Eisenhower has emerged recently from Sam Mustafa, who has always been a great rules innovator in my view, employing straightforward
approaches to gaming mechanics in terms of making things work, and
approaching the history from a discerning perspective, and ensuring that historical flavour trumps simulationist complexity.
I
would cite his Maurice
as one of the finest designs ever. I have not had enough experience
with Blucher
(though with a few plays, I do suspect it is a superb adaptive ruleset for all horse and
musket – noting that ‘Chamberlain’ is available online) nor
Rommel to
testify, though I do understand how the latter was a bit of a risk with
units as companies – echoing the ww2 Piquet/Field of Battle
approach, though striving to do something bigger without the scope, and with mechanics perhaps suiting a smaller scale.
That large scope was ever my own fascination…I have always had three WW2 games in mind,
from an operational standpoint, that I wanted to do – either in a
group game, or with player vs player: Market Garden (yes, all of it),
Kasserine Pass and Bastogne.
Back
in the Megablitz days, all three scenarios were readily available
through yahoo groups and elsewhere, though having sold my own copy of Megablitz
(SHAME you say! I never really grokked it anyway), and looked at
larger scale Piquet derivatives and ‘Hexblitz’ with a view to
doing something soon(!), so the arrival of Eisenhower is somewhat
timely.
Again,
some things are familiar from Sam’s other games – units gain
advantage through being ‘prepared’ and there are Ops markers and
mechanics for getting things done. Squares (like Rommel) are used to
delineate movement etc., but key – units are now 'battalions'.
So
seeing this, I immediately thought that Bastogne was possible, Hong
Kong was possible, Russian Front actions, larger parts (or full part)
of Market Garden etc.
I
commonly check for two things in a game like this – firstly the
unit scale (battalions – check) – indeed, even unit marking in this case is
sensible rather than onerous, and then ground scale: in this case 3km or
2 miles per square.
Now
most standard games in ‘Ike’ are on a 6x4 table – or 12x8
squares at 6” per square. My mind starts plotting however –
Eindhoven to Arnhem – 89km – but that is including
various road networks and bends back into the northern town; plot it
on a map and you do a little Pythagoras’ Theorem and voila: 64km by
40km on table would have a hypotenuse of 76km…IF...the squares are
4.5” per.
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| 'this is the wide part' |
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| Beware the math, for by its unholy scrawl you will know it! |
This
was a sudden and fantastic revelation. Market Garden would fit on my
table – and indeed Sam has a small bastardized Nijmegan scenario
online on a 6x4 – expand this with 4.5” squares on an 8’x5’
and Voila! Added to that, we have multi day games within the
mechanics, so it all works well.
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| Sam's 'Not Nijmegan' scenario. |
Each
square allows three units – so I play with divisions as maneuver
groups – the 82nd,
the 101st, 1st Airborne at Arnhem, with XXX Corps coming to the
rescue – all do-able with 3-5 players.
But
let’s play with the concept…Bastogne, in the Megablitz scenario
available online is on a 60km x 40km map; a massive Tunisia scenario,
incorporating Kasserine Pass works too, and then the Hong Kong 1942
scenario in the original Rapid Fire rulebook is also suddenly a
possibility without the multiple tables originally envisaged there,
not to mention D-Day beaches (with inland para drops).
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| Bastogne, with map in appropriate colour for December 1944; an old Megablitz scenario by Mike Elliot |
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| 20mm German 1940 units on a 4.5" x 4.5" square |
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| A sample of the earlier Megablitz 'Kasserine Pass' mini-campaign |
I
was never a fan of where I should place the MGs, how quickly I should
move up the hedgerow and count the grenades used (though some
skirmish games remain beautifully designed), and why the Mauser was
crap compared to the Garand, or how rules never took account of the
fact that the MG42 rarely had enough ammo available to keep spitting
its high rate of death, and thereby could be rendered ineffective in
the bigger picture when facing enough ‘crappy’ Brens.
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| "Hans! I vill simply run out of ammo...vee can't provide enough due to ze bombing and pressure on two fronts, and zee supply issues, that vood enable us to complete zis scenario!"...."zat is not vot zee rules say Fritz!!!" |
With
Command Decision
– a step up again to platoon stands, we once spent an hour plotting
the various hull & turret MGs firing from PzIVs and wondering at
the genius of the commander who managed to co-ordinate said fire from
an entire engaged company, and bend the rules to his will – it’s
simply bollocks; but larger operational concerns…that’s a
different beast entirely?
…and
I haven’t even read the rules yet.
