Stripped down for parts: Ordered to Die: the Battles for ANZAC Cove

 

 

The Commonwealth assault on Gallipoli in April 1915 is a key event in the Australian (and presumably New Zealander) collective psyche. Boys and men from both countries had gone to war before to further British causes, but the Dardanelles campaign was the first time these “Colonials” fought under their own flags.

It was also the brainchild of Fleet Admiral Winston Churchill, who always saw beyond the current situation to future possibilities. Removing the Ottoman Empire from the war would alleviate the situation on the Eastern Front in the short term but would allow Britain a greater hand in the Middle East in the decades after the war.

The campaign began inauspiciously and ended without accomplishing its objectives. The overall failure of the operation overshadowed the brilliantly executing withdrawal from the theatre under new leadership in December of 1915. It also birthed the old saw that Churchill was ever willing to fight to the last Australian, Indian, Canadian and South African.

Gallipoli: Ordered to Die (The Dietz Foundation, 2025) is a game simulating the battles fought over the first half of the eight-month operation. It was designed by fellow Australian Clint Warren-Davey, probably best known for One Hour World War II (Worthington Publishing, 2024) and more recently Werwolf: Insurgency in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948 (Legion Wargames, 2025), and the upcoming Reformation: Fire and Faith (Neva Games, ~2027).

The Dietz Foundation ran a Kickstart campaign for Gallipoli concluding in July last year, and barely seven months later, it arrives. I think the game and the publisher are a good fit. This is only my second Dietz Foundation game, but it has all the hallmarks, including under-promising and over-delivering through the funding campaign (it was only announced after the campaign that the paper game-map would be replaced by a mounted map). 

The case is of standard dimensions, 1” deep and quite sturdy. The box art is simple and effective. I haven’t been able to ascertain if the illustration of Commonwealth soldiers charging into danger is an original piece by Jose Ramon Faura, who was also responsible for the map and counter art. Faura has form for the campaign, having also handled the art for Kieran Oakley and Russell Lowke’s Assault on Gallipoli (Gecko Games, 2022; Hexasim, 2024).

The Box-back.

The box back features a map extract and a selection of counters, shown to roughly actual size. It also offers a brief description of the scope of the game, and the number and length of scenarios – three, and all playable in roughly an hour. No mention is made of solitaire suitability, but it includes both an age recommendation (thirteen and up) and a warning (“Not suitable for children under three years”). Good to know.

The Rulebook. As always, apologies for the insufficient light for the photographs,
Take as a given that all the components look at least 70% better in real life
than they do here.

The Rulebook comes in at sixteen pages and is presented on a mid-weight, mid-gloss paper. The cover age offers a table of contents and a discrete listing of credits, and is decorated with the badges of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF), who made up the bulk of the Commonwealth troops at Gallipoli. The actual rules portion of the book covers barely twelve pages, including a couple of Optional Rules at the end. The remainder is given to Designer’s and Developer’s notes, and a brief combined bibliography, recommending Peter Weir’s film, Gallipoli, as well as online resources, podcasts, and of course, books covering the subject at length.

Rulebook - sample spread.

The layout of the rules is exemplary in offering an on-ramp to learning the game. Reminiscent of Lee Brimmicombe-Wood’s Wing Leader (GMT Games, 2015) rules, each page consists of two columns, a main column of rules text, and a narrower supplementary column offering space for notes, examples, and the sort of advice that doesn’t typically make it into a rules-set. Mr Warren-Daley is a high school history teacher, and G:BtD was designed with a mind to using it as a teaching tool to help students better understand the gruelling situation on the Turkish front. That said, there should be enough of a challenge here to satisfy the most grizzled grognard.

The map-board.

The board is 17” by 11”, mounted and rendered in sandy yellows and browns. Mr Faura has done a laudable job presenting the difficult terrain that faced the invading forces across the theatre of operations. Movement is point-to-point, with lines of advance marked with arrows, and the locations, called Spaces in the game, reflect of the names given to landscape features and tactical vantage points by the soldiers on the ground.

The Spaces are allotted numerical values, and it is by these that victory is determined. Each scenario has a point total the Commonwealth player must achieve to claim the win. A shortfall hands victory to the Turks. The board also features a Turn Track sporting boxes large enough to accommodate stacks of reinforcements due later in the scenario.

Counter sheet 1.

Counter sheet 2.

Which segues nicely to the counters. G:BtD comes with two counter sheets. The counters are 5/8”, pre-rounded, and punch pretty cleanly (just a trace of a centre-nub on the top edge). The counter count comes to 129 in all, of which just 87 are unit counters. The unit counters are illustrated by a soldier dressed in that unit’s uniform. The rules spell out that it’s not crucial to have the correct units placed in each space during set-up, so long as the unit values match the requirements for that position. Nonetheless, each Allied unit is identified by its parent brigade or division, each Ottoman unit by its regimental identification.

Other counters include Control markers to indicate possession of a Space, and Leadership chits, which may each be used once per game (some may be used once per turn – the single-use chits are identified with a red boarder) to bestow a small advantage to that player's troops in an engagement.

The Scenario Cards...

 The game offers three scenarios, The Landing (recommended as the starting point for anyone new to the game), The Ottoman Counter-Attack, and The August Offensive. Details for each scenario are printed on separate cards, including set-up guide for each on a reduced map.

...Which double as PACs.

On the reverse of each scenario card is a Quick Reference Sheet, essentially a player’s aid covering The Turn and Battle sequences, how to conduct actions, and the use of Leadership Chits in the game. It’s a nice touch, printing this on the back of the three scenario card, and economical – no matter which situation you are playing, there are always two PACs available.

The Historical essay booklet.

In addition to the game components, an essay booklet, The first half is a short essay prepared by Mr Warren-Harvey, briefly discussing the events of the initial landing; how the operation came to be, the factors leading to the soldiers being placed on the wrong beach and without the support of the combined French/British landing at Cape Helles, which was supposed to see Entente forces marching up the peninsula in 48 hours, but in truth saw the Allies thrown back into the sea in even less time, the travails of the ANZACs on shore and unsupported for those first few days, and how the 25^th of April evolved into a national Day of Remembrance.

The second half of the booklet is devoted to the remembrance of individuals who fought at Gallipoli. Some of those remembered survived Gallipoli to fight in France and Belgium. Others never left, like Pvt James Martin, who died of typhoid in October of 1915, at age fourteen, the youngest Australian service fatality of the Great War.

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You may have noticed I didn’t mention dice. That’s because the game is semi-deterministic, Battles are resolved by simply comparing the totals of force brought to the fight and determining a winner. Although it’s not quite that simple. Every time you engage in an attack, each of your units will take a step loss (this is done after the Attacking force strength is established). If the Defender’s total is higher than the Attackers (after any additional values such as Leadership chits or defending in elevated terrain have been added), then the Attacker retreats to their last location Space to lick their wounds. If the Defender falls short, he takes a single step loss to one unit and retreats, or they can soak the retreat by taking another step-loss. Combat is brutal and will always favour the defender. This might be the most realistic mechanism for WWI combat at this scale that I’ve come across; simple, bloody, and boiling down to deterministic arithmetic.