Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1991 21:55:32 MST From: Don Pirot Subject: REVIEW - The Ardennes Offensive (SPI) The Ardennes Offensive ====================== Wacht am Rhein, the German 1944 Ardennes offensive popularly known as The Battle of the Bulge, has been a favourite subject of board wargamers for almost as long as there has been a hobby. The Bulge is one of several campaigns that satisfies two important criteria for a good wargame; first, both players at some point in the game are able to go on the attack, while the other player stages a fighting withdrawal and second, the entire map area is used in the course of the game as fighting progresses from one side of the map to the other and back again. The Avalon Hill Game Company published the first game on the subject, Battle of the Bulge, in 1965. It was a relatively simple game, employing a variation of the classical Avalon Hill game system, using separate, non-interactive player turns, each composed of a movement phase followed by a combat phase, but it diverged from the standard system used in earlier games in that it had a more complex combat results table. In addition, there was a set of tournament rules using a different combat results table which permitted the attacker some degree of exploitation movement after a successful attack. Jim Dunnigan, publisher of Strategy and Tactics magazine was not satisfied with AH's Bulge game and felt that it would be possible to design a game that simulated the campaign much more accurately; the road net on the Bulge map left out a number of important roads and the game system was a long way from demonstrating what he felt was the critical factor in the battle - traffic control. He proceeded to redesign the Avalon Hill game and the result was Bastogne, the magazine game in Strategy and Tactics #20, published in January 1970. (I believe that there were earlier attempts to enhance the Avalon Hill game which made use of the original game components and introduced modified rules - I remember hearing about a 'Bulge II' game that was published in one of the variant magazines of the time, but I've never seen it.) Bastogne was virtually unplayable. The rules for road movement, which were supposed to simulate the traffic jams that occurred in the early days of the German offensive, worked too well. Units were required to pay additional movement points for just about any road movement action, stacking and unstacking, and moving through other units. The complex movement procedures made the game an ordeal to play. The map was nice to look at, though. It depicted the road net much more accurately than Bulge, and the research that went into it formed the basis for most of the maps used in later Bulge games. In 1973, Dunnigan published The Ardennes Offensive as a Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) flat box game, in which he streamlined the system that he had developed for Bastogne using the research for that game as a basis for a the new simulation which he hoped would become the definitive Bulge game. The system developed for The Ardennes Offensive was intended to be used in a series of new games depicting World War 2 campaigns at brigade/regimental level using one game turn per day. As it turned out, only one other game, Alamein, also published as an SPI flatbox game, used that system. In his design notes for the game Dunnigan says: (It) was felt that the subject had not yet been done justice in a game form. How, therefore, have we done any better with The Ardennes Offensive? First of all, before designing a game on the Battle of the Bulge, you must choose which of the many critical factors in the campaign you wish to stress. The Battle of the Bulge was a very complicated campaign. Many factors which are simply present in other campaigns were potentially decisive in the Battle of the Bulge. Take, for example, the roads. In any battle these are a factor. But in the Ardennes the roads acquire critical importance, mainly because of the terrain. And so the terrain becomes of 'more than usual' importance. The weather is critical. Bad weather was essential for the Germans in order to keep the American air power neutralized. Components: Counters - 256 counters; German, field grey; US, olive; British, dark green, plus status markers, printed one side only. The counters stand out reasonably well against the map background. Map - 22 by 28 inch mapsheet (an unusual size; a standard mapsheet these days is 22 by 34 inches). Two colours (blue and black) on an off-white background. The hexes are 5/8 inch and they are printed with the standard SPI hex numbers. I think that Ardennes Offensive was one of the first games to use hex numbering. The map is easy to read, with the roads and towns printed in black, as are the several impassable hexes. Rivers and rough terrain are blue. It's a busy map with a detailed depiction of the road net, but not overly cluttered. There are lots of bridges and river fords and these are pretty important to game play. The area covered is standard for Bulge games - Monschau to Echternach, N to S, and it goes west of the line Namur/Givet/Sedan. Charts and Tables: The CRTs (there are two of them) and the Terrain Effects Chart are included in the rules folder, not printed on the map. I've photocopied mine and laminated them for play convenience. There is also a separate turn record/reinforcement chart. The Turn Sequence: German Player Turn - Allied Player Turn - Reinforcements Reinforcements Supply Judgement Supply Judgement Initial Movement Initial Movement Combat Combat Mechanized Movement Mechanized Movement Supply is critical to game play. It is tied to the road net which is easily interdicted. Supply for phasing units is evaluated in the supply judgement phase and applies throughout the player turn. For defense it is evaluated at the moment of combat. There are three supply states - in supply, unsupplied and isolated. A unit's defence strength is only affected (halved) when it is isolated. A unit is isolated when it is completely surrounded by enemy ZOCs or units in all six adjacent hexes, and is more than three hexes from a friendly unit or friendly map edge road exit hexside. It is pretty important to be able to isolate units, especially when they are defending in towns because the attacker has to get quite high odds against a unit to dislodge it from a town. Units defending in towns can ignore Ar and Dr combat results. In the standard CRT the attacker has to get 5 to 1 odds or better to obtain a result that could clear the town (Ex or De). With the German Initial CRT (used only by the German player and only for the first five game turns), 4 to 1 odds gives the German a 1 in 3 chance of an Ex result. The German player can also cut his potential losses by attacking at 9 to 1 on the Initial CRT, which guarantees a De result. Another feature of the game is the rule that allows 'infiltration'. Enemy units' ZOCs do not extend into hexes occupied by a friendly unit. Units can 'flow' around and past enemy units by stacking with a friendly unit adjacent to an enemy unit and moving from that hex into an enemy ZOC (movement from ZOC to ZOC is prohibited). This procedure can take two or more turns because it costs movement points to stack and unstack (six MPs for mechanized units and 2 MPs for non-mechanized, ie. about 50% of a unit's movement allowance). There is a definite advantage to using this technique, because it allows a player to destroy units rather than simply pushing them back. For the German player, especially in the early turns of the game, breaking loose means having to mount attacks against Clervaux and St Vith because the Allied player will have units in these towns which interdict the bridges he needs to open supply routes across the map. A unit interdicts any bridge hexside within three hexes of it. This rule was so effective that it seems to be almost standard in later Bulge games. He will have to infiltrate past these two towns, surround them, and push Allied units beyond the three hex distance from the town so that he can isolate the defenders and get good enough odds to eliminate them and clear the towns, removing the interdiction from the bridges across the Our River. If he can't do this quickly enough, he's not going anywhere. This is the part of the game that I find most interesting. The movement rules introduce the concept of road mode. Units can enter road mode by spending 6 MPs (for mechanized units) or 3 MPs (non-mech). This can speed things up substantially, but it gets tricky since units in road mode cannot move through, or even adjacent to other units in road hexes, they are restricted to the road net, and they can't cross interdicted bridges. This can produce road jams, and it can complicate play by mail, since players must record not only the final destination hex for each unit that moves, but also the sequence in which the units move. By the way, Allied units do not interdict bridges on the German side of the start line in Game Turn 1 only. From turn 2 onward, they have full interdiction effect. There are no weather rules in the game, as there are in most of the Bulge games that came later. The effect of the overcast weather that limited Allied air power in the early stage of the offensive is factored into the German Initial CRT, which gives the German player a distinct advantage for the first five turns. There is no provision for variable weather. The German player always loses his advantage with Game Turn 6. Dunnigan's contention is that the siege of Bastogne was anti-climactic, and that the Germans win or lose the game in the opening turns. There is nothing magic in Bastogne, and the Allied roadblock could have been in any number of other places, or not at all. However, the road net and reinforcement rates are such that the 101st Airborne can usually get into Bastogne in time. The rules that I've described are the salient ones that shape the course of the game. There are, of course, others, but they are pretty routine and need not be described here. Winning the game is accomplished by destroying enemy units (one victory point for each enemy unit destroyed) and, for the German player, by occupying road exit hexes (the highest point value is, of course, for the exit hexes farthest from the start line and they vary from 1 to 3 points). The game lasts 18 turns (days) and the German player can get an automatic win by accumulating 35 victory points by the end of Game Turn 6. The Allied player wins by preventing the German player from scoring 35 points by Game Turn 18. Between those extremes, victory is determined by computing the ratio of German/Allied points. Greater than 1.5 is a German victory, less than 1 is an Allied victory. Anything else is a draw. There are 10 scenarios, using combinations of Allied/German historical setups, free setup, and historical or accelerated reinforcements (for Germans) or slower reinforcement (for Allies). This game has always been one of my favourites, and is the Bulge game that I like best. It can be pretty frustrating for the German at times, especially for a German player who expects to charge through to Bastogne by Turn 2, but I think that it comes as close as any Bulge game that I've played to being a good simulation while being fun to play. It's probably not the definitive Bulge, but I don't think that's been designed yet. Any opinions on that?