From: "R. Ben Madison" Subject: War in the Falklands review/replay Gentlemen, Here's a review/replay of Mayfair Games "War in the Falklands" (1982) if you d like to use it. Thanks for the site! R. Ben Madison talossa@execpc.com Wanna run a country? Join the Kingdom of Talossa! http://www.execpc.com/~talossa ******** Game: War in the Falklands Publisher: Mayfair Games Designers: Jim Griffin and Bill Fawcett Date: 1982 Grade: D War in the Falklands is, to my astonishment, the only treatment of the 1982 Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. (Perhaps there was one more floating out there somewhere, but it's apparently so obscure that it has yet to make it to the Grognards page.) Copyrighted in 1982, I suspect the game was rushed into production to take advantage of the Falklands mania that was sweeping the English-speaking world. War in the Falklands (hereafter: WitF, not to be confused with WiF!) is actually two games in one that use different rules and counters but the same map. The first game, "War in the Falklands 1914," is a straightforward naval shoot-em-up between the British and German fleets off the Falkland Islands in 1914 as the German Pacific Squadron raced back to Germany at the outbreak of war. WitF has two and a half pages of rules (!!) and an additional set of about two dozen "record sheets" with ship silhouettes and damage boxes that you tick as the ships get more and more degraded in combat, reminiscent of Star Fleet Battles and a host of other games. Since naval warfare is not my forte, I haven't spent much time looking at WitF 1914. The real reason I bought this two-in-one package was to get WitF 1982, the second game in the box which simulates the 1982 Falklands conflict between Leopoldo Galtieri's unpopular junta and Margaret Thatcher's unpopular junta. The game begins with the Argentine invasion already accomplished, and the British Task Force is steaming south from Ascension Island into the South Atlantic.... The game comes with a not unattractive 17x22 inch map of the South Atlantic, covering the Argentine coast from Ushuaia in the south to the River Plate in the north. In the middle of the map is the Falkland Islands itself, grossly exaggerated in size and split into three areas (one in West Falkland and three in East Falkland where all the ground action took place). An inset map shows a one-area South Georgia which, annoyingly, the British player must invade on Turn 1 or else he loses the chance to ever do so. The sea is divided into several rectangular sea areas. Curiously, the entire Falkland Islands fits into one sea area--so there is no question about who controls the seas around the Falklands. The 150 or so counters are chintzy, no worse than Avalon Hill was doing at the time--but suffer one huge drawback: all air units have different capabilities, but they are not named on the counters. You have to remember the individual silhouettes of twelve different kinds of aircraft, including two different varieties of Mirage! The rules for WitF 1982 are seven pages long and have no case numbers; there is no index, no cross-referencing, and it is dreadfully hard to find one's way around. The game mechanics are simple and simplistic, and there are multiple annoying features. Individual ships carry piles of aircraft--up to 7 aircraft/helicopter counters in each carrier. This cries out for an off-map display. Combined with the combat system, it is annoying in another way: You have to make an attack roll for EVERY ship and plane in your fleet. This means, for instance, on one turn my British had to roll 39 pairs of dice during the Air/Ship combat phase alone! Then the Argentines roll a similar number of times. All this puts quite a strain on the wrist. The naval system is completely lacking in realism, and lends itself to a "Fleet in Being" strategy-- there is no reason to split up your fleet. This generates colossal surface combats which are very unlike anything in the real Falklands War. On Turn One, you assault South Georgia with the entire fleet, and on Turn Two you assault the Falklands with the entire Fleet. There is no subtlety or strategy involved; there is simply nothing else to do with your fleet except run circles around the Falklands and hope you don't get attacked. The British fleet outclasses the Argentines in every way. Argentina does have good air units (hey, they don t call it Buenos Aires for nothing!) but there are no stacking limits, no limits to how many you case base from a single air base, etc. Argentina's strategy should be to put the entire air force, the entire fleet, and the entire army in the Falkland Islands and just wait for the British to arrive. Then the Argies should fire everything--and I mean everything--at the British carriers, the container ship, and especially the infantry bobbing around in their landing craft--once killed, they never come back. The whole point of the game is to hold the Malvinas, so sacrifice the navy! This strategy, of course, is completely at variance with the real Argentine strategy (which was to run away from the 200-mile Exclusion Zone, whine and complain when the General Belgrano was sunk, and cower in Argentine ports till the war was over). There is no reason for either player to do anything remotely similar to what happened in the real war--except for the air force, where the Argentines ought to attack, attack, and attack again as they did in real life (the Argentine air force was the only branch of the service to come away from the Falklands War without egg on its face). Indeed, the victory conditions almost preclude realism. The British get victory points for chasing the Argies out of *West* Falkland, which they bypassed in the real war; worse yet, the British get victory points for sinking the General Belgrano, when in real life, the sinking of the Belgrano was an international scandal for which Margaret Thatcher was roundly condemned by people who were shocked that the Royal Navy was actually going to kill anybody to get the Islands back! Other parts of the game system simply don't work at all. Each side has a small and totally ineffective submarine force; the subs are sunk early in the game by the overwhelming ASW power which both sides have (the Argies from their surface ships; the British from surface ships and several Sea King helicopters which have no other role in the game than to kill subs; after turn 1 when all the subs are killed, these helicopters just sit around taking up space on your carriers.) The game takes place over 12 "turns," but nowhere in the rules does it explain what a "turn" is supposed to represent; is it a day? A week? Two weeks? To give you some sense of the game, here is a brief replay from the one time I played it (solitaire): Turn 1: Anticipating an assault on South Georgia, virtually the entire Argentinian Fleet sets up in the waters around South Georgia. (Because the rules say the British must assault South Georgia on Turn 1 or they ll never get another chance.) South Georgia is beyond Argentine air range, so this is going to be a straight naval combat; my strategy (as the Argies) is to sacrifice the Fleet and destroy as much of the Royal Navy as I can. (This strategy was flawed because South Georgia is out of air range from the Falklands and there is no air base there. Instead, I should have put my entire fleet in the Falklands and let South Georgia go.) Argentinian Etendards perform well against the RAF Harriers; but in the Air/Sea round the Harriers pound the Argentinian carrier 25 de Mayo and score 3 hits on her! Fabulous die-rolling. One more turn like this and she ll sink. British AA wipes out the whole air complement of the 25 de Mayo, and then both sides wipe out all the other side s submarine units! In ship-to-ship combat the Hermes, Fearless, and one British transport are hit, causing many casualties among the British troops scheduled to land on S. Georgia--but the vastly superior British Fleet quickly reduces the Argentines to rubble. The Hercules, San Trinidad, Piedrabuena, Py, and the General Belgrano and 25 de Mayo are both sunk! British land units easily retake South Georgia. Turn 2: Stunned by their defeat at sea, the Argentinians withdraw their battered navy to the secure air cover of Port Stanley. In the grand melee that follows, the Argentine Air Force and navy are ripped to tatters--but the Argies sink HMS Hermes! The Argentines also destroy one British infantry unit and damage another before they can land--but the British come ashore in force in Lafonia, west of Goose Green, and overwhelm the lone Argentine defender. Here's where things get really absurd: Apparently one British Harrier unit is lost because it can't land anywhere, but the rules aren t really clear that it *has* to land anywhere (there is no "planes go back to base" phase). Turn 3: Things get even more absurd. According to the rules, ships can't use their anti-aircraft ability unless they're being attacked by air--so the entire fleet sits around the Falklands with nothing to do while the Argentinian air force pummels the British troops on the ground. There are no supply rules, so there is no incentive for the Argies to attack the Royal Navy from the air. (Translation: No reason to attack HMS Sheffield.) So the few remaining Argentinian ships concentrate their fire on the damaged HMS Invincible, and sink her! Naturally, the entire Argentinian fleet is sunk, but the British are now at a big disadvantage in the air with both her carriers sunk and the container ship Atlantic Conveyor damaged. British advance on Goose Green and score what amounts to a "no effect" on the Argentinians; each side damages one of the other's units. Turn 4: British Vulcan bombers appear out of nowhere from Ascension but fail to do anything, so they go home. This is the only time they are seen in the game. The British assault on Goose Green continues with what amounts to trench warfare; mindless shooting and maiming but no progress. This is more like World War I than the Falklands War. Without Supply rules, the Argies are as good now as they would be if they controlled the seas around the islands. Turn 5: The Argentinians sink the Atlantic Conveyor! Assuming I read the air rules right, Britain has no more air units on the map, thanks to the British failure to capture the airbase at Goose Green. But British on the ground continue to wear down the Argentinian defenders of Goose Green. Turn 6: Now that the Argies have total air superiority, it doesn t do them any good since an air unit only damages a ground unit on "boxcars." Actually they do damage one British unit--15 unopposed squadrons of Mirages and Super-Etandards aren t very effective, it seems. The British and Argentinians take equal losses in their slug-fest on the ground. Turn 7: Argies again use their total air superiority to slightly damage the British, but the losses on the ground are equal and the British have a bigger stack. The slug-fest continues on. Turn 8: (When on the calendar are we? May? June? October? WHEN??) Argie air force actually kills 2 steps of British units! But British perform well on the ground; Argies whittled down to 1 unit in Goose Green, British have two. And they re better units. Turn 9: ZOOKS! Combination of good Argentinian land-rolling and the total air superiority of the Fuerza Aerea Argentina, and suddenly the Argies and Brits are whittled down to exact parity in quality and quantity at Goose Green! Turn 10: Quite a turn. Nobody hits anything. The slug-fest continues. It's the Battle of Verdun at Goose Green... Turn 11: Same as last turn! Turn 12: This is the last turn of the game--according to the rules, the Argies should lose the game because, thanks to British domination of the seas *around* the Falklands, the British are racking up victory points despite the fact that they don t actually control more than a corner of the Falkland Islands themselves, and Stanley is still firmly in the grip of the Junta. The Argentine Air Force succeeds in blowing up that last British unit in the Falklands, and the Argentine Army reconquers Lafonia, the last piece of British-owned real estate in the islands. Thatcher's army is destroyed to the last man; the British have lost two aircraft carriers and four submarines plus every air unit committed to the mission (except those mysterious Vulcan bombers) and every square foot of the Falklands is still under Argentinian control. According to the rules, this is pretty much a draw! ...That should give you some ideas about the weaknesses and limitations of this game. The Falklands War was one of the most fascinating conflicts of modern times, and it cries out for a game which can handle the politically-motivated subtleties of both sides. (I yearn for an "Al Haig vs. Jeane Kirkpatrick CRT.") It is a great story of individual bravery, classic tactical mistakes, and--on the Argentine side--almost Hitlerian strategic incompetence. Unfortunately, WitF 1982 doesn't come close to simulating it in any realistic way. R. Ben Madison talossa@execpc.com Join the Kingdom of Talossa! http://www.execpc.com/~talossa