From: Doug Dery Subject: Possible posting The Jack Radey Plan for GDW's Beda Fomm from The Grenadier Issue 16, page 21 ======================== Beda Fomm is my idea of a good game, but I don't think Brother Gordon (see issue #15 of The Grenadier) has it figured out yet. At first glance the game seems to belong to the British, despite the Italians' numbers and victory conditions. In fact, given time and a dispassionate analysis the game actually belongs to the Italians. But the magic of the game is that the Italian player will tend to lose for reasons that are not built into the rules but rather into the situation and the affect a player's mind rather than his unit counters. Oh--that devilish Chadwick fellow. First the Italian player comes onto the board, wham, the British vanguard clobbers him and drives him back across the board, making hash of those units he catches. Mama mia! The Italian player who probably brings into the game a feeling that he is in for a beating, has lost before he starts, no matter how good a fight he makes of it. But suppose the Italian player leads with the Bersaglieri? Wham, the lads of Coombe Force hit them and nothing happens. Hmmmmm- Suddenly the British find half of Coombe Force tied down trying to defeat two very strong battalions while the rest of the force tries to push up the roads to delay the oncoming Italian army. But it's not really enough, and suddenly the British player, instead of shaping his enemy, has been shaped by him. If those two good Bersaglieri battalions are saved for later in the battle, like after the British have had the opportunity to stack all of their artillery into a battalion, they will be destroyed in short order without accomplishing diddlysquat. In the mid-game, the Italian player will be able to attack the British in the center of the board, carefully winning the attrition battle until the British have no cruiser tanks left. Then using Babini's survivors, he can pick off enough of the light tanks facing him until his infnatry can waltz through fo ra touchdown. But it will take you about four or five playings of the game to discover this, and by that time you will probably have moved on to playing something else. I'm sorry Frank, I didn't mean to mention the rabbit up your sleeve, it just slipped out.