Dear Readers of Consim-l, I'm not sure I'm going to come in under the length limits on this, but I'll give it a try. Let's take an in-depth look at an old WWIII game. Hope you enjoy the review; thanks for reading. John Best jlbest@advancenet.net Currently playing: (Well, thinking about it): putting together GDW WWIII series games "Battle for Germany" and "Southern Front" minus the air units, which might make the games reasonably playable. Warsaw Pact: A review by John Best (Quasi) Historical Background: Sometimes we wargamers like to play games about events that "could" have happened, but never did, and this is one such game. Warsaw Pact is an examination about what might have happened in a hypothetical invasion of Europe by a coalition of nations led by the USSR and known as the Warsaw Pact. Europe is in turn defended by an opposing coalition, NATO. The events in the game can be set in any one of three possible time-periods (1967, 1974, or 1981). The time periods don't appear to be tied in any way to any events that may have been occurring elsewhere in the world; the time period seems chiefly to do with the volume of military force that each coalition is able to bring to bear against its enemy. Game Background: Warsaw Pact was designed by the legendary designer, Stephen V. Cole, and developed by his business partner of some years, Allen D. Eldridge. Long before he designed Star Fleet Battles, and long before he edited For Your Eyes Only in S&T for 17 years, Stephen Cole was first and foremost a hex-and-counter wargame designer. The game first appeared in Jagdpanther-that wonderful potpourri of a magazine that included either a game or mini-game, along with a veritable blizzard of variants, either major or minor in scope, across the entire spectrum of then-contemporary hex-and-counter wargaming. Jagdpanther (and its one-issue successor, Battlefield) appeared for 15 issues in the mid-1970s. Warsaw Pact appeared in Jagdpanther #14, whose nominal publication date was July 1976 (that's right friends, it was fully 35 years ago.). I acquired the copy I used for this review from Mike Pincus, an Ebay seller. I paid $11.62 US for a punched copy in January 2001. Mike had packaged Warsaw Pact with another game about the arrival of World War III (Berlin '85), of which I already had a copy from my S&T subscription days. So I paid $11.62 for two interesting games-you just can't beat that! A brief review of the game written by Brian Train appeared in Simulacrum #26 (nominal publication date: March, 2006). The Simulacrum review is invaluable for its inclusion of a very complete counter manifest, as well as a history of Jagdpanther magazine, and a biography of Stephen Cole, who, based on his lengthy and productive involvement with American wargaming, remains one of its towering figures. Physical Components and Appearance. The game consists of one 17" x 28" map, one 8-page rule book, and 144 die-cut counters. The map shows a big chunk of Europe from the Jutland peninsula in the north down to Athens and Istanbul, and from the edge of Russia in the east, over to Paris and Turin in the west. The map scale is 25 miles (40 kilom) per hex. The hex grid itself is credited to GDW. Looking at the map and the other components, I was reminded of a school of architecture known as "brutalism" that was a popular choice of many architects in the US in the 1970s. This architectural style features lots of concrete, blocky, cubic designs and a general feel of mass. It is not a style of architecture that is graceful, airy or pretty. The appearance of the map is something like that. The map is black and white, or off-white, with oceans, rivers and any other water features in blue. Rough or mountainous terrain is shown by a fine granulated dot pattern. Cities are all the same; the map symbol is a simple cross hatching in a hex. There are no other terrain features (no forests, swamps, or anything else). There is a blocky heavy dashed line that indicates the boundaries between countries. The names of countries and cities and are shown in a big, heavy, sans-serif type. It is not the prettiest map I've ever seen, but it is clear and functional. There are 144 counters are likewise generic. They depict units ranging from regimental sized groups up to army sized; corps and army-sized units predominate. Neither the NATO nor the PACT units have any unit designations, although the each counter, except the actual Russian units, shows a national abbreviation. The counters have the standard NATO symbology; many have the typical Attack-Defense-Movement numbers. The appearance of the counters is described very completely in the Simulcrum review. Summarizing here, the actual Russian units are shown with white symbology on an orangey-red. The Pact satellite countries are shown with orange numbers on a kind of a pink color. The US counters (and the Greek counters, oddly enough) are shown with white symbology on dark green-they look pretty good. The other NATO countries are shown with dark green symbology on light green counters. The forces of the countries that are initially neutral are variations of these combinations. Even by 1976 standards, which are not exactly lofty, the map and counters are not particularly attractive. For example, you can take a look at the map and counters for Panzergruppe Guderian, which also appeared in 1976, and I think you'll agree they are light years ahead of this product physically. This game was republished by Task Force Games in the early 1980s. I understand that edition was substantially more colorful than the Jagdpanther version. Scale, System and Mechanics: Each turn represents approximately 5 days; each hex is about 40 kilometers (25 miles). The units generally represent corps or army-sized formations for the Pact, there are more divisions and corps on the NATO side. The sequence of play is very similar to that used by a lot of SPI WWII games that came out in the early to mid 1970s: There is a reinforcement phase, followed by a primary movement phase, followed by a combat phase, followed by a second movement phase (unlike a lot of the SPI games, everybody gets to move again in the second movement phase.). There are locking ZOCs for everybody, with only a few exceptions. Once locked in, each and every unit continues to be stuck until the enemy units are destroyed or retreated. Combat is mandatory between units in a ZOC; every enemy unit in a friendly ZOC must be attacked, and every friendly unit in an enemy ZOC must participate in one such attack. Combat is resolved on a 1d6 CRT with Avalon-Hill style "whole hex" results (AE, Exchange, DE, that sort of thing). Most of the units have a "depleted" level on the reverse side, and that's actually what a DE result does to a full-strength unit. The depleted level's combat values are generally much less than half the full strength values. For the Pact units, but not for NATO forces, their movement allowance is also greatly reduced on the depleted side. There are a lot of typical and expected modifiers to combat strength (attacker halved across a river, and so on). Maybe the most interesting system is the supply mechanism. Unlike many or even most games that have a supply phase inserted somewhere in the turn sequence, supply in Warsaw Pact is integrated into the combat phase, and there a lot of interesting twists, especially for the Pact player. At the beginning of each turn, the Pact player has a variable, but decreasing, number of supply points loaded onto the supply point track. After movement, but prior to combat, the Pact player can use these points to first rebuild depleted units, and even quadruple their attack strength. If a unit is currently at full strength, it must trace supply, but the Pact player still must pay a supply point (or more) to keep the unit at full strength at the end of the turn. In another twist, the supply point cost to engage in these activities depends on the length of the supply line. There is a multiplier to the supply cost that kicks in as soon as the Pact units get more than 4 hexes from the East-West demarcation line. The longer the Pact supply line gets, the more expensive the cost of running their show. Rules Length, Format, Completeness, Complexity and Organization: The rulebook for Warsaw Pact is 8 pages long, and this includes a couple of brief tables. The text is formatted in a double-column, each column appears to be a typeset copy of text that was originally written using an IBM Selectric typewriter with a Courier New "ball" as the print head. Some counter symbology is clearly hand-drawn in. The font size is probably no larger than 6 points or so. Based on my estimate of counting the number of words in a paragraph and extrapolating, I've estimated that the number of words in the entire rules set could be up to 8,000 or so. Seriously, it's not as "little" a game as it might look (Of course, I'm aware that this review is clocking in at almost 4,000 words.). The rules are not organized in the case system pioneered by SPI, but rather each rule appears as a non-numbered paragraph under a heading. The headings are themselves pretty reasonable (eg, "Sequence of Play", "Combat", "Stacking", and so on). The rules seemed generally complete to me, in the sense that I was able to find some text in response to almost every question that came up as I played the game-that's not to say I didn't have questions that arose as I played. Most of the basic concepts in the game are standard, and the explanation of them was adequate. There are some wrinkles in which I thought the mechanic that Stephen Cole wanted to implement was a little beyond his capability to explain. Here are some examples. Full strength units that have a DE result are not eliminated but are reduced, in most cases, to a much lower strength "battlegroup" on the counter's flip side. However, the rules never quite address what might happen when a battlegroup is involved in an attack or defense in which an AE or DE result occurs. I handled that situation by removing the battlegroup from play. It still is not clear to me that that is what the rules meant to have happen. There is a procedure for rebuilding NATO battlegroups that are still on the board; it's not clear if a battlegroup in the deadpile can be brought back, or if so, how. I came up with my own procedure for doing so. This absence of a particular rule here was not a game-breaker by any means (although it may have been a big-time game im-balancer, as we'll see). A lot of the game's complexity is related to the business of tending to the geo-political churning that, although somewhat dependent on the military events being played on the table, is nevertheless "above" them in game terms. There are quite a few nations and military forces on the map who are not formally aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact (for example, the military power of Switzerland is something you rarely see in a wargame, but here it is on display in Warsaw Pact). These nations may become aligned with either coalition in some cases. This means that there is a lot of text in the rules about the occupancy and "ownership" of cities, which, depending on who that is, may in turn lead to a nation's collapsing, which may in turn lead to other nations' revolting, and even joining the formerly enemy coalition! Subtract all the verbiage dealing with that sort of thing, and the hex and counter wargame boils down to a fairly simple affair. Game Play and "Feel": I think the designer's intention is a good place to start with the evaluation of a game. Here's a statement Stephen Cole made in the introduction to the game: "The game is unique and unusual in that it is intentionally designed with the published Soviet concepts and doctrine as its basis. That is to say, the game follows more the Soviet theory of what the actual war will be like than it does the Western theory. The game poses the problems that the Pact will face and provides the resources the Pact feels that it will have." Let's take a look at what some of these problems might be. First, there is a mandatory advance after combat rule for the Pact, which reduces their ability to maneuver. Second, the movement allowances of the depleted side are really reduced for the Pact, but not for NATO. Pact forces are reduced down to 2 movement points on their depleted side in almost every case. What this means is that, if you don't have the supply points to keep your front line units from being depleted at the end of their turn, your Pact juggernaut is really going to get a case of the "slows". Speaking of supply points, this is probably the main driver that affects the game play. Simply put, you might not realize it when you start to play, but the Pact forces are attached to a big old rubber band: It might seem to have a lot of elasticity at the beginning, but rather suddenly, they will feel themselves being jerked back to East Germany. Here's how it works: The Pact starts out with relatively few units on the board; they have 80 supply points added to their bank account on Turn 1, and they are close to the East-West demarcation line, so the supply cost multiplier is not affecting them. But those three vectors are on a collision course with each other: The Pact gets a lot more units, the number of points added to their account declines steadily, especially after Turn 4, and their distance from the E-W demarcation line increases with their victories. Put those factors together, and by Turn 7 or so, when Stephen states in the rules that the NATO will begin its counterattack, and the Pact is in trouble. And playing it for the first time, I really couldn't see that coming from the Pact perspective, as my notes will indicate. How all this may relate to Soviet doctrine of the time might depend on how much you believe that the Soviet offensive would be "front-loaded". Generally in these WWIII games, the Pact side "burns" their units as they advance, counting on the fact that they have more units in their follow-on forces to finish the job. It's NATO that has to hang on and absorb the blow until their strategy of sustainable units and supply begins to tell. This game manages to produce that effect, even thought the Pact's ability to resupply banged up units is initially very high. At the "tactical" level (in game terms), there is a subtle art in these kinds of locking ZOC- mandatory combat games of knowing when to advance, and where to advance to contact with enemy units in your second movement phase. It's not an art I can say that I've mastered, but I think it would add a lot to the competitive value of the game if the players knew how to maximize that. By advancing to contact an enemy unit in your second movement phase, you effectively lock him up in his next movement phase, but you also risk having your guy attacked at potentially high odds. As you'll see in my notes, I wasn't ever sure that I was playing the NATO side optimally, and as a result, regardless of what the victory conditions said (NATO substantive victory), the reality in gaming terms was a Pact walkover. Overall: I'm still very intrigued by these WWIII games, and in general, it doesn't take much to get to me to play one. This game is far from the worse such game that I've played. There are some negatives. Physically, it's an ugly game, but at least you won't have to look at it too long to play it. If you want to play an old game about WWIII on just the German front, I think the vintage SPI game, NATO, is more fun than Warsaw Pact. However, on the positive side, if you would like a quick look at the whole European situation, with all of its political implications, then there is no doubt that Warsaw Pact lets you play that out at a much faster clip than, let's say the GDW Third World War series (where you would probably put together Battle for Germany and Southern Front to get something like the same game as Warsaw Pact). The supply rules in Warsaw Pact are intriguing, and they do a good job of portraying the problems that Stephen Cole apparently belies the Pact would have faced if they had invaded Germany in the 1970s or 1980s. For a guy who was maybe 21 years old when he designed this, the game represents a rather mature product. Addendum: "Playthrough" and Notes (This section contains some of the contemporous notes that I made while I was playing. Not all of the writing in this section is completely grammatical-some of it was written as just a reminder to myself. Although it is not actually part of the review per se, I'm including it because it allows readers of the review to go "backstage" with me and look over my shoulder as I was playing. At least, that's the spirit in which I offer this section.) 8/31/2011: Just for the record, I was playing the Hasty Attack, 1981 time frame, with the US in its "actual" defensive posture. I'm beginning Turn 3: rolling on Chinese Intervention table. Rolling a 6, so no attack by the Chinese. So far, WP has attacked Austria and has taken Vienna. In North Germany, the Soviets have taken Hamburg, and are driving on Munich. In the south, I now realize that the occupation of Istanbul means that Turkey has technically collapsed. The Pact could declare a Southern Europe ceasefire, but I think I'm going to let the Turks and the Greeks play on. Turn 3 and NATO is already seriously depleted of units (I wonder if I'm playing this right?) I think you want to try to protect your NATO guys by feeding no more of them than necessary into the battle-make use of the breakdown counters where possible. Austria has technically collapsed too, but I'm letting its few banged up divisions continue to defend the rump of Austria that remains. I wonder what happens to the intrinsic defense of a city if it is occupied by a friendly unit, and there is an exchange result? If the city is not occupied, it looks like an Exchange result lets the enemy units advance and occupy the city. I played out to the Soviet second movement phase. We'll start there next time. By the end of the Pact Turn 3, I was pretty sure that I was not playing the game correctly (and in fact I was positive that I had unintentionally blown by a couple of nations' collapses). I say this because NATO had been reduced to only a handful of units at this point. It was true that the huge numbers of PACT units across the demarcation line were going to start seriously drawing down their supplies soon, so the incredible shock and awe tactics of the first three turns surely could not continue. Could they? 9/3/2011: Beginning with Pact second movement phase. Played that, then beginning NATO turn 3. Any reinforcements? Fortunately, lots of them. NATO hanging on. Three NATO units out of supply in Germany; they have been surrounded by Pact units. Beginning Turn 4. Still playing Pact Turn 4 first movement phase. Warsaw Pact takes one of the Ruhr city hexes on this turn. Got to the end of Turn 4. The game has become pretty linear at this point. It still looks like there are a lot of Russian units coming forward. The Pact still has over 50 supply points in the bank at the end of the turn. 9/4/2011: Beginning Turn 5. By the end of Turn 5: NATO has a total of one unit free to move on the German front. Not very many units intact, most are on their battlegroup side. 9/5/2011: Beginning Turn 6. Soviet supply points are mercifully declining. Uh Oh, Yugoslavia joins the Pact! However, the Pact is pulling back some units back over the demarcation line (where, presumably, they don't have to pay supply in order to avoid depletion.). No, they still have to pay, but they are never going to have to pay more than 1 point per unit for units behind the demarcation line. The Pact eliminated a few more units this turn. NATO holding on to Frankfurt, and Bonn in Germany (and the Italians turn back a Yugoslavia offensive on Trieste, at least for the time being). Beginning next time with NATO turn 6. 9/7/2011: Starting with NATO turn 6. NATO gets some replacement points. Warsaw Pact beginning Turn 7, Soviets "decline" their reinforcements this turn (no reason to try to keep more guys in supply). On Turn 7, the Soviets are able to keep their front line units in supply, but not any of their reserve units behind the demarcation line in East Germany. Pact did take Bonn on this turn however. I notice later that, by taking Bonn the West Germans have technically collapsed (which means that so far, Turkey, Austria, Netherlands, and now West Germany have collapsed. I decided to let the West Germans play on (continue to get their reinforcements and replacement point). And the Yugoslavians did take Trieste. Beginning Turn 8. Soviets once again decline their reinforcements. But on this turn, they can't keep all of their front line units in supply. In North Germany, the Pact units that are still in supply are continuing to push through Netherlands, and on to Belgium. But elsewhere, things have clearly come to a halt for the Pact. 9/8/2011: Beginning NATO turn 8. NATO retakes Bonn. At the end of their part of Turn 9, the Pact has exactly 7 undepleted units on the board, but they have retaken Bonn in Turn 9. NATO retakes Frankfurt in their part of Turn 9. 9/10/11: Playing the final turn. The Pact expends all of its supply in paying for counterattacks needed to hang onto Bonn. Meanwhile NATO is merrily counterattacking in its final turn. The Italians are trying to retake Trieste, and the Greeks are busy pushing the depleted Bulgarians back out of their country. Meanwhile the Yanks are driving on Bonn. The Italians fail to take Trieste, and the Pact retains control of Bonn. That takes us to the end of game routine. End of game: Pact has taken Vienna, Munich, Istanbul, Trieste, Ruhr cities (2 hexes), Hamburg, Bonn. They exited a unit at hex 0113, which gives them Antwerp for a total of 9 cities. Looking at the chart indicates if the Pact captures only 9 cities, it is a NATO substantive victory! But it wasn't really. Netherlands, Austria, West Germany and Turkey have collapsed. In terms of losses, in the actual dead pile, the Pact has lost a total of 9 units with a total of 124 full strength attack factors (most of these losses occurred in the game's final 3 turns, at the end of 6 turns, the Pact had actually lost only two units). NATO's losses were much worse: 28 units with a total attack strength of 194 points (and that loss total would actually be higher, were it not for the fact that NATO starts getting replacement points at the end of the game that allow the rebuilding of depleted units on the board (and I allowed the rebuilding of units from the dead pile too) On board strength: Units Attack Pact (counting the Yugoslavians) 49 292 NATO 25 188 It's true that the Pact had only about 4 units at full strength. And if NATO had continued the war, and continued to receive 4 replacement points per turn, I'm sure the tide would have turned. But the overall position and strength at the end of 10 turns still strongly favored the Pact forces. _______________________________________________ Consim-l mailing list Consim-l@mailman.halisp.net http://mailman.halisp.net/mailman/listinfo/consim-l