Subject: revised review for S&T 233: Dagger Thrusts
From: paulha@sonic.net
To: admin@grognard.com

Dagger Thrusts (S&T 233): Missed Opportunity

Ty Bomba’s new “Dagger Thrusts: Patton & Montgomery” (DT) simulation, the
game in Strategy & Tactics 233, disappointed me. I wanted to like it. DT
aims to explore the different strategic options—-the missed
opportunities-—available to Eisenhower and his generals following the
sudden collapse and rapid retreat of German forces from France in late
July 1944. It’s a wonderful application for a simulation, but DT misses
its opportunity now just as Eisenhower may have missed his then.

The problem for the Allies in 1944 was that available supplies could
support only one strategic thrust into Germany in September (out of six
alternatives enumerated by Bomba in the accompanying S&T article), but
success in any of them could have precipitated German surrender many
months before the actual event. The problem for DT is that the game
doesn’t cover all six alternatives, and for the five it does allow, the
game offers no means to relate the outcome of one choice to that of
another (except in a single case). There’s no clear reason for these
problems: Bomba’s a skilled designer and clearly has command of his
material. In the end, it seems to come down to poor planning and poorer
execution-—the same reasons that doomed the Allies’ choice in September
1944: Montgomery’s ambitious Market-Garden assault.

At first glance DT looks good, but the good impression didn’t hold up. DT
actually is two completely independent folio-sized (half-map) games. One
folio game covers Montgomery’s options in the north and the other
addresses most of Patton’s options in the south. In scale and topic DT
resembles SPI’s 1972 “Breakout & Pursuit” game: 3-day turns, 10km hexes,
and regiment- and division-sized units, although here the hexes and
counters are Bomba’s beloved oversized variety. Unfortunately, the hexes
of the Patton map are somewhat less oversized than those of the Monty map
(to cover a slightly larger area, but not large enough to include Patton’s
third—-and possibly best—-option), and they are not quite oversized enough
to hold the oversized counters for the Patton game. Given the possibility
of 10-high stacking, counter crowding can become an annoyance in play.

Each of DT’s two games is meant to be played separately, and each has
multiple victory conditions to represent the different possible thrusts
open to the Allies. As the Allies in Monty game, one can win by clearing
Antwerp’s Scheldt estuary, by breaching the German “Westwall” defenses
around Aachen, or by clearing a “Highway to the Reich” in Market-Garden
fashion. For Patton, a player wins by either driving into Germany’s
critical Ruhr industrial region or by establishing a substantial
bridgehead across the Rhine River.

OK, maybe you’re thinking that this isn’t so bad. A game can’t always
cover everything and DT does allow players to try most of the strategic
alternatives open to Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Patton. But the package
fails by providing no way to compare the outcomes of these alternatives
between the separate games, or even of the different alternatives within
the Monty game (the Patton rules note that a Ruhr victory is much “bigger”
than a Rhine bridgehead victory). There’s no “tactical victory-operational
victory-strategic victory” scheme; there’s no scale of points; there’s no
way at all—-in terms of the two games—-to tell if one approach or another
provides the better ultimate result for the Allies. Which is supposed to
be the point of the whole alternative history exercise, and why in the end
DT disappoints. After playing the games you can’t really tell if Patton’s
plan was better than Monty’s (and at first look, the open terrain of the
Monty map would lead me—-like Ike—-to favor his plan over Patton’s charge
into the woods). It’s too bad. Certainly players can come up with some
kind of an ad hoc approach to relate the various outcomes of the two
games, but it would’ve been so much easier and more valuable for Bomba to
provide such a scheme—-say in terms of how many months the war would be
shortened—-based on his research and assumptions in creating the game. But
he didn’t, and I don’t really know why. Just like no one really knows why
the historical Market-Garden attack was so sloppily executed.

As for the Allies in September 1944, there’s lots of room for
second-guessing about DT. There are the big “strategic” questions. For
example, why were the two folio games were done independently and with big
hexes and counters? Combining both on a single map and using regular-sized
components would have allowed the map to cover the western German border
from Switzerland to the North Sea and would have provided the extra
counters needed to simulate the missing sixth option (and also for a
consistent breakdown scheme to be used for the Allies in both the Patton
and Montgomery games. As DT now stands, Patton uses regiments and
divisional integrity, whereas Montgomery has four-step, two-counter
divisions). Such combined presentation directly would have shown the
different war-winning value of the different strategic alternatives for
the Allies, better would have created the “you take command” sense of the
best alternative history simulations, and would have avoided the gamey
“edge of the world” problems that plague the DT maps around Arnhem and the
Ruhr cities. It would have simplified and improved the whole business
(which army—-Patton’s or Monty’s—-got the Allies’ limited supplies could
be indicated simply by making the other army out of supply for the whole
game).

Or, if two small games with big hexes and big pieces were wanted, why
wasn’t the whole thing wasn’t done in the style of the old “Battle for
Germany”? Given that the German player in both the Patton and Montgomery
games has relatively little to do beside deciding where to die, why not
combine the two games into one contest, with one player controlling
Patton’s armies on the south map and the German defenders against Monty on
the north map, and the other player running Monty’s assault in the north
and the Germans in the south? Not only would this have enlivened the
package for players, it would’ve forced a direct comparison of the results
of the different strategic options selected.

And there are the small “tactical” questions. First among these is why not
put all the information needed by the players on the counters? Despite the
acreage provided by the oversized format, the DT counters do not show
movement allowance. Numbers are there for combat strength, entry turn,
number of steps, and other factors, but not for movement. Instead movement
ability is suggested by counter color. I write “suggested” because the
color of a counter merely indicates army grouping and/or mobility type
(there’s a list in the rules), which then must be checked against a
different chart (this one’s on the map) to find out how many movement
points a unit has. Of course players get used to the various groupings and
their movement rates before too long, but it all seems unnecessarily
involved, unnecessarily complicated, and—given the large counters—just
plain unnecessary. If it had to be done, why not at least link color, army
group, and movement points on a single chart?

And why does the game not include OOB variants to address some of the
critical factors that Bomba mentions in the S&T article, such as the
likelihood that Market-Garden would have succeeded had the Allies
completely closed the Falaise pocket in mid-August and trapped the last
20,000 Germans—-the most fanatical soldiers of all—-before they reached
the Westwall defenses? But neither article nor game completely indicate
which units these 20,000 men represent, so one can’t readily test this
assertion.

As for the game system itself—-a low-complexity variant of the “move or
fight/move or fight” two-impulse approach from Dave Isby’s classic To the
Green Fields Beyond” (or before)—-it seems competent enough. Of course I
might quibble with a few details. For example, why do Allied armor
division and infantry divisions have the exact same combat strength when
1944 armor divisions had maybe twice the firepower and rate 20-50% greater
offensive punch in most games of the period? Why do American armor combat
command units function like (weak) infantry regiments with divisional
integrity when they were supposed to be strong independent task forces
with divisional assets attached directly? And why do the first American
forces enter the Monty game a turn after the time the designer’s article
says they liberated Liege, a city that is another turn or two away across
the map? Overall, though, I defer to the designer’s extensive knowledge of
this campaign, although some notes about his decisions would have been
helpful.

In the end I’m left saddened by the promise and missed opportunity of DT.
Probably my review is all the more critical because of the high
expectations I had for the game, but with S&T’s increasingly good
standards of late, it’s unfortunate that DT should be doomed by a poor
choice of format, weird graphic decisions, and plain old incompleteness.
Which may recreate the missed opportunities of the historical situation
more than anyone ever intended.

Paul Haase