Designed by Dave O’Connor
Published by Panther Games, 1985

I have a confession to make. I’m not a wargame collector. (Perhaps this is why John neither returns my calls nor acknowledges me on the street.) That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t want to have pretty much every game worth having, if only to study it for a few hours. This means that I’m often looking for games that are fifteen, twenty or even thirty years old. And so I have been known to spend too much time scouring eBay and various other places on the Internet looking for copies of Korsun Pocket, The Art of Siege, Torgau and the like.

Unfortunately, this means having to compete with real collectors and that economy. To keep the spending to sane levels, I have a rule: for a game to be worth real dollars, it not only has to be collectable but actually worth playing. This simple rule keeps me from spending $300 on a copy of War in the Pacific, or $400 on a copy of La Bataille de Deutsch-Wagram.

Of course, “worth playing” is highly subjective, you say. Perhaps, you ask, would I be a bit more precise? Well, nothing serves better than a good example.

Which brings me to the subject at hand – the game Trial of Strength. If you ask a collector, I expect the title will elicit words indicating a modest amount of interest – after all, the game appears with some regularity on eBay and usually goes in the $20s and $30s. But it’s hardly a Wacht am Rhein. So why I am telling you about it? Why has John acceded to my request that a review be published?

Well, simply enough – it’s a terrific game. Moreover, it’s of interest to those of us interested in wargame design because (I believe) it introduced or at least packaged together many interesting mechanics into a workable whole. It’s a breakthrough game, in my opinion, and deserves a prominent place in annals of wargaming genealogy.

So, no, I don’t expect you’ll get rich hoarding copies of Trial of Strength, but if you buy one copy you’ll have many hours of enjoyment. I hope you’ll agree this is another form of wealth.

First, the basics. Trial of Strength is a strategic-level game covering the decisive portion of WWII in Europe – the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The game covers the campaign from start to finish in ten-day turns at a corps/army scale with hexes about 45 miles from side to side. It is of moderate, edging towards high, complexity.

The game is played on a map covering the area fought over from Petsamo in the north to Baku in the south, and Germany west of the Elbe in the west to just short of the Urals in the east. The map area measures about 26” by 57”. Hexes are slightly larger than normal – about 0.7” from side to side. The map graphics are attractive and functional.

Trial of Strength includes 800 counters. Combat units represent primarily German and Axis-Allied corps and Soviet armies, but there are many other types of counters: HQ units, which play an important role in the game, air units, motor supply units, RR repair units, naval transport markers, partisan zones, Soviet marines and the like. The units have a simple graphic design, showing unit type, size, designation and strength. Armor-type units have, additionally, an armor rating.

The rules booklet is 46 pages long, but includes scenarios, a bibliography and designer’s notes as well as the rules themselves, which amount to some 35 pages. The text is well written and virtually free of ambiguity. The rules cover the usual aspects of play in a game of this nature, but in addition to the common land systems the game includes comprehensive political rules covering the defection of Axis minors, possible entry of Turkey into the war, the Polish uprising, Western Allied progress, Rail repair/conversion and even construction and political stability. As with everything else in the game, the production quality is top-notch.

The game includes a “Case Blue” mini-scenario that serves as an introduction to the system, but the heart of the game is the full campaign scenario. There are four campaign starting points: Barbarossa, Case Blue, Kursk and Bagration. Interestingly, the game can end whenever the players want: the historical victory point totals (against which the players’ performance is judged) are given for each month. So, players short of time can play Kursk through to the winter of 1943 – certainly a fascinating period of time, and lasting only 12 turns. Scenario set-ups are given by superimposing start positions over reduced scale pictures of the map, much like Korsun Pocket.

No doubt the reader is thinking that what I’ve written thus far describes what appears to be a comprehensive and playable simulation, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary. So why is Trial of Strength special? Well, it comes from the land/air system – called CLIMACS (combined land integrated movement and combat system: a very carefully contrived acronym, I’m sure the reader will agree.) This is, in my opinion, the revolutionary aspect of the game.

At its essence, the system integrates movement and combat. All units have ten movement points -- terrain costs are a function of unit type. Combat costs the attacking units a varying number of movement points, depending on the size of the attacking force. A successful attack will leave a battle marker in the hex with an associated movement amount determined by the highest MP expenditure thus far among the attacking units. All units passing through the hex later in the turn round up their movement expenditure thus far to this value – they have to wait around until the combat is complete.

This raises many interesting questions: do you attack with infantry and exploit the resulting hole with the armor? On the one hand, you preserve your valuable armor. On the other hand, it’s been slowed down a fair amount by the infantry, which reduces its ability to exploit.

The system is the first I had encountered that allowed defender reaction. Enemy units near an HQ can attempt to react when close to a declared attack, so fast moving reserves are essential. On the other hand, committed reserves accumulate movement penalties against their movement allowance in their next player turn, so over-committing reserves will unnecessarily reduce counterattack potential. A succession of attacks in one area can exhaust the mobile reserves in the area, wonderfully simulating initiative.

Armor is decisive on the attack – the ratio of armor points between attacker and defender determines column shifts which will often turn a mediocre attack into an excellent one. But don’t let your armor exploit too deeply! Enemy counterattacks in the next player turn will blunt it rapidly.

The game also provides for limited intelligence, adding further variability to the mix. Units stacked with HQs can be kept off-map on the HQ displays. All of this results in a very dynamic situation on the board, giving this strategic game a terrific operational feel.

That’s what I think is great about the game – it plays at two levels very well without lots of rules. The game forces you to be flexible and anticipate failure; if you don’t do this, you will often find yourself unable to exploit a promising result, or out of position to respond to adversity.

There’s much more to talk about with this game – a production system (a force pool system with replacement points received monthly in an amount that’s a function of territory held), a complete political system, supply, etc., but rather than spoil the surprise I’d like instead to recommend that you just pick up a copy of your own – you won’t regret it.

As I sit here writing this, I have my copy of Trial of Strength beside me. With my now experienced collector’s eye I see a stain or two on the rulebook cover, a few places where I integrated the errata into the text of the rules and two places on the mapsheet that have errata marked in ink. The box is worn. The value of this item is not nearly as high as it could be, but it simply doesn’t matter – mine isn’t for sale.

Boone lists low, high and average prices of 6/36/21.64 at auction and 20/67/30.06 for sale. Perhaps one of the reasons Trial of Strength doesn’t fetch high prices is that it is relatively unknown. Trial of Strength is the only board wargame published by Panther Games. It published two other board games: Shanghai Trader and Warlords, neither of which I own. Panther also published a computer game called Fire Brigade, an operational study of the battle of Kiev, 1943.

Breakout, an Australian magazine, has published a Trial of Strength add-on module that covers the campaigns in Poland and the Balkans. These campaigns serve as excellent introductions to the system and are playable in an hour or two. The supplement was published in issue 22 (June-August 1986) and includes 112 two-sided die-cut counters, two scenarios (Poland 1939 and the Balkans 1941) and the latest Trial of Strength errata.