State of Play: WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (solo introductory scenario)

 

Okay, so on Monday we were supposed to play Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2019).I’d set the game up 9except for the units, which I’d left for free set-up), and made a pot of coffee, when I got a text from T to say they were still at their daughter’s house, ogling over their new grandson, and he wouldn’t be able to make it. I’ll admit, I was disappointed, but it’s hard to resent a three-week old’s hold over pretty much anyone in his proximity, so I decide to make lemonade out of lemons, stashed Napoléon, and broke out WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020).

I recently posted an unboxing of WWII Commander: BotB, and I punched it out and looked though the support materials a little more closely. The back of the box says that the game has a high solitaire suitability, but the rules don’t include any guidance in this regard. Nonetheless, folks have been playing two player games double-handedly since the earliest days of board wargames. As I mentioned in the Stripped Down for Parts post, I wanted to test how well WWII C: BotB played solo before I showed it to anyone else. I just didn’t think I’d get the chance so soon.

WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge is a thirteen-turn game, but it comes with a really simple three-turn scenario called Race for the Meuse. This is literally just the first quarter of the full game; the scenario has the same set-up and reinforcements, and no add-on rules, you just stop at the end of December 18 instead of December 28, and check if the Germans managed to make the victory conditions. Three turns would be short enough, I thought, to play in an (already late) evening, but long enough to get a solid feel for how the game plays out.

I’d read through the rules about a week before posting the unboxing, but I quickly went through the rudiments of how units were activated, how they moved and how they fought. Setting up took longer than it might have; I had the chits in bags, with the units in separate bags for initial board set-up and reinforcements. Initial set up ran smoothly but finding the 17^th and 18^th reinforcements among all the other reinforcements for the two sides took longer. Along with repacking the set-up Napoléon, I think the whole set up took maybe an hour, but I was collecting the units on the Order of battle cards, then transferring the top counters to the map. The units that begin on the board are each printed with the area they begin in (only on the full-strength counters for multiple-step units), while the reinforcements are all printed with a reference for the border they come in on.

Opening positions.

Once I got into the game, things ran very smoothly. The see-sawing activations keep things moving along. Each turn is one day, starting on December 16^th. Once you get into the turns proper (cryptic, but I’ll come back to this), the day is divided into nine segments, running through the day at about one-and-a-half-hour intervals. The Germans start, and at the end of their activation, the German player moves the time marker along. The Allied player always starts the turns thereon, with the German player nudging the Time counter forward each time after his activation, until the last turn when only the Allied player has a n activation, then reset (Turn marker moves to the next day, and the Time marker goes back to 5:30am), and housekeeping. The Germans also have an extra advantage; they get three free activations before the turn-marker moves onto turn one. In these moves only the leg infantry units get to move – mechanised units are stuck until the first proper turn, but it can give the German player a positioning advantage that may prove crucial (I suspect I wasted these activations on non-crucial sectors; I’ll know better next time).

In an activation, the active player can order all the units in one area. If that area is contested, each unit may move (retreat) to another Controlled (friendly) area, or they can stay and fight the enemy in that space. If the units are in a Controlled space, they can move one (if leg infantry) or two spaces (if motorised or Armour, and three spaces dependent upon certain conditions). Moving into a space with an enemy unit or units will immediately initiate combat with the enemy, and any friendly units already in the area will get pulled in for the fight as well (even if they’ve already been activated in a previous activation). When a unit is activated and the action is over, a black wooden block gets placed on the activated units. These are removed during the housekeeping phase at the end of the turn.

I’m pleased to report that the game does support two-handed solo play exceptionally well. It’s the WWII Commander’s turn structure makes it so perfect for solo play. The constant back-and-forth between the Germans and the Allies sets the necessity for both sides to react to what has just happened and to manoeuvre their own resources into place for best effect. A lot of the time the two requirements will be mutually exclusive and tough choices must be made. A first game is never a good indicator of how quickly a game will play our when the people involve are familiar with the course of action, but I think I added at least another half-hour trying to strategise on the fly for both sides.

I don’t want to go too deeply into how the game plays; this isn’t meant to be a review (if it was it would have “Review” in the title). Suffice it to say that mistakes were made (by me) on both sides, mostly minor things, and the dice rolled treacherously high for everyone nearly every time. Even when the elite Armour units were rolling eight dice (six strength, one for artillery support, and one for the first day bonus), looking for 5’s or less, they were rolling 7s and 8s consistently, without fail. Ut was so hard to land a punch on either side. Defenders get to soak some hits for terrain (rough, woods or built environments), so the hits that did land for the Germans were often ineffectual. Defending units have the opportunity to retreat to a friendly area, so the Americans did just that a couple of times, and the Germans took out the (reduced) 99th Infantry a one-step Greyhound unit. The Americans returned the favour with a pair of two-step leg infantry units taken out of action.

Allied casualties.

I made one significant mistake in my first play-through that may have had a detrimental effect on the chances for a German victory; I forgot about the three-sector movement through Controlled areas, which, for the Germans, kicks in at the 17^th (Turn 2). As the game played out, I could see a couple of mistakes I made with concentration of German efforts on the wrong sectors, dissipating resources what may have been more effective sent elsewhere. Adjacency to the Meuse and a contiguous supply line unchallenged back to the eastern map border is a big ask. I think it can be done, but I also think I need to spend some more time looking at the roads. Like in any Bulge game, the road network is crucial to victory for both sides. The kind of movement needed by the Germans to achieve victory in the Meuse scenario relies on control achieving and maintaining control of a road-based supply line.

A quick victory is what the Germans sought in the Ardennes. In fact, it was what they counted on: their fuel reserves would not allow a prolonged manoeuvre battle. In the full game, German fuel supply checks begin on December 21^st (the sixth turn). When this happens, the wheels will start to fall off. I’m looking forward to soloing the complete game, but I think I wand to try the Race to the Meuse scenario a time or two more. I keep wondering if the available German armour could make it to the Meuse and keep control of the area to take the pennant. Put me in, Coach.