Date: Fri, 22 Apr 1994 08:30:39 -0600 From: John D Burtt Subject: REVIEW: Operation mercury Very brief rundown on Operation mercury newly out from GMT Components: Disappointing. Player aid charts are paper, counters very thin. I talked to Gene B about it and he said it was a major screwup that GMT was stuck with. If you play be very careful with these things! Two maps, east and west, almost same scale as Vances' Air Assault on Crete. Good looking maps, a little different that shown in rulebook and on the back of the box. One problem I had was that you can play one map scenarios (in fact its better that way(see below)), but you end up needing BOTH maps because the main CRTs and TEC are on the other map! I am copying them to sheets so that I can play one map. Units are basically company sizes, one and two step units. There is an area naval map that the Royal navy maneuvers on, the Germans search in and attack into. System: This is GMT's basic systems with a few additions. Bombardment, maneuver and assault type combat are available. Unit efficiency aids combat. Defenders can refuse combat or react someone into the attacked hex to help. Major addition: HQ coordination. a die roll is made against an HQ within range to see if an attack is coordinated. result can be fully coordinated with support, without support, uncoordinated and a single hex frontal asault with attack penalties (the latter really hurts when you've massed three or four hexes worth of troops against an airfield and can only attack with a single (defender selected) hex. Adds to replayability (or to a lot of single hex attacks). Attacks without HQs in range have a 20% chance of coordination with support, 30% coordinated period. I liked this addition. Paratroops are dropped on their historical drop hexes and roll for losses, dispersal and drift. Lots of rolling that first turn. assault combat is immediate for units stuck in same hex with allied defenders (lots) Naval game is fun. You have to detect task forces, then attack them. Germans try to blow RN out of the area so their wimpy convoys can get through (not likely, but it can happen). Combat is usually air to sea, with ships using AA to drive off or damage planes, then individual planes attacking individual ships. Vance and Gene have a good system, very historical, with some exccellent "feel" modifiers. [D Game: Donny brook. Drop scattered the paras all over the place and the german player has to do what he did historically - regroup and grab for land. Allies have historical restrictions on their initial movement which is very frustrating to deal with. Most combat is assault and casualties are HIGH. Organization is heavy. German para battalions = 4 double step companies most allied battalions = 4 single step companies. they melt away fast. The seconday paradrops at Retiomo and Heraklion are little games in themsel;ves as distance will keep reinforcements away for long perioods. As such they added to the historicity of the game, but not to the "game". IMHO, playing only the Suda/Maleme sector campaign game is more than adequate. That would have dropped the game to a single map (with additional player cards for CRTs and naval sector map). Victory in on point system for + for eliminated allied steps and vessels and captured real estate and - for eliminated para/german steps and for evactauetd allied HQs and units. Evacuation is called for by a roll and if this is played out to the "bittier" end is the only time 90% of the map gets used. IMHO a more restricted and expanded look around Maleme would have made a better choice. More map used, less clutter in restricted areas of the map. (As I say this I'm thinking that may be construed as a plug for a TCS game upcoming from Gamers. It's not really. I'm looking forward to seeing that game, but I really like the GMT operational system. The donnybrook nature of the initial fight is all assault, very little maneuver, so this doesn't use the system at its best. Expanding the scale might have, but that's conjecture on my part. Overall: Good system, disappointing components. High replayability with high wristage. There are some alternate campaign choices that fall short of (what if the germans had dropped the "right" way - which would have been countered by the "what if the Allied had actually read ULTRA and responded correctly but add to the potential "study" of the battle. I added the two what ifs myself and had an interesting time. Vance addes an excellent annotated bibliography for this really interested in the battle. Two other books that recently came out are Beevor's CRETE and Callum MacDonald's LOST BATTLE. Beevor's book addes an appendix with the critical ULTRA messages Freyberg misread. Good reads. comments and questions, send them to me! john jdb@inel.gov