Eisenhower

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 do understood 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.

'this is the wide part'

Beware the math, for by it's 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.

Sam's 'Not Nijmegan' scenario.

Each square allows three units – so I play with divisions as maneuver groups – the 82^nd, 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).

Bastogne, with map in appropriate colour for December 1944; an old Megablitz scenario by Mike Elliot

20mm German 1940 units on a 4.5" x 4.5" square

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.

"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.