This Perry Moore design of the British vs. Turks in Mesopotamia during WWI is a cross between XTR's Chaco and believe it or not, Moore's last design for S&T: Operation Shock Troop. It's a clean, simple design of a not-too-often-gamed campaign. But panzer-pushers beware, for Moore himself notes the design concentrates on the logistical and command problems of both sides, not combat....Eight pages of simple rules. You'll be playing inside of 15 minutes if you're experienced. The map portrays the Tigris-Euphrates river valley from Basra and the Gulf to Bagdad at a scale of about 6 miles to the hex. It's interesting to compare this map's terrain to XTR's Back to Iraq. Hmmmm, add a few roads here and there and a few armored units and it could be 1991. No really. There are some interesting differences that highlight the backwardness of this region in the early 1900s. The rules note 240 counters but I count only 220. Haven't found what's missing yet. Units are battalions, regts., and bdes with a mix of icon and symbolic identifiers. As to the odd units: you get some nifty planes: including Short seaplanes, Albatross's, and Fokkers You get more 10 river gunboats counters representing twenty boats. Trench and fort markers, OOS, OOC, Run Aground, weather lots of depot and truck supply markers a la Chaco. A few Armored Cars and Ford Vans as well. Units are noted with combat values, movement allowance, a troop competence number (morale). Hqs have command points (drms and command radius), support value and movement factor. Air units have air-to-air value, bombing value and radius. Gunboats have support value, something called tactical advantage (get a column shift), and movement allowance. Units (most) are stepped. Turns represent one month and various phases can be skipped at player discretion. Both players begin by checking Out of Communication status and creating supply depots. Then the Brits move and fight, followed by the Turk moving and fighting. Naval combat occurs during movement. Then both check supply. Like Chaco, supply is the be-all and end-all in this game. Units can move normally if in supply and in communication with their parent HQ. Supply is traced 6 hexes to a supply source. If a unit is OOS or OOC, movement and combat values are halved. OOS units must roll lower than their troop competence or lose a step. If both OOS and OOC, unit movement and combat values are quartered. Units can be carried by steamers or Ford Vans. ZOCs are semi-locking. Armored cars and calvary can ignore 'em by spending 4 Mps per ZOC. Infantry stops in enemy ZOCs, but can disengage in the next turn by expending 6 ZOCs. Stacking is fairly limited: 2 regts or 2 bde. plus unlimited a/c, steamers, gunboats, trucks, Hqs... Combat is voluntary. Units attack or defend at full strength if a supply depot is expended, else units combat at half-strength. Depots are created at the beginning of the turn by expending supply points. Combat is influenced by HQ command points by totalling HQ modifiers of both sides (neg. vs. pos.) with the remaining as a DRM. Also, tactical advantages have to be determined (shifting columns for terrain, certain units involved, troop quality, etc. -- all nicely noted on the map for quick reference). This is the part of the game that takes the most getting used to and hearkens back to similar column shifts for both sides depending on units, terrain, HQs in Op Shock Troop. CRT results in step losses for either/both sides and Engaged or Breakthrough results. Engaged means the defender takes losses and must counterattack. Breakthrough means defender retreats longer and attackers can expend 3 mp per unit and attack again (once). After taking the first step loss, defenders can retreat instead. One can't cross rivers except at bridges (an important note) in retreat but can overstack in retreat. Advance after combat is limited to two hexes (aside from Breakthroughs). HQ and gunboats are known as support units which must be stacked with a combat unit to use their support values in combat and are vunerable if unstacked. Air units fly to a hex in range to bomb, are subject to interception if within a certain range of an enemy HQ or airdrome, the interception is completed by comparing air-to-air values, forming a ratio on the AirCRT and rolling a die. If the bombing units survive, they add their strength to the battle. Two flavors of weather: dry and rain, impact movement and some terrain. Scenarios cover the full campaign Nov 1914 - March 1917, the Battle of Ctesiphon in 1915 and Operation Lightning: an alt.hist. Turk plan to take Baghdad in Sept 1917. I've played about 2 years of the full campaign solitaire (with the turgid supply -- this is a great solitaire design) and it's very interesting. Burning through depots to attack at full strength can leave one very vunerable to counterattacks. The Turks though tend to melt away after a struggle for Basra and its a slogging match for the British to move up river toward Baghdad. I am anticipating a big battle just south of Baghdad and the British lose, God help them...it'll be the siege of Kut all over again. There's some interesting chrome and special rules: the Turks can try to block the downriver Shat with a steamer (historically unsuccessful) which really hampers Brit supply. I'll add more game notes later. Doug Murphy "Let us have Wine and Women, Mirth and Laughter Sermons and soda water the day after." Lord Byron The most important rules in the game is the necessity of being in supply for full movement and the expenditure of depots for full combat strength: units are halved in movement if OOS which means a six hex LOC back to a supply source. While you won't spend as much time humping supplies and managing trucks (and new wrinkle: steam ships) as you did in the Chaco, you need to keep your supply heads up within range of your advanced units. Also, you need to keep a reserve supply in case your opponent does something unexpected like counterattack (because you'll defend at half strength if you don't have a depot w/in range to your defending units.) Like Chaco, you'll see an attack coming, just as your opponent can see your attack coming, because of the necessity to build up supply dumps (an easily defended hex of a couple of depot markers.) I did succumb to the temptation to use river steamers and Ford Van movement to amass the Brits in attacking the Turks, but ran out of depots rather swiftly --- fortunately without finding my advance troops cut off. While it is frustrating (and an interesting command control exercise to manage a mobile advance) to see weak defenders just "out of reach" as it were, resist the temptation to lunge after them OOS/OOC, because if your opponent is near as saavy as you are, his counterattack may cut off your spearheads similar to the Indian 6th div. at Kut. The chrome (air units/ gunboats/ armored cars) is different and can be decisive if used according to their capabilites: armored cars to cut enemy ZOCs, air units to turn an attack into possible Breakthrough, and the number of gunboats makes an interesting naval sub-game in itself...although these units can be cut off if you're not careful. Like Chaco, you'll find this game an interesting exercise in the management of an active offensive (or for the Turk, primarily defensive) campaign. IMHO, supply is much more manageable here (although some of you may find not love its predominance to the design a la Chaco). Also, note if you're familiar with Perry Moore's other designs, you will find this game easy to get into and play. Being very familiar with Operation Shock Troop (Israeli advance into Syria in '73), I was surprised at the concepts I recognized (albeit renamed or subsumed into a sequence) in this design: unit values being readily apparent on the counter; Drms and column shifts due to status, unit involvement in an op, terrain, etc; the importance of tracing supply/command.... In addition, the game article has more than you ever want to know about this campaign and is surprisingly complete like I've found Command game articles to be. You get very comprehensive OOBs for both sides, nice maps and an overview of weapons/tactics/etc. Not bad for under $17. Kudos to S&T. I can't recall another published game on this topic (I know there have been WWI games which have covered either scenarios from this campaign (Soldiers SPI) or at a strategic level, although I will be eager to compare/contrast treatments/designs with the (different scale, etc.) Great War in the Near East from our own Ted Raicer in an upcoming Command. Doug Murphy "If we fall on evil days, let us avoid dishonour -- for honour is our only gain in death" -- Aeschylus Forgot to mention what seems to be an map omission on the TEC: the airdrome symbol is missing. After studying the map, there's a brown slash and box which look like an airfield in 1402, 1518, 2324, 1538 and 1345 that I assumed was the missing symbol. I also neglected to mention the easily remembered single victory condition: If the British take Baghdad the game ends. Else the Turks win. More tactics. In reality, the Turks were surprised by the initial Brit. assault. Won't happen here. The Turks should try to stall the British for as long as possible before Basra. Also the Turk has the option to try to block the Shatt al Arab channel at Basra/Qurna. Go for it (even though it's a long shot: roll a one) If successful, the Brit. has to clear the wreck to move gunboats and steamers north (and has to roll a die to determine how many turns it would take). Although this will "force" the Brit. to stockpile supply depots which will come in handy later. Generally, the Turk should begrungingly trade space for time but only to the extent that the Brit. is forced to spend as much time away as far away from Baghdad as possible. The terrain as much as supply dictates tactics for both sides. It is reasonably hellish in the delta around Basra: a mix of marsh and wadi. Because of the nature of the Tigris and Euphrates, the British advance is either split between the two rivers or follows the Tigris up toward Baghdad. Because one is severely limited in crossing the rivers, the Euphrates is not the river for the Brit. to follow. You're on the wrong side of Baghdad. But the Brit. should advance up a ways and garrison a town to forestall a Turk avenue of advance. Indeed the special rules for the campaign scenario, require the Brit to garrison Nasirya (along with Basra and Ahwaz). The Brit. also gets extra supply points for capturing Qurna, Amara and Kut along the Tigris (so that's another good reason to go that way). Generally, the Turk will have more supply than the Brit. so can be more aggressive. I prefer to play a sort of "defensive reaction" for the Turk to parry various Brit. advances. The Brit. is hard pressed to take Kut given the rules allow one to create column-shifting trenches and even-more-column shifting forts. I had some success attriting the Turk attacks while the Brit. very slowly advanced, creating little strongpoints to hold supplies as I went. But the Brits do not have enough troops until late in the game to do this well, so the game follows history fairly well: too few Brits and supply to do much for lunge for Kut in the early game. Then their reinforcements and supply gradually turn the tide. However, this time allows the Turk to turn Baghdad or even Kut into very strong fortresses. An overly aggressive player on either side will lose the game. There's all sorts of interesting factoids about this campaign in the accompanying articles: the importance of air recon., a successful attempt to "airlift" supplies for a time into besieged Kut, mobile attacks on and from gunboat-escorted supply convoys. The impact of the rivers/weather on ops. Doug Murphy