Tigers in the Mist is a board wargame on the subject of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. The game is currently on GMT Games Project 500 list. Gene Billingsley asked me to write a piece on what makes Tigers in the Mist different from other, previously published, games on the Bulge. As the 54th anniversary of the start of the "battle" is tomorrow, it seemed a good idea to get this blurb out in time for that anniversary. I frankly admit that the primary purpose of this document is to stimulate interest in the game and hopefully accelerate preorders so that Tigers goes into production sooner, rather than later, or God forbid, not at all. Of necessity, additional information on the game system has been included to aid the reader in understanding how Tigers works.
The most obvious difference between Tigers in the Mist and most other games on the Bulge is the map. There are roughly 20 existing Bulge games that utilise hex maps. The map for Tigers is point to point. To my knowledge, there are exactly two other Bulge games which do not utilize hex maps. The first is the old GDW game Attack in the Ardennes, based on the A House Divided system. This game has been out of print for 15 years more or less. The other is the brand new card game Nuts! by Decision which has no board per se. The GMT version of the Tigers in the Mist map is disguised to look like an area movement map. This allowed the addition of a bit more terrain detail than would have been possible using a pure PTP map. The terrain was taken from old topographic maps of the area made during the era of the battle. A sample of the map by Mark Simonitch may be viewed at GMT's web page.
The URL is: http://www.gmtgames.com/sneakpeek.html
http://www.gmtgames.com/sneakpeek.html
If any of you are web browser impaired, e-mail me at RayFreeman@aol.com and I can send you a JPEG of the sample.
The three basic arms of WWII ground combat forces are represented; armor, infantry, and artillery. The armour counters use silhouettes, so that they are easily distinguishable from infantry type units that use NATO symbology. This "at a glance" visual difference is very important due to a combined arms combat modifier. Artillery is present, but there are no artillery counters. Instead artillery support is possible for both sides in any combat and is represented abstractly. More on this issue later. Infantry is further broken down into mechanised, motorised, foot, and engineer types. Engineer units are critical to both bridge demolition and repair.
Each unit counter has a strength that represents both the number of hits it can take before being destroyed and also is the number of dice it rolls when resolving combat. Unit strength varies from 1 to 5. Divisional strengths vary from 6 for the 106 Infantry and run of the mill Volksgrenadiers divisions to 20 for 1 SS Pz division. If a die roll is equal to or less than the combat factor of the firing unit, it scores a hit that causes its target to lose one strength point. Basic combat factors vary from 3 to 5, with armour being more effective than infantry. Units on defence get a -1 DRM. There is no CRT. This system has three advantages over the classic wargame CRT. First, no attack (no matter how strong) is guaranteed to eliminate, or even damage the defender. Second, there is no possibility of an impregnable position.
Third, all units participating in battle run the risk of suffering attrition that erodes their combat capability. Many Bulge games encourage the use of "soak-off" tactics, whereby the big glamour units do the killing while weak units suffer the losses in exchanges, etc. Tigers in the Mist is very different (and, IMO, more realistic) in this respect. If you attack with a powerful SS Panzer unit, expect to take casualties with that unit in nearly every battle. One of the real advantages of the combat system is that the outcomes of battles are never predictable. Neither side can be sure what the outcome of any possible battle will be, only what the probable outcome should be. This raises the tension level during play considerably. While the combat system is somewhat similar to that used in Columbia block games, it differs in that there is only one round of combat per battle. The success of an attack is often measured by whether or not the area is cleared of defenders.
Combat modifiers include attacking without combined arms (Armour, Infantry, and Artillery all present), attacking across a river, attacking entrenched units, and out of supply status. Combat is mandatory when entering an area containing enemy units. It is optional when both sides start an impulse in an area.
The sequence of play is fairly standard Igo-Hugo, with one important exception. Each turn represents a day of real time. There are three impulses per side per day. However, units may only move and/or attack once per turn. This feature forces both sides to maintain reserves. If the Germans are to make progress, they need reserves to exploit first impulse successes on follow up impulses. If the Allies are to avoid a fatal breakout by the Wehrmacht, they must maintain some reserves to plug the inevitable holes in their lines opened by strong German attacks. For example, the prudent German player will often use no more than 60% of his available forces on the first impulse of any turn. Most other game systems modelling the Bulge encourage the use of all available forces in the front line.
Occupation limits in Tigers in the Mist are controlled by two different factors. Each player may have a maximum of 4 unit counters with a maximum total of 10 strength points occupying an area at the end of any movement impulse. These limiters have two significant effects. Without the SP limit, both sides could create "killer" stacks of up to 17 SP. Such a stack could generate as many as 5 artillery support points in a battle, resulting in 22 combat die rolls. The 10 SP stacking limit reduces the maximum attack or defence to 13, counting artillery. The second effect is to make the impact of attrition on combat power more significant. As battle grinds down the big elite units, their combat power erodes faster than their impact on stacking. Four 1 SP units result in an area being fully stacked, yet generate little hitting and staying power in combat, and still clog up the road net. The effect is that battles create a lot of detritus that impairs the ability of reinforcements to get to the front.
The movement rules are very simple. There are two types of road, major and minor. Movement on minor roads is double the cost of movement along major roads. Movement off road is not allowed. Much of the Ardennes in 1944 was thickly forested which limited off road movement by major combat formations. In addition, there is a penalty for moving through occupied areas, which simulates the road congestion common in the battle. In combination with the impulse system, this penalty creates many traffic control headaches for the German player without the use of special congestion rules which "go away" after a certain time. Other movement modifiers include leaving an enemy occupied area, crossing a river at a blown bridge (by infantry on foot only), having a bridge blown up as a unit is trying to cross it, and being out of supply. There are very high movement costs for both entrenching and bridge repair.
Bridge demolition takes place during the opponent's movement. A bridge may be blown only as an enemy unit is attempting to cross it, and a defender must be present at the bridge. How long the defender has been in place behind the bridge and the defender's unit type also affects the probability of successful demolition. Engineers are excellent at demolition. Armoured units can't blow bridges at all. Bridge repair takes place after movement, and may only be performed by Engineers that have not moved that turn.
Artillery is represented abstractly in the game. Each attacking or defending stack is assumed to have the possibility of artillery support during any impulse. The players roll dice for each artillery unit they are eligible to call on for support. Each player may make 1 call for artillery support for every 3 strength points he has present in a battle. The defender always gets a minimum of one call. American artillery is much more reliable than German, and defending artillery is significantly more accurate than artillery used in support of an attack. As the US is typically defending, their artillery is usually 4-5 times as effective as the Germans, gun for gun. In TitM, artillery will rarely be a decisive weapon in any given battle, however the cumulative attritional effect of US artillery makes it a very deadly weapon indeed.
The three most important tools in the American arsenal are artillery, shovels, and dynamite. The US player must dig in whenever he can and it is prudent to do so. He must also try to preserve his precious engineers, not an easy task when he is desperate to find any unit with which to plug holes that occur with alarming frequency. The Germans have to rely on their panzer divisions for punch. As the five panzer divisions they begin the campaign with are usually burnt out after 3 or 4 days, it is critical that they release at least some of the 4 panzer divisions they have in reserve as soon as possible by securing certain geographical objectives.
The final somewhat different feature of Tigers in the Mist is the German Special Forces unit. This unit represents the von der Heydte parachute unit, Greif commando teams, and the use of captured US Sherman tanks to lead attacks in order to confuse the defenders. The SF unit has three different effects, each of which may only be used once. During the 17th, 18th, and 19th of December, the German player selects an effect and area for it to be applied. One effect is to impede US movement through an area, one affects bridge demolition die rolls, and one yields a favourable combat modifier in a single battle.
There is one last phenomenon I should mention. This game constantly gives both players the dread feeling of imminent disaster and defeat. Many gamers have made this comment to me and I have felt it myself in most games of Tigers in the Mist I've played. I have been playing wargames since 1960 and have never played another game that conveyed such a feeling of doom to both players simultaneously. After a few turns, the US player starts to feel as if every roadblock he throws up is being steamrollered by the German juggernaut. However, after some initial euphoria, the German player realises that his panzers, far from slicing through enemy lines with surgical blitzkrieg precision, are instead caught in a meat grinder, where manoeuvre is limited by congestion and a lousy east-west road net. The feeling for both sides is quite disconcerting.
That's my summary of what makes Tigers in the Mist unique in a crowded field of Bulge games. While a few of these features occur in some form in other games, the combination of systems in Tigers in the Mist and their close integration with each other makes this game truly different. Should any of you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them here or e-mail me directly.
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© Copyright 1999 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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