3 Designers Replay

Western Allies: Thomas Prowell

Soviet Allies: Sal Vasta (and later Tony Zbaraschuk)

Axis: Alan Emrich with Roberto Koljevina (and later Ken Keeler)

Played at MonsterGames.Con, May 2001

What follows are the convention "reports" we posted on ConsimWorld from the MonsterGames.Con convention sprinkled here and there with some pictures of the action.

Thomas Prowell

Hey, guys -- the "Duel in the Desert" between Alan, Sal and myself at MonsterGames.Con continues today. We're up to Fall 1943 after a long Limited War. Alan is the Axis player, and to this point he's been ably assisted by Rob Koljevina, an old wargaming buddy of Sal's.

This game featured Alan pulling off a successful Sealion after he was able to get a one-turn superiority in Air units (even though I as the Wallies had played Dyle Plan to get some support units out earlier). After some brief battles, I was forced to fall back to Scotland, but I was able to get the Fly the Flag card out before he could knock me entirely off the island. After that, he benefited from War Reparations and a beefed-up Italy (Mare Nostrum), but I was also able to get another +1 DRM on the Western Military Aid cards I'd play later, which added another five steps to the Wallied cause prior to fighting with the Axis again. Paris just barely ended up falling on the last turn of Summer 1940 [AE: Thanks to Thomas for showing me how I needed to sail a panzer step out of England and back to France on the last turn of Summer to make sure that I nailed Paris.]

After taking Gibraltar, Alan was later able to add Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece as Axis partners. It looked like he was going to get Turkey as well, but Rob finally missed a die roll [AE: Rob was rolling the Axis dice and was hotter than the weather outside]. Unfortunately, Sal had played Turkish Border Dispute preemptively (figuring he had nothing to lose and an HQ to gain), so sure enough when Barbarossa was unleashed the Turkish Ceded Border Marker was out and we'd have to fight the Turks. [AE: We were in no hurry to activate the Turks, by the way. The Russians and British were set up ready to pounce, so they were the last minor we activated from Barbarossa, Rumania and Finland being the first two.]

Sal played Stalin Line and Alan spent a whole year of Limited War campaigning before Barbarossa to clear the forts. Right now, the Axis War Machine is gonna get up to Tide 3, but Sal and I have some evil tricks to hopefully knock Alan back down before he can plant the No Retreat Marker - heh heh heh.

Oh, Alan told me that I should mention that this game we're playing is actually the fourth one we've played here, after three "false starts." The first one was a short test to see if the extra French steps were too much. We tried it with a max 6 on the French mobilization, plus the three extra free Maginot Line steps. This proved to be too much, as the French were quickly across the border and causing unacceptable attrition losses to the Axis (though I didn't capture any Strategic Hexes, though). So we decided the three bonus steps for the Maginot Line fortress units are out, though for now the French 3-2-2 armies are in.

The next restart was called after the Axis lost both panzer steps and an infantry step taking down Poland (remember, Alan was trying to teach Rob, a new player, "how to do this by the numbers") while still facing the max 6 on the French Mobilization. (This made for a rather bad "demonstration.")

The third restart was one where we wanted to see what the Wallies could do playing Colonial Disputes as their first card. Our advice -- don't do that at home.

Finally, we decided to start a new game, this time not to test anything specifically, but just to play as we normally would, and this time we have the keeper thus described.

Alan Emrich

It turns out that England “flying the flag” was not as wonderful an experience as I (the Axis player) would have hoped. That’s because it put a Truce Marker out prior to when I wanted it placed. Ironically, my next card was Demand English Surrender, so you see I had my own sense of timing when Thomas should surrender in mind…. Thus, when chips came down, I was investing Lisbon and had just declared war on Hungary (to get the Yugos into Russia). Thus, for a year, I had to leave besiegers in place and await for the day when their destruction would be swift and sure.

I dragged Limited War out by playing every Limited War card except Lebensraum. When the Summer of ’42 came around, I didn’t want the Allies too sure if we would Barbarossa or Lebensraum (we Barbarossa’d). Now, I left a German corps garrisoning every city in England south of Scotland, so there wasn’t a whole lot to hit Russia with (what with leaving Germans around Lisbon and Hungary). Fortunately, I used the Mare Nostrum selection option when England surrendered and let the Italians carry the burden of the war in Russia. That’s right, all the fighting south of the marsh was an Italian opera. I must say, with their 2 tank corps, the FL mech army, the PZA, the Med HQ and the Italian HQ all in Russia (there wasn’t much going on in Africa with the Truce Marker out), the Italians did a very credible job spending their bolstered economy (at Germany’s expense) and new British tanks (British War Reparations adding +1 to the Axis Tide, thus garnering another Italian step every turn) in investing the Stalin Line. Those Soviet forts took the entire first (Limited War) Summer to knock out, but by the time Barbarossa hit the table (and we could finish off Lisbon and Budapest), the Axis armies in Russia were poised to launch a “real” campaign and make some noise.

So, it was then the Summer ’42 and the gloves come off. Thomas explained why Sal did the Border Dispute with Turkey (with the Political DRM of +2, it looked like we’d get it for sure… we didn’t). But the last thing we wanted was to activate Turkey! We’d need to prop it up as both the British and Russians left some nasty forces on its border as “monitors.” Turkey was looking like the Allies would "gobble" it whole.

Interestingly, though, we played Axis Partnership for our Fall “filler” card after Barbarossa. Originally, we thought we needed the extra Spanish forces, but with Turkey now in the oven, we glommed onto their goodies greedily. So, now we have Super Italy and Super Turkey… what could go wrong, right?

Well, we had get more Germans in Russia. Leaving German garrisons around Europe were killing us, so the Italians got new orders in Russia – relocate to France, Italy, and Africa. The Barbarossa forces came in to take their places in the South of Russia (except for the Med HQ, which we needed to make up for the German HQ that was working in the West to finish off France – Vichy went Allied the turn after France fell, so finishing off French North Africa was another one of our post-Barbarossa fires we had to put out. Oy.) Eventually, we got the Italians sorted out of the line and built up their "attack" forces in Africa (after concentrating for a successful attack on Malta which, combined with Gibraltar, make the Western Med an Axis lake) and their "defense" forces in France.

The interesting bit about the whole game was Sal’s strategy. Because he could pick his own timing for such matters due to a Limited War “invasion” of Russia (more like a border incident, but you know that Soviet propaganda exaggerates), Sal opted to do a Stalin Orders Attack for the Summer of ’42. (I guess he was counting on our playing Lebensraum). Well, Barbarossa did a pretty good job whacking the Soviets and unbalancing their big Summer attack plans, but the Axis drive was pretty thin on the ground. All we were able to do was get Moscow (barely… it stayed on the front line for most of the game) and try to hold on to our flanks (Sal had tons of stuff in the Ukraine along the Dnepr river). It was tense.

Now, this was a strategy Sal would use again and again. The “Summer Offensive” plan. In ’43, our Case Blue met his Uranus Offensive. Ironically, he’d pulled back the Red Army to be a move away from the Axis lines in Russia. So, the first turn of Case Blue, the Axis didn’t do anything but invest Leningrad, Sevastopol and eek towards Rostov. There was no big push in the middle toward Sal’s position. So, instead, Sal spends his first turn grunting up the Red Army for a bash in the middle (which was pretty thin after peeling off forces to the strategic flanks, but a lot of the Case Blue reinforcements were on their way to the center of the line). Well, just like removing a Truce Marker give the other guy the “first whack,” so too did the Summer of ’43 shake out. I got the first whack again (just as I did when Barbarossa met Stalin Orders Attack the previous Summer) and we ended up with the same result – a favorable exchange rate for the Axis because they got the first whack in.

Granted, by the end of that Summer’s campaigning the lines of both sides were lookin’ pretty thin in Russia, but the Soviets got the worst of it and I managed to sneak a couple fast corps around to grab distant cities as start fires that I knew Sal would have to “put out.” Like the previous Winter, things were quiet in Russia that winter. I played Festung Europa to catch a Tide 3 and used the SS Panzers to make a couple more pro-Axis attrition attacks in Russia, but that’s about it.

I remember the betrayal of Turkey falling to Avalanche and the Wallies weaseling into Istanbul. They turned that front over to Sal, though, whom I promptly bottled up (see the picture, below). Neither of us were able to get anything going down there, though I know we both frequently looked there to see if there was a fire we could start.

In the Summer of ’44, history repeated itself again. Sal and I both do the Bliz-baby cha-cha in Russia while Thomas tries an early D-Day using the Operation Torch card. Well, we held the entire set of Axis Support Markers to keep the Wallies off the shore on the first turn of that Summer, but they came roaring in during the second Summer turn. Fortunately, with the Festung Europa and Operation Citadel reinforcements newly arrived, France was beefed up enough to contain the Wallies onto that one hex (the Med HQ and a German 4-4-3 HQ sealing the deal there). Thomas tried several innovative ways to break out, but that would lead to… well, I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Suffice it to say that he didn't manage to fulfill the Torch Conditional Event that Summer.

So, we used, like, no planes in Russia for two whole years to keep the Wallies in check. Because of this, little had been happening in the West. In the East, however, we were winning with favorable attrition, but the attrition rates were still pretty high (those three “big” replacement cards with 6 panzers and 12 infantry steps each over 5 Seasons really put some wind back in our sails). So, once again we went on an offensive in Russia right in the face of Sal’s Summer offensive. Again, getting the first whack made all the difference and we knocked the Soviets back on their heels once more. The line ran from Leningrad to Rostov through Moscow (all of which were in Axis hands). Stopped in Russia and on the beaches of Normandy, the Allied cause was starting to look bleak.

What “sealed the deal” was the Wallies daring Autumn ’44 blitz into the Bay of Biscay to pick up that port near Normandy. Thomas landed there (for the second time), but only after suffering an exchange and leaving a one-corps “whale on the beach” (again). Unfortunately, the HQ he thought his partisans and airpower in all over France had cut out of supply could still trace a supply line from that tiny port north of Paris at Le Harve (I had a Supply Convoy for the Germans out in the North Sea), so his breakout from Normandy never came off. To add insult to injury, once again, just as they did during the second turn of the Summer of 1940, the stars lined up right over the Support Units. This time, I didn’t get to invade England, but instead got to put a support unit out in the North Sea and control it. That “sank” a ton of stuff sitting on a Beachhead awaiting Thomas big breakout from Normandy and, at that point, we decided to end the game.

I’m certain the deciding factor was being able to pre-empt every big Russian Offensive. Sal and Thomas might have differing points of view, but that was the big news in Berlin. Having all those Italians on garrison duty really helped keep the Germany army focused in Russia.

Roberto Koljevina

Hello all! My name is Roberto and I am the aforementioned buddy of Sal that played with those great guys; Thomas, Alan and Sal at this past Monster.Con. First I would like to thank the the of them for making a newbie to the system feel welcome and showing him the ropes.

I would like to give the view of the campaign from the first timer point of view. Just for some background I have been wargaming over 20 years now mostly in the WWII era with a focus on the Pacific theater (wink wink nudge nudge to the TK designers ;) .

As far as system mechanics, I can not provide more than what has been posted above. The war went as it has been indicated with German going after the West first. Aside from the Polish Calvary doing better than historically against the Panzers, Poland fell and we decided to go after the French to see what the impact would be of the Paris HQ and the beefed up French units, while France did fall it took a bit more pounding than usual. Once we had captured France, after invading England (That was a 1-100 event!), we had the Italians pushing in the East while we had Spain attack Lisbon.

Funny note here: although France had fallen we rolled that France became active again as a Wallied country. What a feel we had captured Paris but units popped up in N. Africa making us lose the elements of the French Fleet we had just captured.

Alan and I concluded that with Wallied surrendering, which was a great bold move by Thomas. The Germans could not generate enough steps to go East and help kick some Soviets. Ultimately, we used Spain, Italy, and later Turkey's production to control the West. Barbarossa happened a full year later than historically accurate, and I had to leave the Con at this point.

Final thoughts this game went this way more so due to strange rolls and unique card plays more than any thing I could tell with any flaws in the game system. From what I have seen, TK2 allows for a player to have a very good grip on the events that could have occurred during WWII as well as playing "what if's." It is definitely more fun with each side being played by a player. ( Sal and Thomas did have a few glares at each other, though, especially when the Wallies surrendered). I look forward to playing this game again as well as talking with other posters on this board.

Sal Vasta

Please explain how the limited war invasion of Russia came off. I would expect that attacking Russia w/o a Barbarossa or Lebensraum infusion gives the Soviets an edge in numbers. Were the Italians that big of a balancer?

The Axis used an Ultimatum card that Summer and promptly picked Ireland three times in a row (because there were Axis ground units in England). It is one of the few ways to get away very cheaply with that card. The Italians were a big help because of their armor, HQ, and Support units. They did their part to chip away at the southern part of the Stalin line. They did not achieve any major breakthroughs, but were enough of a presence that I could not ignore that part of the front.

From my perspective, several things added up over the course of the game that gave the Axis the win. For most of the war, or at the very least during crucial seasons, the Axis delay rolls were quite good [AE: Thanks, Rob!]. It is bad enough when they have a -1 or -2, but when you couple that with consistent rolls on the lower half of the die, it becomes extremely difficult for either Allied player to make trouble. It is especially true when the Axis manage to get not one, but two "partnership" minors (in this case, Italy and Turkey). The steroid-pumped Italians and Turks gave them three more support units.

Not that any of this needs fixing as it is just part of the game. If a player consistently does well with his delay rolls [AE: except for our U-boats, both of which were "sunk" with 6s over the course of the war and sat out quite a while], he is going to come out on top. The game may abstract the details of the air and naval aspects of the war, but it certainly does not abstract their strategic impact. The rolls could have gone the other way and the outcome would have been different.

As Alan pointed out, the Soviets could never seem to get ahead of the curve. Besides being smacked first in the Summer turns (I probably should have waited out that first summer. (Note to myself: listen to my own advice about being patient with the Soviets during the first few years.) I lost some replacements when I played Manchurian Settlement to counter the Anti-Russian Crusade card. The Soviets had to commit troops to Turkey which it really could not disengage from there even after Turkey collapsed. I thought I could exploit into the Balkans, but the Germans never seemed to run out of troops and bottled them up.

In my opinion, above all else the reason for the Axis success in the Russia was their ability to man Western Europe mainly using Minor Country units. This allowed them to send the majority of the German forces to Russia. When you add in the extra HQ units the Axis player had that were committed in the east, the Russians simply could not find a weak point in the line. It got to the point where the Axis had more steps in Russia than the Soviets. [AE: Sal and I even made a bet on that subject which I lost; the Axis really did have more steps in Russia after all that bleeding!]

Oh, sure, I launched attacks and bagged a few armies here and there, but the overall Soviet strategy of many attacks to attrition the Germans was simply not possible. I couldn't even get 3-2 odds if I wanted to. And in the places I could have it would have been worse to do so because attacker attrition would have left me more vulnerable to the counterattack.

Now did this prove the game is pro-Axis? No, not at all. It was simply a game that went the Axis way. The strategic air and naval war went the Axis way and the Axis player did just what he had to keep keep beating the Soviets down. As for the pocket shift and two-city supply rule, the new Soviet Interior Box worked perfectly to fix those major areas on the map that could get cut off, e.g. the Murmansk-Archangel. The pocket shift occurred here and there, but it was not seen as a major contributing factor.

Sal - did you end up getting the full General Mobilization in your game?

For the most part. If I recall correctly, I played Stalin Challenges Germany instead of General Mobilization because I did not know if the Axis player was going to break the Pact in 1941. It was another reason I had fewer steps than normal.

Alan Emrich

Sal got gypped on steps in a lot of ways in our game:

1. The Turkish Front / Garrison

2. Not playing General Mobilization, instead opting to play Playing Stalin Orders Attack

3. Playing Release Strategic Reserves on a two-turn Season

4. Playing Manchurian Settlement

Now, to Sal's credit, he did play aggressively and tanked more than a few German "big boys." But I did get lucky most of the time prior to 1943 when Sal's bud Roberto was doing the heavy lifting on the dice for our Axis team. When my turn came around, the rolls decidedly "averaged out" (which left me ahead of the curve vs. Sal but not Thomas, who was pretty hot with his dice once he hit USCL 2 -- except for the last turn, when I out-Support Unit'd him and could sink his beachhead with the whole "second wave" stranded on it).

The Axis strategy is similar to what I've used lately. Getting London and Gibraltar makes an Allied comeback pretty tough, because you mainly have to worry about their fleets. Spain and Italy can almost do the job unaided with good delays.

I am not sure about that. It helped immensely that the Italians were pumped up with Mare Nostrum, which they got for free when the British surrendered. It provided an extra support unit, and very importantly many more ground units and an extra replacement each Season. The Italian and Spanish forces are fairly thin without those extra units.

Sal Vasta

Perhaps a counter to this would be to focus the Western effort in Turkey and play Victory Program. The supply lines through Basra are pretty secure, since the Axis can't shut down the South Atlantic.

Thomas and I thought the Victory Program was the worse of the two because the Axis already had many more support units than they normally would get. To have them not suffer a bad delay DRM due to USCL would mean they would recycle faster making it that much harder to support a drive. Remember that in our game the British were not driven out of England. So having fleets contested was not the main problem, it was getting numerical superiority.

And I do want to remind everyone of the conditions in which all this occurred. It was a game that had a successful Sealion due to a one turn, one support unit advantage achieved by the Axis. If the Wallied delay rolls for support units are 5s and 6s (Thomas' luck early on was not good.), it is going to happen. Except for France turning Wallied due to an Axis Aggression roll and a few British in Egypt, the Med became a virtual Axis lake with Axis minor allies from Spain to Turkey.

In retrospect, France turned Wallied too quickly. Since it happened the turn after it collapsed, most of the German army was around to help the Spanish conquer it. If it had occurred many turns later, the Axis may have been out of position and the Wallies may have been able to intervene. In Russia, an over eager player whose name we won't mention underestimated the quantity and how quickly the Germans would be able to send troops there. The point is it was good Axis play with some timely luck that won the game, not an inherit play balance advantage.

Thomas Prowell

I was going to comment on a few things, but I see that Sal and Jim have already covered 'em. Yeah, I couldn't DoW Ireland because we were still at Limited War. Alan's rolls against Ireland were, in order, No Effect, Neutrality, and Free Passage. Pretty much an optimal series of rolls for him there! [AE: In my own defense, I am half Irish and was "relating" to the die in my best brogue before rolling it to assure the proper results.] And the reason I played Arsenal of Democracy instead of Victory Program was simply to keep up with Alan's Support Unit game. We needed DRMs to reduce the effectiveness of his extra Turkish and Italian units. In fact, I had Intensive Bombing lined up for Winter '44 had the game got that far.

Getting my English Channel Beachhead nuked in Fall '44 was the final straw for me; it was a total bonehead series of moves. I had the support units to guarantee the Beachhead's survival had I not frittered them away in a secondary landing in Brittany. And at one point I reminded myself of that, but I went ahead with the landing anyway. I also totally forgot about Le Havre, which invalidated my attempts to put the German HQs in France out of supply. Finally, I should have moved the units off the BH in the Reserve Phase anyway, because they weren't going to be able to make it ashore to Cherbourg while it was mired in mud the following turn. For this series of errors, I can only blame con fatigue. :-)

Alan Emrich

Does anyone have any ideas WHEN Victory Program is a good play?

I might have done the Victory Program as the Wallies in the game we just played. With Turkey already open and North Africa still at issue, there was plenty of “frontage” to engage the Axis on where support units would help but ground troops would be better. I might have conducted a “Balkan Nightmare” as the Wallies and started pulling out those Axis minor allies one by one and see if Germany could hold on then. I think that the Axis would be very stretched holding a line from Gibraltar to Narvik on the one hand and stopping up the Balkans on the other with the entire Russian Front raging at the same time. The fact that I got to "breathe" by bottling up the Balkans and reducing activity in North Africa made success in Russia that much more possible.

Sal Vasta

I might have done the Victory Program as the Wallies in the game we just played. With Turkey already open and North Africa still at issue, there was plenty of “frontage” to engage the Axis on where support units would help but ground troops would be better. I might have conducted a “Balkan Nightmare” as the Wallies and started pulling out those Axis minor allies one by one and see if Germany could hold on then.

Of course the key is getting them there and being able to feed in the troops. It was not going to happen with the Wallies constantly having parity in support units with the Axis. The Wallies managed one invasion to grab Istanbul, to be promptly put out of supply the next turn. They barely managed one turn of superiority in the last Summer.