Nicholas Stratigos for Vae Victis This game appeared about 18 months ago, but somehow its counters got left behind until I could do a translation of the rules. Now assembled and played I have to say that this is an interesting game with brilliant artwork but not the most balanced of scenarios. The game covers the approaches to the south of Nijmegen right through to the north of Arnhem. The operation has already passed through the 101st Airborne. Play starts with the 82nd Airborne led by Ryan O'Neal pressing forward on Nijmegen which is guarded by three German units. In the north 1st Airborne have landed around the drop zone and should (unless I have misread the movement rules be able to get six units into Arnhem before Les Boches can act. The Germans receive the best part of two Panzer divisions plus auxilliary artillery and infantry. The Allies have Guards Armoured and 43rd Division pressing on from the south and two more sticks of paras to drop (including the Poles who can choose their DZ). The problem for an Arnhem scenario is that it is essentially a timing play. The Allies suffer from the Champagne Cork Effect; they get held up in a number of places, throw resources at the problem and suddenly WHOOSH they hurtle on to the next line. Clearly the interaction of Allied road speed and German resistance at Nijmegen is important. One must also look carefully at the opportunities for the 1st Airborne to get into Arnhem, and stay there faced by the Germans in powerful numbers. Too clunky a combat system and the delaying forces (of which there are some on both sides) will just play hex-blocking. Too bloody a system and the two relief forces will meet in the middle of the map. Let's start at the beginning. As with every Vae Victis game the counters are very attractive. Unlike many a World War II game this one elects to put together jolly little sprites for infantry and artillery as well as the armoured units. The tanks and vehicles come in splendid three-quarter views and range from the jeeps of the paras to a King Tiger (via load of wondrous German kit and a Cromwell!). The foot are nicely illustrated although the Germans get the best artistic work (just as the devil gets the best tunes), but I did enjoy the US Paras swaggering down the road with a fag hanging out of their mouths. The commanders look right and the whole thing is very helpful in getting us into the spirit of the thing. The Movement Factors colour or surround neatly handles movement. These tell you if the unit is foot, mechanised, motorised or armour. Going off the road is possible but not recommended. Tanks pushing through mixed terrain without a road will usually manage two hexes a turn, whereas foot will have crossed three hexes. Do not be fooled by all that chatter about mechanised warfare. Each counter is also rated for its Combat Value and its Anti-Tank value. The latter also covers the full range of heavy weaponry. As a result paratroops often have a factor of one, against an 8 from a tough SS battalion mounted in Hanomags. One swiftly grasps why many commentators thought airborne assaults were ineffective, in this game you can try stopping a Panther with a machine-gun and a few PIATs. The British, Polish and American paratroops are lowly rated here, but the Germans (apart from a few scratch infantry units) and the Allied forces much more highly rated. A colour band showing its superior formation also decorates each counter. This required the issue of further counters for the game in later issues of Vae Victis. The sequence opens with weather, this can be historical or random. It impacts strongly on parachute drops and the degree of air-support. Unfortunately I cannot immediately tell what the symbols mean on the historical chart! Once the weather report is in the paras for the turn drop. There are no losses involved in this but the units must avoid landing on certain kinds of terrain and an overrun drop zone is one of them. Both players now check supply and command and then decide which of them has the initiative. The main section of the turn now starts with the Operation Phase. Each player alternates activating packages of troops who move and fight. This goes on until the troops or the inclination run out. Activation is simple but neat. You can activate any three units (anywhere on the map and any formation) of any six units of the same formation within command. Since command (see below) is quite restrictive this means that many of your units will activate in the slower fashion with a consequent reduction to the number of units they can use in attack. A few formations though will move swiftly and en masse to attack key areas. Artillery units do not need to be activated to support attacks or defences. Movement includes the usual matters (as noted before off road movement is slow which makes road clearing very important) but also a degree of combat. The CRT proposes three kinds of attack: prepared (5 MPs), normal (3 MPs) and Mobile (1 MP). This means foot infantry are going to have to be pretty much in position for a prepared attack. The CRT manages these by making the dice score of each equivalent to one below the next best type of attack. So a 1 on the normal CRT is equivalent to a 2 on the Mobile CRT. One can move quite some distance in this game, but not if you seek combat at the best odds. It does mean that in the case of a mobile assault you may keep moving (to prevent the Germans setting up units on the road forever). You can build defensive positions in movement, but beware entering ZOCs, they oblige you to attack. Combat starts by checking the defender's terrain and reading the relevant line. These are offset in the traditional fashion. A 1:2 attack on a target in a town is equivalent to a 1:5 attack in the open. One then modifies for artillery, airpower, bridges (rough on the attackers), supply and heavy weapons (called armour) superiority. The latter consists of adding up the armour factors of both sides and making a ratio of these, this in turns gives the number of columns adjusted. A few heavy units can thus leaven a stack most effectively. The final results are in terms of step losses (which can also in some cases be taken as hexes retreated). You can imagine the paras holed up in Arnhem, under tank attack and out of supply – not much fun. Nor is the early attacks by US paras trying to weaken the German defenders before Guards Armoured Div arrives with XXX Corps Bailey bridges. The system works pretty well, unfortunately in some cases if the defender must take losses then attacker can choose to retreat instead! I would make attackers take all their losses as step losses but that's just me. Occasionally you can have an odd situation where a lot of weak units (poor armoured factors) combine to attack a single high value unit. In general I found the system gave me a real feel for the weight of fire each side could project. I was never quite sure if one could use 88 guns as part of an attack to benefit from their high anti-tank value. The artillery contains all sorts of jolly unit (whoops Airfix Converter Warning) from Nebelwerfers to Priests (or was it a Sexton?). Effortlessly the system teaches you why having artillery support was vital and how little your parachute units had. Command and Supply are both pretty tight. Command is five hexes from the headquarters unit. This means each division must concentrate on one particular area of the map even though its units may be involved in several fights. One needs to exercise some car in moving Guards Armoured as the road column is likely to exceed command span, movement then halves. Supply involves a very short line (two hexes!) to HQ or a DZ and in the case of HQ on via the road to a friendly edge. This means the Arnhem paras will soon be parted from their DZ (and the road south is blocked). The Polish brigade can land south of the bridge and may re-establish contact. It also means many units will be out-of-supply and still in command. Bridges and ferries other than the main two can be wired to blow on the approach of an Allied unit. I reckon that if a para can pass these sites they can also prevent German forces crossing the Neder Rijn to extend supply to the Nijmegen defenders. The XXX Corps Sapper unit is vital here. Unless I am counting incorrectly the paras should be able to push some troops into Arnhem which is more than the originals did (they dithered until they could only reach Oosterbeek). The first stick of six units can follow the roads for twelve hexes. However, the Germans can then push units to break these roads and a hell of a fight should develop. In the south the US paras can weaken the Germans but are unlikely to destroy them and must not block the approach march of Guards Armoured which needs sapper support to clear the bridge. After that it is a drive against whatever the Germans have pushed forward over the Neder Rijn. They can use other bridges even if the paras hold Arnhem but will want to mass a powerful attack on Arnhem as well as occupying the DZs. As the sheer weight of fire impacts on 1st Airborne it must just sit there losing steps (of which is has many) hoping the armoured forces manage to push their way through. Is it all balanced? I must confess I do not know, but it plays very well as a basic World War II game. Back to Perfidious Albion #98 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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