From: "R. Ben Madison" Subject: Review of "History of the Second World War" Wargame Game Series Review: "History of the Second World War" (Task Force Games, 1985) Includes 2 parts: "Part 1: Hitler Turns Against Russia," and "Part 2: The Overrunning of the West." Review by R. Ben Madison, talossa@execpc.com **************************************************** AN OVERVIEW OF "LIDDELL HART" There are few wargames that I would regard as "bizarre." The defunct Task Force Games' "History of the Second World War" series is "bizarre." Maybe for that reason alone, I love this game. On the surface, "Liddell Hart" (as my gaming buddies and I call this game) is a delight to behold. It was originally to be produced in nine separate, interlocking modules--of which only the first two (covering the Russo-German war and the overrunning of Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, Greece, and Yugoslavia) were completed by the time the project collapsed circa 1985. The titles of the games were taken from the chapter titles of Sir B.H. Liddell Hart's classic book, "History of the Second World War." Task Force Games actually had a licence from Liddell Hart's estate to use his name and likeness on the game, but spoiled it all by referring to Liddell Hart throughout the rulebook as "Hart." The entire "Liddell Hart" game was supposed to simulate the entire Second World War in every single theater--on the same scale everywhere. (None of this World in Flames split-scale stuff.) The sheer level of detail is amusing, and there are several inside jokes if you know where to look. (My favorite: in the Russo-German war game, there is an entire army counter called "Steiner." Group Steiner was one of Hitler's "phantom armies" that he pushed around the map in the Fuhrerbunker--I believe it was supposed to 'cut off' the Soviet advance on Berlin and save the city. But in "Liddell Hart" you can assign as many SS Panzer divisions to "Steiner" as you please, and make a real army out of it!) Several innovative details were provided. For instance, the game employs land combat modes (always a favorite of mine) but they are breathtakingly simplistic. For instance, a "normal" attack versus a "hold" defense would *never* result in the defender losing the hex--no matter what the odds. Even here there are some good ideas; one defense mode is a kind of tactical retreat, which isn't very bloody but trades land for lives. Unfortunately it doesn't save any time--the attacking army can just attack the same unit again in the hex it retreated into, so the tactical retreat doesn't slow down an enemy advance. In other mode combinations units can be encircled within the hex (just put the "encircling" unit on top of the "encircled" unit). Army counters (which represent army-level formations) are marked with historical symbols. So German checkerboard flags are used for the Germans, triangular pennants for the Red Army, and so forth. Alas, not every country had symbols (or the designer didn't do his homework) and so many countries have bland counters with no symbols at all. (The French 1st Army for instance is a solid light-blue counter with the words "1e armee".) The scope was impressive for its day--the entire world on a Mercator projection with a scale of 175 miles to the hex at the equator. Based on the two maps that were produced, it looks like the whole world would have stretched about 7 feet long and a little more than 3 feet tall. The maps themselves are gorgeous, with subdued colors that make them look like something out of a real atlas. There are some serious typos and omissions, of course--for example, there's no Malta. (Come to think of it, SPI's "Global War" didn't have Malta either. I guess if Mussolini didn't consider it worth invading, it couldn't have been *that* important.) Interestingly, all-sea hexsides aren't marked; at the center point of each sea "hex" there's the hex number. Sort of reminiscent of World in Flames, but with the added utility of hex numbers. (In that respect this game was light-years ahead of WiF...) LOGISTICS, LOGISTICS, LOGISTICS "Liddell Hart" is loaded with really interesting concepts, especially if you like logistics (I don't). The counters represent large formations such as army groups and air fleets--and off-map displays exist for you to pencil in the actual "composition" of these counters in terms of how many divisions, how many ships and how many aircraft--yes, how many individual aircraft!--each counter contains. To give you some idea: In July 1940 Luftflotte 3 consists of 158 fighter-bombers, 250 transports, 437 medium bombers, and 464 fighters--a total of 1,309 separate units which you have to keep track of in your off-map status sheet. Not even "Europa" deals with individual airplanes--and Germany has three Luftflotten! (At the end of July, Germany receives an additional 547 separate planes which you must assign to your various off-map status sheets.) All this means, of course, a mass of mind-blowing calculations. In the Battle of Britain, pitting Luftflotte 3 against Fighter Command involves you in a battle featuring 1,309 German units versus 650 British units. It *is* impressive to see a "1,350" column on a CRT, where a single die roll can shoot down 304 planes and abort 152 others. The designers do suggest, helpfully, that "A simple pocket calculator (four-function) will save time during play." The distinctions between unit types are somewhat arbitrary; an army counter that is more than 50% "motorized" counts as all-motorized for movement purposes. Incidentally, stacking limits are absolute--you can't even move through a hex if it's stacked to the gills. You have to move around it. The overall effect can be compared to the Metagaming/AH "Hitler's War" on speed. EIGHT DIFFERENT WEATHER TYPES Like any wargame, Liddell Hart is loaded with its own personality quirks. Instead of the simplistic "clear/rain/snow" weather types, there are, for example, eight different weather types (and this is just for the European theater--heaven only knows what they had planned for Southeast Asia!) including these descending levels of precipitation: Storm, Rain, Partial Rain, Cloudy, and (my favorite) "Partly Cloudy." These fine gradations are important in that they cause various "report errors" in naval and air in terception, but they've given rise to guffaws about "Roll a 5 and you get 'Partly cloudy this evening with patches of fog, with temperatures rising into the low 70's and a 40% chance of thunderstorms by rush hour tomorrow, so bring your umbrella!'" For all this detail about weather, you'd expect detailed weather areas, but you'd be wrong. There are three weather areas on the European map, marked by the Arctic Circle and an imaginary east- west line at about 45 degrees north latitude. Apparently the designers felt that Leningrad and Nice have the same weather. The Arctic weather area doesn't start till you're half-way up Finland- -however Narvik, on the (relatively) balmy Norwegian coast, is north of the Arctic Circle and thus subject to blizzards far more ferocious than those faced by the people of Moscow. (This, presumably, explains why Hitler didn't give his troops winter clothing in late 1941. "Ve faced far vorse dan dis in Norvay, you snivelling traitors!") FEBRUARY IS LONGER IN LEAP YEARS Units have a movement point allowance of 30. But, for "more accurate detail," there is an optional rule allowing units to have a movement point allowance of 30 in September, April, June, and November; in January, March, May, July, August, October and December, units have a movement point allowance of 31; and in February, units have a movement point allowance of 28, except in leap years, when they get 29 movement points! This is supposed to show that each movement point is equivalent to "one day," but it con jures up images of Army Group Center barrelling its way up to Moscow by sunset on June 22, 1941 before any of the Soviet Fronts have time to react. "SOURCE OF THE NILE" REVISITED: RANDOM TERRAIN! My fellow gamers and I have also had endless fun poking holes (figuratively) in the "Liddell Hart" maps. They're based on a strict Mercator projection, meaning the scale becomes enormously distorted as you move north. But the strangest thing about the map is that terrain isn't regularized to hexes. Here's how the designers explain this: "With the exception of beehives, very little in nature corresponds to the 60 degree angles of the beloved hexagon. Accordingly, _History of the Second World War_ uses undifferentiated terrain; that is, no attempt was made to make any natural feature 'conform' to the grid." The mind boggles. Fortunately, the designers realize that disagreements or fist-fights could break out between opposing players who disagree on terrain. ("It's clear!" "No, it's mountain!") So they suggest that players consider a hex to be of one terrain type if the "centerpoint" of the hex is that type. If you don't like that option, then if a given type of terrain covers more than half the hex, the whole hex is that type. (What if more than half the hex is one type, but the "centerpoint" is a different type? They don't exp lain how to resolve this.) Also, what happens in coastal hexes, where the "centerpoint" of the hex is *water*? If all else fails, the designer advises, in all seriousness, "a die-roll should be used to make the decision on the terrain type"! Every game is different. This wouldn't be that ludicrous if this were a Napoleonic game, with small armies dancing around in various parts of a hex. But it makes a difference (to put it mildly) whether the Pripyat Marshes are two hexes or eleven. The option used by some games, to just use the "worst" terrain in the hex, is not mentioned in the "Liddell Hart" rules, and for good reason; the city of Munich would become impassable and Adolf would live out the rest of his days sipping Löwenbräu in the Hofbräuha us as Allied armies beat themselves silly against the mountains. The designers then proceed to violate their own "nothing in nature corresponds to a hex" argument by making "developed" vs. "undeveloped" hexes conform to... hexes. "Developed" hexes are generally more civilized and easier to move around in--but the distinction is arbitrary in the extreme. For example, most of Europe is "developed", but not backward Sweden and Norway. Russia is (surprise) undeveloped, except for a few cities: Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, and a strange-looking and quite arbitrary band of "developed" hexes stretching east from Moscow through Sverdlovsk and off the eastern edge of the map somewhere beyond the "Irtish" [sic] river. I presume this represents the Trans-Siberian Railway, but there are no other rail lines anywhere on the map. India is "developed" while Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are not. Evidently "development" has nothing to do with standard of living. Whether it was hate mail from angry Balts that forced the designer to abandon the game, I don't know. MORE MAP ANOMALIES Perhaps it is unsporting to point out the many map misspellings ("Vishtula" River, the "Tyrrehenian" Sea, "Konigsburg" etc.) To the designers' credit, they did attempt to use "local" spellings for some place names (Warszawa, Sardegna, Lisboa, etc.) but--sadly--didn't take it as far as "Their Finest Hour" with its baroque Gaelic city names in Ireland. As much as I hate them, I am used to games where rivers don't follow hexsides. And they don't follow hexsides in "Liddell Hart". But even more ridiculous, national borders don't follow hexsides either. This makes for a whole host of possible complications. Both hexes of Belgium include parts of France (including the city of Lille). Can the French set up in Belgium? Depending on your interpretation, the entire nation of Switzerland is either four hexes large, or is just two hexsides--does Germany have a one- hex or two-hex border with France? Some of the map anomalies are just bad artwork--Dublin is nowhere near the Irish Sea, for instance, and London is one hex too far west, about where Oxford really is. Even worse is Baku, which in the Russo-German war is an objective hex. Unfortunately, the city of Baku is an *all- sea hex.* The rules tell you to count the hex north-west of Baku as "Baku," even though the real Baku is clearly marked on the map--in an all-sea hex. In the same vein is the "Greek Strategic Victory" condition in the Italo-Greek w ar of 1940-41: The Greeks win if they can occupy hex 1525 with a land unit. Unfortunately, 1525 is an all-sea hex (in the Adriatic Sea). Blocked hexsides represent all-sea hexsides between pieces of land, preventing (for instance) Guderian's panzers from rolling across the English Channel. But there are weird exceptions. The Aral Sea (in Kazakhstan) is two blocked hexsides, while nearby Lake Balkhash is none--you can march right across it. Then there are the "partially blocked hexsides" along the Bosporus and Dardanelles (and nowhere else). Rule 5.2.5 says that "Partially blocked hexsides are treated the same as rivers for purposes of ground movement." But rivers have no effect on ground movement. There is a terrain type called "High Mountain" which is impassable. This terrain type covers most of Afghanistan-- including the city of Kabul, its capital. (No wonder the Soviets couldn't conquer Afghanistan; didn't they realize it's impossible to even enter the capital?) DO THE MATH A working knowledge of mathematics is vital to anyone who would play "Liddell Hart." Unfortunately, this does not seem to have included the designers. The game abounds in mathematical absurdities and impossibilities. Example: On the Variable Weather Tables, if you roll a modified die roll of 15 in October in Russia (or, for that matter, Nice), you get "Blizzard." The chance of a blizzard in October is remote, even in Russia; but just *how* remote is only apparent when you do the math. Rolling two D-6s you'd need to roll a 12 with a +3 DRM to get Blizzard. Note: the highest DRM it's possible to get is +2 (and that's if you had Blizzard weather the previous turn, which is impossible in Russia). Therefore, it is mathematic ally impossible to ever roll Blizzard in October in Russia--although it's there on the table, tantalizing the poor Russian player as he prays for bad weather! This would be amusing, except that such impossibilities and absurdities carry over into the heart of the game system, the exceedingly complex Combat Results Tables. Here the mathematics drive one to distraction. WE OUTNUMBER YOU SIX TO ONE, BUT WE ARE NOT AFRAID In most wargames, your chance of victory improves the more troops you commit to a battle. Obviously if you outnumber your opponent 5:1 you'll suffer fewer casualties--and he'll suffer more--than if you only outnumber him 2:1. Right? Not in "Liddell Hart." Even at first glance the CRTs look odd--on the "best" CRT, you need 5:1 odds before the losses on each side appear to break even. Only at 6:1 does the attacker lose fewer units than the defender.... but that's just at first glance. Then you realize that the "losses" are listed as percentages of your total force. Let's say 30 German divisions attack 5 French divisions, an attack at 6:1 odds. You rumble around in the rules to find the right modifiers and finally throw your dice and roll an average result, 7. The CRT says the losses are 9/11. Which means you lose 9% of your attacking force--3 divisions--and the French lose 11% of their defending force--1 division. That's right--an average roll at 6:1 odds ends with the attacker losing three times as many men as the defender. Weirder still, the percentage losses on *both* sides go up the higher you roll. At a 6:1 attack, a modified die roll of 1 means you lose 1% of your attacking force and the defender loses 2% of his defending force (which in our 30 Germans vs. 5 French example works out to each side losing 1 division--an exchange is the best possible result for the attacker at 6:1 odds). At the other end of the scale, you can indeed inflict a 24% loss on the French (2 divisions), but at the astounding cost of a 19% loss to th e Germans--a whole 6 divisions. The more men you pack into a hex the more they trip over each other and just get in the way. By the way, it gets worse if you're Japanese or Russian--their percentage losses are always doubled. 30 Japanese divisions attacking 5 American divisions will result, on average, in the death of 6 Japanese divisions and 1 American--six-to-one losses for the attacker at a six-to-one attack on the best possible CRT! MISCELLANEOUS ODD ELEMENTS Then there's the "Special Results Quadrant" featured on CRT A (the "best" possible CRT for the attacker.) This is a boxed-off portion of the CRT where--if the die roll is 7 or less at odds of 2:1 or better--the defender is forced to retreat. But this "Quadrant" is indeed a four-sided quadrant, not a triangle--your odds of forcing a retreat remain the same whether you're launching a 2:1 attack or a 6:1 attack. Also, the "Quadrant" is at the low end of the die-roll; an attack that inflicts 2% casualties on th e defender is more likely to force a retreat than an attack that inflicts 24% casualties on the defender. What seemed reassuring in the rulebook becomes ridiculous as you learn more about the game. In the preface, the designers promised: "These games are based on the book History of the Second World War.... As such, the games do not attempt to present a definitive picture of World War II, but rather offer a single historian's viewpoint of how the war was conducted. Except for cases of documented factual error, Hart's [sic] viewpoint has been maintained." Exactly what this is supposed to mean is not clear at all to me. Far be it from me to ascribe to a historian of Liddell Hart's stature the idea (just to name one) that overwhelming odds in a ground combat normally resulted in six-to-one losses favoring the defender. I just love *looking* at this relentlessly distracting game and wishing it had all been completed. It has provided me endless hours of amusement and I've only played it once. In spite of this "bad" review, I really do admire the ambition of this game. Of all the cadavers in my collection this is the one I most enjoy dissecting. R. Ben Madison talossa@execpc.com Join the Kingdom of Talossa! http://www.execpc.com/~talossa