Stripped Down for Parts: The Lamps Are Going Out: World War I

   

  

World War I, or the Great War (or The War to End All Wars), as it was referred to at the time, holds an abiding fascination for me as a subject for exploration through gaming. Obviously I’m not the only one, because there are an awful lot of WWI games on the market these days, and many of them have developed committed followings. It’s such an expansive subject that I think there is room in anyone’s collection for more than one.

I nabbed a copy of The Lamps Are Going Out: World War I (Compass Games, 2016) from my FLGS on the recommendation of Karl from the Wargaming Bootcamp; I’d mentioned in a comment on somebody else’s post on Facebook that Dawn’s Early Light: the War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020), was currently my favourite CDG, and Karl responded with a couple of others he held in equal esteem, but first and foremost was The Lamps Ae Going Out. I’ve never been one to let a provocation like that slide, so I felt I had to investigate this for myself. When I’ve spent some more time with the game, I’ll post a review, but in the meantime, here’s a look at what comes in the box.

But first, the box, with its rather poignant photograph adorning the cover. Two weeks after the death of King Edward VII of Britain and Ireland, the nine monarchs of Europe gathered to pay their respects and to participate in the extraordinary spectacle of Edward’s funeral. As they sat for this photo, none of them could have conceived of the tumult that would descend upon Europe a mere four years later.

The box back gives us a look at some sample troop, event and technology counters and a sample event card and technology card, (all reproduced at roughly their actual size), all against a backdrop of a portion of the board, showing Italy, Greece and the western Balkans.

The standard provisos let us know that the game is of medium difficulty (while not a scale, the folks at Compass games are pretty reliable with a statement like this), it plays one to four players but is best with two, has a high solitaire suitability (I’ll be testing that claim the first time or two to the table), and the game should run to about five hours. The map is referred to as “Strategic,” which might be code for area movement; I’d say it’s kind of a front-scale area map, as the larger countries are divided up into roughly along the lines of historical frontlines. The unit scale is individual armies – the units are identified by the designations of the armies that participated in the war – and the turn scale is approximately three months, which is likely the ideal durational scale for a game of this scope.

Rule Book (in case the cover didn't give it away).

The second edition of the game comes with two booklets. The Rulebook and a separate booklet of additional designer’s notes for the second edition publication and more thorough explanations of each of the event cards.  rulebook is Thiry-six pages. High sheen pages with gloss cover. The rules run to twenty-three pages. The booklet also contains a Table of Contents, the Designer’s Notes from the first edition, and an eight-page Extended Example of Play.

Sample page from the rule book.

The additional Design Notes booklet is new to the second edition of the game. It runs to twenty pages, with the first three devoted to additional design notes. The other seventeen pages are given to detailed notes on the function of each Event card and a paragraph or two (some are quite extensive) on its historical background or significance. This all makes for really interesting reading. This isn’t a review, or even a cursory exploration of the game, so I don’t want to go too deep into the tall grass, but I will say the first edition nots in the rulebook and the follow-up notes and event descriptions are well worth the time spent reading through them.

Second Edition Design Notes, incorporating the expanded Event Card notes
and historical details. Interesting reading for its own sake.

The map for Lamps is mounted on a solid-weight board and lays out nicely out of the box (you might have to put a couple of books of other games on top of the rising folds for twenty minutes or so if you have the luxury of that much time – I’d do it while you’re punching and sorting the counters if you want to start pushing pieces around straight away). The play area offers most of Europe (minus the Iberian Peninsula) and a goodly portion of the Levant and the Syrian plains, presented in sombre tones. The East African interests and the distant United States are represented with box-inserts.

The map. Mostly playable. All useful.

The colours used for various countries distinguish the antagonists home territories, as well as individual smaller states like Greece and Bulgaria. Two neutral countries – the Netherlands and Switzerland – are rendered in black, impassable to both sides. There’s a slight colour variation in the Triple Entente with France and the UK appearing in khaki, while Italy takes a more mustard hue, Germany is rendered in light grey, Austria-Hungary and Turkey in a rain-bearing blue/grey, and Russia in a mossy green. The effect is quite striking.

As I mentioned earlier, the larger countries are divided into a series of areas to be contested. Some areas have representations of mountains, which will impact on units’ defensive combat and movement. A terrain key nis incorporated into the map, along with a turn track and an escalating America Declares War track. The whole thing looks both appealing and very playable, although I suspect the action around Verdun, Venetia/Austria and Gallipoli might get a little crowded, looking at the numbers of counters at play in the Extended Example of Play.

All in all, the map is eminently functional and fit for purpose. To my mind, wargame artists don’t usually get the recognition they deserve. A game’s artwork will often subtly affect the way a player approaches the game. We’ve all had the experience of a map’s colour scheme or poor contrast between the background and values on a counter reduce the joy of the play experience. So, I wanted to take a moment here to mention Tim Allen was the artist on The Lamps Are Going Out (and another Compass game covering the same theatre, Imperial Tide: The Great War,1914-1918 (Compass Games, 2022). Mr Allen has well over a hundred games to his credit on BGG, including some personal favourites. When I get to writing a review of the game I’ll probably forget to mention Mr Allen’s contribution, so I wanted to take the opportunity here.

Players Aid Cards, Triple Entente and Russia/USA (top),
and Germany and Central Allies (bottom).

The game comes with four Player’s Aid Cards (PACs), two each for the Triple Entente (TE) and the Central Powers (CP). The pairs are duplicates, with the additional copies for the four-player game option. The need for this will become clear in a moment.

The reverse side of the PACs all feature the game set-up guidelines form page 26 of the rulebook. This is really handy as if you’re playing someone who is already somewhat familiar with the game, you can effectively halve the set-up time, which – looking at the set-up notes – shouldn’t be too burdensome a task in itself (compared to some other games, at least).

Set-up notes (on the reverse side of all four PACs).

The play-side of the PAC is where it gets interesting. It’s intended to be used as a mat for managing your off-board counters. This is no doubt because, apart from the US involvement and Turn tracks, the whole map-board is taken up with, well, map. Given the reverse is only of use before the game, it doesn’t create any imposition, except for the need for a little more table space.

Everything is laid out very sensibly and usefully on the PAC, though. There are slight variations between the CP and TE PACs as necessary. Each has a Sequence of Play on the left side, but the Central Powers SoP features two extra steps in their Movement Please for U-Boats and Fleets, and the TE card sports a U-Boat Attack Table where the CP card has a U-Boat Attrition Table. Similarly, the other charts correspond across the two PACs, with the content tailored for that side. The PACs also duplicate the holding boxes for Eliminated units, Event Markers, etc., for the two factions making up each side so the players each only need a single PAC out for a two-player game.

Counter sheets (pre-rounded - sheer luxury) This is a relatively
low counter-density game, for the scope..

The two counter-sheets for Lamps are the pre-rounded easy-punch types that people either love or hate. Personally, I don’t mind them. These 5/8” counters are printed in a matt finish on a grey-core board of a good thickness (about 2mm). They’re easy to pick up and move around, which, at the end of the day, is what you’re looking for in game counters.

The choice of colours for the nationalities matches those used on the board. There are no numeric values for strength or movement on the unit counters, but at this scale there needn’t be. Each unit features aits national flag, the army’s designation, and a figure of a soldier in the uniform of that force. The result is very effective. Units have two states, Ready (front) and spent (reverse). Other on-map counters include entrenchment and artillery concentration, Air Superiority, Fleets, U-boats and Zeppelins (German), and Convoys (Entente) markers. The counter mix incudes various Some of the Event cards for both sides have corresponding Event markers which will be placed either on the board of the card as a reminder that the event in question is currently in play.

The cards some in two decks, but they need a little sorting,

The game comes with two sealed card decks in loose-fitting cellophane baggies that I think should become an industry standard. I get the shrink-wrapped plastic is to stop the cards rubbing against each other  and give them a little more integrity (safety in numbers) if they get jolted around in transit, but you essentially get the same thing from these bags, the sturdiness of the plastic offering something off a buffer for knocks, and I’m not terrified of slipping and putting a gouge in some of the cards trying to get a knife under the seam of the wrap to split it open. Just my opinion. The cards themselves are printed on a good card-stock and shuffle well. These too are really nicely illustrated with images appropriate martial images from the period.

Some sample cards; two Events on each side, and a Technological Advance in
the Middle (note the "A2" in the top left-hand corner - you can't activate
this card unless the "A1" card is already in play).

There are actually six sets of cards; four Event decks – each faction has their own to draw from – and two Technology decks, which only Germany and the Western Alliance (the two research powerhouses) get to draw from. The Event decks reflect historical events and significant personalities involved in the conflict. Some Event cards offer an advantage for their faction when played, while others will cause a minor setback (though even a minor probable can become significant at the wrong moment; such are the fortunes of war). The technology cards offer advantages of their own, but only if the requirements for the drawn cards have already been met; both sides, for example, may be able to develop their air superiority (cards P1 through P3), but a drawn P3 card drawn by either faction in their Technology Draw phase can only be put to use if their P1 and P2 cards are already in play. If not, it gets shuffled back into the deck; no technology advance this turn.

Serious dice, but no baggies. : (

I neglected to mention the quality of the box before. In recent years every Compass game I’ve bought has come in a good, quality box with a lid that will come off easily enough when you want it to (I’m sure everyone develops their own removal techniques). The box for Lamps is no exception.

The game comes with four white six-sider pip dice which look familiar from other Compass games, so I have no doubt they will roll well (except for the times when my own well-documented poor luck at pivotal moments intercedes). I was a little surprised when I discovered an absence of the expected baggie-roll from among the contents of the box. I’m not too heartbroken – I can source my own counter bags or spring for a tray – but Compass usually includes really good quality bags. A small thing.

There is a note included in the box, identifying a single erratum; to wit, that any references to the British Isles as being Factory 5 are incorrect, and should be read as Factory 4. The 4 appears on the map, next to the Factory symbol, so that should be a sufficient reminder, but some people have a big stick out for Compass regarding errata, so you can’t blame them for wanting to cover their bases.

Well, that’s everything that comes with The Lamps Are Going Out, Second Edition. Overall, the game components all look good and are of a high grade, but I’ve been spoilt a bit by the Compass games I’ve acquired thus far, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. I’m looking forward to putting The Lamps Are Going Out through its paces, but I’ll want to play it a least a couple of times with another human before I review it, so it might not come for a couple of months. In the meantime, I’ll solo it a couple of times to find my way around, and if all goes well, I might put up a session report as an appetiser.

 

  

By the Numbers: Collection analysis and classification by divers methodologies – Part II

 

 

Note: This is the second part of my journey down the rabbit hole of collection analysis. Here is where we look at the working end of my games, and gain some understanding of the factors influencing my selection process. Part I, where I classified my games by publisher – which I had done once before, though the collectin has groen some since then – and by historical period setting, using the (arguably inadequate) Charles S. Roberts Awards categories from the 2022 awards. In this post, I’m breaking my collection down into the types of items that make it up..

 To get a better idea of my own collecting habits, I took a broad-brushstroke view of what constituted my game collection. I broke the list down into three categories:

 - Stand-alone games. These are one-off titles intended to stand on their own. Most are like Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Battle (Companion WarGames, 2019), or Prairie Aflame! The Northwest Rebellion, 1885 (Legion Wargames, 2020). Sometimes a stand-alone game will have its own expansion, as in the case of Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD (GMT Games, 2017) and its “extras” package, The Age of Iron and Rust (GMT Games, 2019), which introduced some additional cards and non-player AI options. The expansion doesn’t radically change the play of the game or refashion it into another situation, so I’d still class it as a stand-alone game. The expansions o one-off games are still counted among the Expansions.

RAF: Battle of Britain. Definitely a stand-alone game, and really quite brilliant.

 - Series Games. These tend to be games that share a common rules-set or functional grounding. The Band of Brothers series of squad-level tactical games from Worthington Publishing is an obvious example, as is the Carl Paradis’s No Retreat! theatre-encompassing games published by GMT. The attraction of a series game is not having to grok an entirely new rules-set each time you get a new game. If you have played and enjoyed Death Valley: Battles of the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019), then picking up Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (GMT Games, 2022) will be a simple thing and no trouble. Some games included in this section are titles like No Peace Without Spain (Compass Games, 2011), the first in the No Peace series, now up to four titles in print with a fifth, covering the Thirty Years War, in development, but I only own the first, and Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2020) which is the only volume in print thus far, but at least a second is due for publication this year.

France '40 - a splendid example of a series game, or perhaps not.
I did an unboxing post that you can read here.

 - Expansions. Technically the base games and their expansions; these amount to additional material supplementary to an otherwise complete and self-contained game. An obvious contender for this section is Combat Commander: Europe (GMT Games, 2006), and it’s legacy of boxed and zip-loc bagged additional scenarios and materials, and the seemingly ever-growing family of Commands and Colors games, of which I possess – ahem – several, each with most or all of their additional boxes. This section also includes one-off expansions like SpaceCorp: Ventures (GMT Games, 2021) for John Butterfield’s SpaceCorp: 2025-2300AD (GMT Games, 2018). (Yes, I know SpaceCorp isn’t technically a wargame, but my list - my rules; the kid stays in the picture.)

C&C Napoleonics. Definitely an expansion; it says so on the box.

And so, to the numbers. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that series games make the lion’s share of my collection, a whopping 49%. I think this is an artefact of historical trends of opportunities to play more than anything else. I’ve mentioned this previously, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but I didn’t have a regular wargaming habit until 2010. I had been buying wargames before that, and sometimes taking them out and soloing two-handed, and I had a regular RPG game I’d been going to for a few years by them, but in 2010 my wife was sick in hospital for about four months. In that time, Jess’s elder sister and her husband would have me around once a week for dinner – mostly to make sure I was looking after myself, I think – and one night I took over Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010), which T had just brought back for me from the US about a month before. That turned into a weekly-ish thing after Jess was back home, and we’ve been meeting most weeks since.

T is a doctor in a local hospital, and runs a section there, so he’s got a pretty serious job and he takes seriously, and doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth for anything outside of it. C&C: Naps is a relatively simple game at heart. There are variants to the rules for each army, but the core mechanisms stay true for the entire series. Which is why we played that pretty much exclusively for the first nine or so years, working through the expansions as they came out and revisiting the Peninsula when the mood took us (and wearing though one board and a set of dice labels in the process). Since about 2019 we’ve expanded to other flavours of Commands and Colors, and more recently (maybe the middle of 2022) we’ve been breaking ground outside the C&C system, most recently with WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020 – you can find a review here), Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2019 – review forthcoming), and Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017 – review here), but almost exclusively series games, so that when we move on to the next one - in this case, probably Napoléon,1807 (Shakos, 2020) – there’s less of a learning curve before getting down to playing.

Expansions make up the smallest section of my collection (only 20% in total), which did surprise me a little. While The Commands and Colors base games appear in the Series game count, all of the expansions appear in this section. The same with the Combat Commander: Europe boxed expansions and scenario packs, and the Panzer and MBT expansions, and every Flying Pig Games game that I own – and there are several – has at least one expansion in the list. But the above stated make up nearly all the count between them. There are a few strays, like the aforementioned Age of Iron and Rust for Time of Crisis, or Ventures for SpaceCorp, but not all that many. I guess this also speaks to the habit of keeping to series rules, especially for two-player games (something I’ll return to later).

Stand-alone games make up a goodly proportion of the collection (the remaining 31%). These are probably more representative of my magpie interests in history and mechanics. One of the joys of playing wargames is delving into the history represented, but another is seeing how the designer has attempted to recreate various aspects of the situation through the game’s mechanics. An obvious example of this is the optional or mandatory events in various card-driven games (CDGs) like Washington’s War (GMT Games, 2010), Dawn’s Early Light: the War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020), or Plains Indian Wars (GMT Games, 2022 – you can read my review here). But often the best way to reflect a quirk of history is a simple mechanical adjustment, like the second impulse for motorised units in The Russian Campaign (Jedko Games, 1974) to replicate the blitzkrieg tactics of the Wehrmacht. Or how in La Primogenita (Legion Wargames, 2022), each unit is given a stacking “weight,” and the coarseness of the terrain can restrict the mass of firepower you can bring to bear on a target hex; it’s a small thing but it adds immeasurably to the verisimilitude of the experience of play. There isn't so much room for this kind of variation in series rules, but that's okay, because different types of games are trying to achieve different things.

Pacific Tide, Second Edition. Sand alone? Series game?
All I'm sure if is it's a really fun game.

Some people commit their ludological lives to a single pursuit, like chess. In our hobby t's more commonly a game-system like Advanced Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1985), or La Bataille (Clash of Arms/Marshal Enterprises). I can appreciate the allure of devoting oneself to exploring a rich vein of gaming goodness like that, but I think I'm a little too distracted by all the other opportunities and experiences offered in new games and rules. I have enjoyed Commands and Colors: Napoleonics every time it makes it to the table – I estimate T and I have played that game alone more than five hundred times now – but I like the new experiences and different periods as well. 

I suppose that's also what drives the need for new games, even when I have so many as yet unplayed. It's more than a simple desire of acquisition (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy obtaining and possessing new games, another aspect of the magpie instinct), but the exploration, the reveal, the chance to learn something I didn't know before. That last one is the most intoxicating.

I'd had intended to keep this to two parts, but I ran away a bit here, so next time I'll interrogate my pile of games through the lenses of Mode (more or less as per the new award categories included in the Charles S. Roberts Awards for 2023), and player-count. There's quite a bit to unpack there, so I'll try to keep the philosophical meanderings to a minimum.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: France ‘40

 

 

After a long stretch out of print, Mark Simonitch’s France '40 (GMT Games, 2024) is back in print. It was first released in 2013; this time it appears in a revised second edition with some updates to the rules to bring the game in line with the more recent editions to the 19XX family. France ‛40 was and still is actually two games dealing with two separate but linked operations. The first, Sickle Cut: Guderian’s Drive to the Channel takes its name from the much-revised German Western invasion plan, Unternehmen Sichelschnitt (code-named Fall Gelb, or Case Yellow), the initial invasion of Belgium, and France, and the thrust through the poorly defended Ardennes region. The second game, Dynamo: Retreat to Victory, covers the delaying action undertaken by the overwhelmed French forces to secure the time needed for the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force’s evacuation from Dunkirk.

Mr Simonitch’s 19XX games have been a staple of the GMT catalogue, and of my collection, for more than two decades. The second edition of France '40 has served its time on the P500 list (I think I pre-ordered it maybe six years ago) but judging by the contents of the box – and the regard held for the original release – it’s definitely been worth the wait.

A quick note

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of the game, I’d just like to talk about the nomenclature I’ve adopted in referring to these games. A lot of people insist on referring to them as “Mark Simonitch’s Forty-X series” or simply the “ZOC-Bond series,” referring to the Zone of Control rules that have been a hallmark of the games. As I’ve said previously, I’m disinclined to call these games a series, even though familiarity with one will definitely give you a leg-up in understanding the next. It’s reductive to refer to the games as a series, because it highlights the similarities between them while papering over the differences that make each game a better representation of the situation it models. I think it’s more helpful to think of the games as a family; while there’s definitely a sibling resemblance, each has its own personality. As for the name, Mr Simonitch has himself referred to these as his 19XX games. I think this is a better epithet than Forty-X, mostly because I selfishly nurture some hope of there being a Poland '39 inclusion sometime in the future.

The box art for the second edition is an illustration by Antonis Karidis of a pair French Char B1 bis tank (at least I’m pretty sure of that – happy to be corrected in the comments), with what look like a couple of Bristol Buckingham medium bombers in support (again, happy to be corrected on that). This is a change from the first edition cover, which featured a really effective photomontage by Rodger B. MacGowan, but it’s not unwelcome, and it brings the game into line with the dress of the newer 19XX games like Salerno '43 (GMT Games, 2022) and North Africa '41 (GMT Games, 2023). It’s colourful and pleasing to the eye, and it eloquently conveys that you’ve just picked up a historical wargame.

The box-back offers an image of the maps and some sample counters (these seem to me represented at actual size, which is always a good thing), and gives us a brief description of the subject of the game-set and a tally of what you’ll find inside. It also tells us that the publishers believe this game is suitable for ages fourteen and up, that it each should be playable in four to six hours (in this case the six hours may refer to the additional scenario included in the second edition that combines the two games; I’ll come back to this later). The Difficulty rating is set at 5 out of 9, which I think I’d agree with – the 19XX games tend to be meaty but not distractingly difficult, and as previously mentioned, familiarity with one will help in picking up the next and the next – and the Solitaire Suitability rating is also a stolid 5. Personally, I don’t think I’d pull out any 19XX game to play solitaire by choice, except for getting acquainted with it (probably two or three plays through at least), but from what I‘ve seen so far, there doesn’t seem to be any hidden information, a la Holland '44 (GMT Games, 2017). I think it would make a good solitaire experience if you could leave it set up somewhere and take from it11’ by17’ between turns.

The Rules of Play and Playbook for France '40.

The 19XX rulebooks, in my limited experience, are always well laid out, with useful illustrations that help to explain the idiosyncrasies of the rules in play. The France ‛40 rulebook is unexceptionable in this regard, meeting the already established high standards for readability and clarity. The Rules of Play run to twenty-four pages (with cover and an index on the back cover page – always nice to see) but the actual rules only run to seventeen pages.

Rulebook (sample page): ZOC Bonds explained.

Though a playbook is included in the package, the Rules of play also include the details for the two single-map scenarios (alas, no shorter scenarios are included; it’s the game or it’s nothing). Also included are an illustrated table explaining the quirks of some special units with unique qualities, and a list of Counter Abbreviations (also handy).

The Extended Example of  Play from the Playbook; a good introduction for new players. 

The Playbook for France '40 is a help and a treat. In a mere sixteen pages, it offers an extended example of play (Sickle Cut), the original First Edition design notes, plus supplementary notes for the Second Edition, some notes on the Order of Battle by Fred Thomas, and six pages of reproduced French and German situation maps from the battle, with notes relating the maps to the two games. The booklet finishes with the aforementioned France ‛40 Combined Game instructions, developed by Mark Merritt, and a bibliography for those of use who like to read the history we play. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to playing the combined game, but it does look intriguing.

PAC bi-fold, front (right) and back (left).

The Player’s Aid Cards are a duplicate pair two-panel, double-sided 11’ x 17’ cards (no need for sharing) forming a booklet. The front page covers the direct effect of combat, and includes the Combat Results Table (and explanations for the result), Determined Defense Table, and lists of the Maximum Advance After Combat Rates and Combat Modifiers applicable to the CRT. 

PAC interior. Some thought has obviously been put into how to make
the Player's Aid Cards as useful as possible.

Inside fold of the card offers all the specific case tables relating to movement – Extended Movement, Disengagement, Breakthrough Combat and Evacuation – as well as the Rally and Isolation Attrition tables, and an Expanded Sequence of Play. The back page presents a detailed Terrain Effects Chart, with some extra details on unusual terrain features found exclusively on the Dynamo map

Sickle Cut At Start and Reinforcement Cards set-up cards...

One thing I love about the 19XX games I own (and that brings a sense of relief whenever I see them on other games) is the unit set-up cards. Sometimes they’re call Order of Battle Cards, or Reinforcement Charts; here they’re called At Start and Reinforcement Cards (so there’s no confusion. These are two double-sided PACs, one for the Allies and one for the Germans, that set out all of the units required for the Sickle Cut game on one side, and Dynamo on the other. 

...with the Dynamo set-up instructions on the reverse side of each.

Placing the pieces in their appropriate spaces on the card ensures that you have all the requisite counters (many of the counters are shared between the two games), while the notation below each space declares where each piece should be placed on the map. Some may say it’s double handling, but I have games I’m reluctant to pull out sometimes because of the barely legible placement notation snuck into one corner of the counter. I don’t mind a little extra set-up time if it means I can set the game up.

Two counter sheets. Sheet 1 (top), right side, eight rows down and fifth counter
 along is Charles de Gaulle's command (tricolor background). Antony Bevor wrote
that only de Gaulle could write a comprehensive military history of France and
never once mention Waterloo.

Which brings me to the counters. The game comes with two sheets of 5/8^th counters (383 counters in all – one blank), of which only about four dozen are markers and such. It’s a very unit-rich game, or games.

The unit counters themselves are laminated on a good weight grey-core cardstock, clear to read with good registration. The units are identified by NATO symbols and silhouettes for the armoured vehicles, in keeping with previous 19XX games. The national colours backgrounding the unit counters are appropriate and distinctive, and all should stand out clearly on the map (no, I haven’t got to clipping this one yet; it arrived in the same delivery as Rebel Fury (GMT Games, 2024), so it’s next in line).

Sickle Cut map, (This is actually the mounted map. I couldn't shoot the paper map
without really bad glare, and couldn't get the camera to focus with it under Perspex.)

The maps really pop. Mr Simonitch is a graphic artist by trade and training and mentioned in an interview with Punched online magazine that he’d done around 100 game maps as a freelancer before joining Avalon Hill. The maps for Sickle Cut and Dynamo have a look that nods to the best traditions of operational-level maps (neutral background with simple, clearly defined features) but still manage to look fresh and modern. The 19XX games are, for my money, the best representation of modern era operational-level maps in print today, and these two are no exception. Everything is clear and clearly explained in terms of game effects.

Dynamo map. Both maps feature a turn track, while the Dynamo map also sports
an evacuation table and an boxes for evacuees and English/German air support.

A minor adjustment has been made to the Dynamo map with the removal of the bottom border. This is to facilitate the overlapping of the two maps for the Combined scenario, which uses the full Dynamo map and the bottom three fifths of the Sickle Cut map, meeting at the hex-latitude of Abbeville/Cambrai.

Finally, we have the dice and baggies; two six siders of a quality familiar to 19XX collectors, one in blue and the other in black. I haven't counted the baggies, but from past experience I'm certain there will be sufficient for a sensible division of pieces. The notable absence from this picture is a travel insert. Rebel Fury didn't come with one either. This makes sense seeing as France '40 isn't a card-driven game and there are no heavy card decks to otherwise shift around during shipping, potentially damaging the maps or popping counters. I ordered the mounted map as well, so I would have been throwing out the insert anyway. I can report the mounted map will fit into the box with enough extra room for at least one counter tray, so there's that.

My copy of France '40 arrived about three weeks ago, and I still haven’t got around to punching and clipping it yet. I pulled everything out for a look-over and red through part of the rulebook the day it arrived, but the lure of Rebel Fury was too great. But having another look over the materials for this post, I think I’ll be spending the next couple of free evening hours in front of the TV, readying this for some getting-to-know-you counter-pushing. What’s not to love about a 19XX game?

 

 

Review: WWII Commander, Volume I: Battle of the Bulge

 

 

 

The best thing about having a blog that nearly nobody reads is you can be as self-indulgent as all get-out. Yes, there will be a review of WWII Commander, Vol. 1: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020) coming shortly, but you’ll have to wade through a sappy trip down memory lane first. Or, alternatively, you could just skip down to the Appearance heading in bold for the meat and potatoes.

John Butterfield was probably the first game designer to achieve name recognition for me (actually, maybe third, after Redmond Simonsen and Marc Miller). When I was about fourteen, I discovered all the possibilities of boardgames, when friend introduced me to a cavernous store tucked away behind a cinema complex, down an alleyway, up a rickety wooden staircase, and at the end of an unmarked passageway, called Simulations. This was my entry into a greater world.

Simulations sold all kinds of games. Here began my life-long appreciation of Traveller (GDW, 1977), back in the days of the little black books, and other RPGs like Boot Hill (TSR, 1979) and DragonQuest (SPI, 1980). They had a couple of tables set up for games in-store, and gondola stands full of D&D material and display cases with chess sets and jigsaws, but the back walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves were lined with wargames. Lots of SPI, Avalon Hill, Yaquinto, GDW titles and others, all beckoning. But I was a kid and broke; I couldn’t afford fancy boxed games.

What I could afford was the magazines, and some of the magazines came with games. To be honest, while I was interested in the historical wargames, I was also an avid science fiction reader, and it was SPI’s Ares magazine that drew me into the hobby first. And the second issue I bought – after issue 3, Barbarian Kings (SPI, 1980) – was issue 2, The Wreck of the B.S.M. Pandora (SPI, 1980). This was a Jim Dunnigan design which I enjoyed a lot, but the following year, Ares issue 6 came with a prequel game, Voyage of the B.S.M. Pandora (SPI 1981), designed by none other than John Butterfield. Really loved that game! Played it to death; I had to tape the two halves of the map back together after the fold-hinge finally gave out. Not that long ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I nearly forked out an irresponsible amount of money for a second-hand copy mere weeks before GMT announced the inclusion of Away Team on their P500 list (click on this link to see the order page). But that’s a story for another time.

Which is all to say, Mr Butterfield designs fine, memorable games. The kind of games that stay with you after they’ve been reboxed and put back on the shelf. I don’t think I’m an obsessive an obsessive – I only own four or five – but like good bourbon, I’ve never met a John Butterfield game I didn’t like.

Set up for a two-handed solo game. Note the Orders of Battle and the slightly smaller
than average board (three-panels wide, or 22" by 25½").

Appearance

As I understand it, WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (hereafter referred to as WWIIC:BtoB) started its life as a computer game. I can’t speak to that; From what I’ve read elsewhere, while it had its critics, lots of people enjoyed it, and it was quite popular for a computer wargame.

Everything about WWIIC:BotB is rendered in a very limited colour palette (something it shares with other Bulge games). It’s an area movement game, and so the board is divided up into chunks of forest green, snowy white and sleety grey. The Allied and German units are similarly coloured in the familiar greens and greys (khaki for the British, but they only come on late in the game). But in spite of this, the board is a work of functional art. There is no waste here; the map represents the battle space well, creating a puzzle of roads and rivers, forests and clearings. Some of the chrome-y aspects of the game-play add to this puzzle-iness, but the game is never reduced to a puzzle. This is definitely a war-game, high level and streamlined to allow a faster play, but full of torturously difficult decision points at every impulse. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I tried a preservation defence here against the Germans, retreating in the first
 two days when I could, but still took a pounding early on. The black cubes
 are used to mark those units which have already activated
that day/turn. These are removed in housekeeping.

Aside from the Orders of Battle and the charts on the Player’s Aid Cards, everything is available on the board. There is a turn-track (turns are marked daily from December 16^th to 28^th plus a space for the German free activations prior to turn one), an impulse track for each side’s area activations, a casualty track at each end of the map, and three space pre-start German impulse mini-track. I’ll circle back to this soon.

I can appreciate the reasons why some people don’t like area movement in wargames (especially in World War Two situations). To be honest, I didn’t jump at WWIIC:BotB when it first hit the shelves for that very reason. It took a while, but I came around to trying the game, and I’m glad I did. I think the area movement makes perfect sense of the scale of the game (mostly divisions, some armies and a scattering of reduced formations). The battle space was constrained to the Ardennes region, and the fighting was close and brutal. This is something else I’ll come back to.

Big, readable counters! The number on the left is the starting dice for attack/
defence, the one on the right are the result-or-lower number for a hit. The plus
sign on the 116th Panzer means these guys are particularly aggressive and
get an extra die when attacking (defence is rolled on the straight number)..

The counters are large (2cm, or ⅘ inch), pre-rounded and nicely illustrated. The leg units are a simple soldier silhouette, while the motorised units are represented by their chief vehicle; Shermans and some Greyhounds for the Allies, Panzers and half-tracks for the Germans. Each unit is also identified by its designation and its divisional decal (tiny, but clearly visible on one corner of the counter). I really appreciate this kind of detail given to the game components.

The game also comes with two sets of wooden components; larger grey disc emblazoned with a white cross are used to mark German control of areas (unmarked areas are under Allied control), while the little black cubes are placed on top of unit markers after they have been activated for the day by movement or participation in combat. This can be handy in the confusion of battle.

A unit is out of supply when it can't trace a clear road through friendly-controlled areas
to a supply point (the the Germans, five points on the eastern map-edge, for the Allies,
just about any other road leading off the map). If these guys can hold out until the 23rd,
supplies can be air-dropped to them and they won't suffer step-attrition.

Play

The Rules for WWIIC:BotB are simple and very easy to pick up. So simple to learn that it’s become one of my go-to games for introducing new people to board wargaming. Movement values don’t appear on the counters. They don’t have to; there are a handful of movement conventions that carry across both sides with just a couple of exceptions. The turns are broken down into a series of impulses, which go back and forth, starting with the Germans. In an impulse, an area is selected for activation, and all the friendly units in that area may be activated. Foot (infantry) units may move from the area they are currently in into an adjoining area; motor units move like this, but if their movement follows the road network they can move two areas. Also, German motorised units and all allied unit may participate in “strategic movement,” moving up to three areas along roads so long as they don’t start, finish, or pass through a non-friendly controlled area.

All units have to stop in an area already occupied by an enemy unit, and once there neither side’s units can leave the area except by retreating after combat. If one side’s units are destroyed or retreat out of the contested area, the remaining side gains or regains control of the area. Area control is important for supply tracing, which we’ll come back to.

Sample page from the rulebook, showing illustrated examples of movement.
The rules a simple, clear, and don't get in the way of the game, once you
get to know all the exceptions.

Combat is performed with a handful of dice, aiming for target numbers of lower. Combat occurs after all movement in an impulse, when a unit moves into an enemy-occupied area, or when a unit or units already in a contested area are activated to fight.

Two numbers, in some cases three, are printed on the counters, the large number on the bottom-left represents the combat strength of the unit. This is the number of dice that unit will get to roll in combat. This number also represents the unit’s steps, the number of hits it can sustain before it is destroyed. The smaller number (or numbers) are the highest number required to score a hit (you want to roll low on your hit dice). This is the number in the black diamond, usually a 3 for leg units or a 4 for armour. Some units have a second number in a red diamond; these are elite armoured units, and they have a higher chance to hit against other mechanised units. The dice used are d10s, with the 0-face treated as a zero (no hit).

The overall number of dice can be adjusted by different factors; terrain advantages the defender and may shave as many as three dice off the attacker’s roll, while, for the German player, attacking an allied formation that happens to be within artillery range (noted on the board by a howitzer silhouette) adds another die to the mix. A hit can be shaken off by one or all of the defenders retreating to a friendly controlled space (the attacker doesn’t get the option to retreat), but just the one. Combat can be brutal, and while reinforcements start to trickle in at around the fifth turn, they are restricted to one or two steps per turn.

WWIIC:BotB is a game of constraints. Area movement means somewhat restricted movement, especially factoring in the three friendly-unit limit per area. There are lots of junctions to move from area to area, but roads are quicker, except only one unit can cross a bridge in an activation. Then there is the need to secure supply lines. The Germans need to make inroads quickly in the first two or three days (turns) of the game. From December 19 (turn 4) the German units have to check supply. The Allies have to do this from turn 1, but they have many more options for supply sources than the Germans, who need to trace a supply route – a clear road running entirely through German-controlled areas – back to the Eastern edge of the map. From here on, things only get harder for the aggressors.

That's not to say everything is going smoothly for the Allies. Before the action, the Ardennes region was seen by the allies as a backwater of the Western Front. Nobody in command through the Germans would try anything there, so it was treated as a quiet place where units that had taken severe punishment in the previous months could be parked to recover and rebuild their strength. These units, some down to 40% strength or less were the first to be engaged by the advancing Wehrmacht forces. At the beginning of the game, the German side gets three free impulses. Only leg units can be activated, but the German player gets a bonus die on each attack (during both the surprise round and the first turn) along with their Artillery bonus. With good planning and some lucky rolls, this can put the German player in the catbird seat for the coming offensive. 

German Surprise Turn track. I really love the graphic details incorporated into the game,
like the calendar and clock-face on the Day (turn) and Time (impulse) markers. 

On December 21, the German fuel shortages begin. This is one of the things I love about this game. Fuel shortages hampered everything the German army did at this stage o the war, but it was a particular issue for the Ardennes offensive, combined with the issues of supply-line integrity, traffic jams on the narrow forest roadways, and a handful of other logistical issues. At this scale, how do you effectively reflect these issues without adding another four or five pages of rules? Mr Butterfield’s solution is elegant in its simplicity. The game includes three yellow “Fuel Shortage” counters. At the beginning of the sixth turn, and every turn thereafter, the Allied player places these fuel shortage markers three motorised German units, at which time, the German player may remove two of them. The unit with the remaining fuel shortage marker doesn’t get to activate for that entire turn. Bad for the Germans, you say? It gets worse; in the last three turns, from December 26, the allied player places the three markers, but the German player only gets to remove one of them. This one simple rule captures a crucial element of the battle, imposing a significant constraint on play, while maintaining a level of player agency. Simply put, it’s brilliant.

The numbers marked in areas are modifiers for the number of dice an attack can bring
 to bear. In the instance of two numbers, the one in a square applies to the force which
has control of the area (the assumption being that the town is being held as a strongpoint),
while the terrain modifier is used for counter attacked against the invader (triangles for
rough ground, diamonds for dense forest).

Every second day from December 20, a sudden-death victory is possible by either side if the German Victory Point level is either higher than the German threshold indicated on the turn track, or lower than the Allied threshold. Neither is likely; most games will play out to the full thirteen turns, but it can get tantalisingly close to one or the other threshold sometimes.

I would call WWIIC:BotB an operational game that plays like a tactical game. Control of the road-junctions (like the five-way intersection at Bastogne) is crucial for both sides. Tactical advantages – the German player's initial advantages in pre-start attacks and artillery barrages, the opportunities for improved defences provided by terrain and river crossings for the Allies – must be subordinate to the side's operational goals. To win on the game's historical metrics, the German player has to not only punch a hole through steadily improving Allied defences, but also maintain an uninterrupted supply corridor to their spearhead. I've never attempted to get an early win on the Victory Point thresholds playing either side, but there might be something to a German strategy of reaping Victory Point-valued locations and targeting VP-yielding units like the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne, or conversely, having the Allies try to sneak in behind the German lines to liberate towns like St Vith and Bastogne to whittle away the German's points advantage. 

WWIIC:BotB is designed very much as a two-player game. Having said that, I played it two handed solitaire the first couple of times to get my head around the rules before I introduced anyone else to the game, but I’ve since played it more than a few times on my own because it’s such a challenging and rewarding experience.

Maintaining control of key intersections is crucial for maintenance of supply, while rivers
 can act as a defensive balk against massed attacking forces.

Appraisal

For a relatively simple game with a single objective for each side – for the Germans, achieve the victory conditions; for the Allies, thwart those efforts to whatever extent they can manage – the game proves to be eminently replayable. In all the times I’ve played WWIIC: BotB, two handed and against another player, I not yet seen a German victory. But in at least two-thirds of those games the Germans could still snatch a win from the jaws of defeat right up to the last handful of impulses.

It would be diminishing to insist WWIIC:BotB is a puzzle game. To a degree, every Bulge game is a puzzle game – how do we get an armoured division or two across the Meuse, intact and in supply, without the other guy noticing until it’s too late for him to do anything about it. Better to think of Bulge games – including this one – first as wargames, but with a more strenuously puzzle-y aspect to them than most. Brute force isn’t going to cut it alone, but it may be the single most important factor on the table. The hammer is the puzzle; where to apply it how much of it to save for the dash to the finish line. WWIIC: BotB brings this to the for in ways other Bulge games might obscure in the back and forth of combat. Its approach to the situation it models is reductive, dealing with division-sized elements on an area movement map and with limits on the numbers of friendly units allowed in a single area, but in that distillation comes a deeper appreciation of the situation, and of the difficulties stacked against both SHAEF and the OKW, and the leaders of both sides on the ground.

I don’t know if I can say this is my absolute favourite Bulge game. There are a lot of them out there, and I haven’t played all that many of them. Just last year. the late Dean Essig revisited the battle with Ardennes II (Multi-Man Publishing, 2023). Another Joh Butterfield design, Enemy Action: Ardennes (Compass Games, 2015), a solitaire game that can also be played two-player, and Danny Parker’s The Last Gamble (Compass Games, ~2024), due for release this year, and Mark Simonitch’s Ardennes ’44 (GMT Games, 2003) is on GMT’s preorder list for its fourth printing. For a fast-playing, single map Bulge game, I think it’s probably neck-and-neck with Dan Fournie’s 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing, 2020), and might just pip it at the post for the smaller footprint and comparative ease of set-up. I can say without reservation that I’m certain this is a game that will be making it to the table for years to come, and in the mean time, I’m really looking forward to seeing the series continued with Volume II: Market Garden, and any further volumes Mr Butterfield cares to design.