very careful to stage co-ordinated withdrawals, even the Italians managed this (after a fashion) in 1940. Even without superior instructions few division commanders would allow themselves to be cut off in the way they can be in this game. After the Primary phase each side has a Secondary phase in which each side moves all those units which were not moved in the Primary phase. There is no combat in this phase except in a few restricted situations. This leads to some silly situations with units in rear areas sitting around doing nothing while enemy units moving all around. Bear in mind that turns here are one month long and the movement allowances are pretty big. Now what does activation actually represent. Can you really believe that units are just going to sit around for a month and only make minor response moves to enemy activity and not move to defend key areas. The Resource Points are an odd beast. What are they exactly. Supplies, money, troops, command initiative or general resources. You can use them for all kinds of things, activating units, rebuilding units, constructing fortifications, or deploying air support. Given that they are generally in short supply it becomes a debate to decide how many to use on activating units and how many to keep to refit damaged ones. The leaders are an optional rule. They offer a number of advantages but the trouble their presence is random and has nothing to do with the overall strategic situation. There is one feature which I thought rather absurd. On those turns when they are not active you can roll for random events. What on earth is the connection between leader availability and random events! One of the random events is that the Allies get extra trucks (although of course the rules do not make it clear whether that is permanent or just for a turn). Good one, the more incompetent your commander the more chance of getting trucks. Some of the key problems we had are set out below. This is based on queries I raised with GMT. There were numerous other rules clarifications we needed as well. As mentioned though they could not even be bothered to send me an errata sheet. 1.There is no Activation chits for three Italian divisions. In contrast there is an Activation chit for the Italian 3CCCN division but the rules say it does not have one! 2.One way to attack in the Secondary phase is with units which start adjacent to the enemy. How many can attack? Is it all units that start adjacent or only one unit? Do you pay 1 resource points for each unit or for all the attacking units? Does this rule only apply to isolated units? 3.Must you activate a unit if its activation chit is picked? The rule says that '... if he does not, or does not have sufficient resource points available, he may not activate that unit'. The words 'if he does not' can be interpreted to mean that the player can chose not to activate the unit but simply let it stand idle and save the resource points for some other use later in the turn. 4.Isolated units are generally pretty helpless, which is why getting cut off is such a disaster. Such units can attack if they start adjacent to an enemy unit. What happens here? You cannot activate a unit unless it has a LOC. An Isolated unit by definition does not have an LOC. How many units can attack, do they need to spend resource points and how many? When do they attack that is, in the Primary or Secondary phase? 5.Certain units have Armour Points which give a combat bonus. These can be upgraded but who goes first in upgrading? There does not appear to be anything to stop a player (probably the British because they may have more resource points) simply buying up all the Armour upgrade counters. As there is a counter limit it means the Axis player would not get any. 6.The Italian medium tanks seem rather strong with Armour Points of 3. These were lightly armoured, poorly gunned, prone to breakdown, had poor crew and few radios. In the game they have an armour rating as good as the initial German tanks and better than many of the British. In fact they were inferior to just about everything! It is awhile since we played it so the full details of the absurdity of the game has faded from my memory somewhat. I am left however with a strong recollection that the whole thing was stupid and didn't work. As far as we were concerned the game system hadn't been properly play tested and the whole thing has been rushed out with complete contempt for the buying public. GMT have done themselves a massive disservice with this game. Do they actually understand a fairly basic marketing concept? If a customer feels ripped off you are highly unlikely to ever get their business again. We the People To end on a positive note. I finally got round to playing a couple of games of We the People. It lives up to peoples comments. It may be fairly basic but its fast, easy to play, actually demands a lot of thought and is a lot of fun. Back to Perfidious Albion #96 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 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