Map and Counters

AUTOMATIC VICTORY AND CAPTURED SUPPLY

INTRODUCTION

After forty-six years, it would be logical to assume that the rules of few games are as free of controversy or as well understood as those of AFRIKA KORPS. Reams of paper have been devoted in the General to answering rules questions, as well as to analyzing — down to the tiniest detail — virtually every aspect of the play of the game. Thus, I was surprised, in the course of a recent PBeM match with a very accomplished and skilled opponent, to discover that an AFRIKA KORPS tactic that I had thought was generally well-known to seasoned players was, in fact, only vaguely familiar to my adversary. The tactic in question is that of using a captured enemy supply to overrun a second enemy line that would, were it not for the use of the opponent’s own supply unit, be safe from a conventional attack. In the case of this particular tournament match, the use of this offensive tactic brought about the almost total collapse of my opponent’s position; his resignation followed one turn later.

Ignorance may well be bliss in some things, but it is usually a recipe for defeat when sitting across from a knowledgeable opponent at the game table. So it was in the aforementioned match. The sudden, decisive end to this particular PBeM contest did, however, start me thinking. If a player as experienced as my adversary was unprepared for the tactical ploy that beat him in our game, then it is highly likely that more than a few other AFRIKA KORPS aficionados might also be ignorant of both the dangers and the opportunities presented by this type of battlefield situation. That being said, this essay will consider the specific AFRIKA KORPS rules that, when taken together, make this tactical approach possible. It will then conclude with a specific example of just how this type of offensive opportunity might arise in a typical game and, more importantly, how it can be exploited by the attacker.

THE CORE OF THE ‘AFRIKA KORPS’ GAME SYSTEM

The play of Charles Roberts’ classic game, AFRIKA KORPS, is largely driven — for those newer players who are unfamiliar with this venerable old title — by two design elements which, when taken together, give this game its unique character and special appeal: mobile supply counters and automatic victory. Of course, the presence of these design features does not seem particularly unorthodox by today’s standards; nonetheless, they were both startling innovations when they first appeared on the gaming scene over four and a half decades ago. Moreover, the critical roles performed by both the supply and automatic victory (AV) rules in controlling the flow and tempo of the game — and not nostalgia for the “good old days” — are, without doubt, the main factors in maintaining this game’s ongoing popularity among long-term players like me, even after all these years.

Beans and Bullets: Supply in AFRIKA KORPS

Interestingly, Avalon Hill took something of a chance when it published the first edition of AFRIKA KORPS in 1964. This is because, although a design that pitted Rommel’s Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK) against Montgomery’s British Eighth Army was a natural subject for a conflict simulation, the introduction of a much more detailed supply subroutine into an otherwise fairly conventional World War II game — notwithstanding the game publisher's earlier experiment with somewhat more complicated supply rules in the first version of D-DAY (1961) — insured that AFRIKA KORPS still represented a significant break from Avalon Hill’s previous commercial offerings. Nonetheless, the gamble paid off, and Charles Roberts’ decision to incorporate a limited number of mobile supply units — three for the Axis and four for the Commonwealth — into the AFRIKA KORPS counter-mix turned out to be exactly the right choice when it came to giving the game its own distinct simulation feel. In addition, the game’s ground-breaking logistical rules also required supporting supply counters to be within five hexes of all units attacking at 1 to 2 or better odds, and for any supplies used by the attacker to be removed from the map after the combat phase. This set of requirements made the task of the attacking player a lot more interesting and, because of the challenges that it created, proved to be a valuable addition to the design architecture of Avalon Hill’s first game on the North African Campaign.

Another truly clever aspect of Roberts’ approach to the battle in the Western Desert was the imposition of chance — through variable supply tables and die-rolling — on the availability of Axis supplies. In essence, the designer made the arrival of supplies automatic for the Commonwealth, but he made incoming supplies a function of changing probabilities for the Axis. This feature, besides being a persistent source of aggravation to countless Axis players over the years, also added a nice bit of uncertainty and a distinctly historical flavor to the cardboard battle for North Africa. What this intriguing little wrinkle in the supply rules really meant, however, was that — unlike the other Avalon Hill games of the day — AFRIKA KORPS absolutely required the Axis player to stockpile supplies in preparation for each major offensive effort. Moreover, the severe limitations imposed by the game’s logistical rules also obliged the DAK’s commander to carefully weigh the pros and cons of each battle before actually expending any of his precious and often difficult-to-replace supply units. This unavoidable ‘cost-benefit’ calculus inevitably created an offensive 'balancing act' for the Axis player because every time a would-be Rommel launched an attack, he did so with the knowledge that it might be a very long time before a replacement for his newly-expended supply counter made its way back to the front.

The final and, in some ways, most interesting feature that Roberts incorporated into his supply rules for desert warfare was the ability of an opposing player to seize and then use captured enemy supplies. In AFRIKA KORPS, an unaccompanied enemy supply counter can be ‘captured’ and immediately converted to a friendly supply unit anytime that an enemy player’s combat unit moves adjacent to the unprotected friendly supply. Moreover, even when a supply unit is stacked with a friendly unit, it can still be captured by means of a soak-off attack, by conventional combat, or through an automatic victory attack. Still more nerve-racking for a defender: any unaccompanied or AV’d supply counter that is seized by an enemy unit can be moved and used by the phasing player — on any game turn, including that of capture — to support other attacks within the ‘captured’ supply unit’s movement range and supply radius. This section of the AFRIKA KORPS supply rules, as we shall shortly see, can produce some very promising (for the attacker) and equally dangerous (for the defender) game situations. However, before moving on to consider the opportunities for creative play that the AFRIKA KORPS supply rules make possible, a brief look at another critically important feature of the game system is probably in order. And a good place to begin is with a further review of the somewhat unusual history of Avalon Hill’s classic game on the battle for North Africa.

Automatic Victory: The Rule that Revolutionized Wargaming

In the course of finishing his design work on AFRIKA KORPS, Charles Roberts ran into a seemingly intractable problem during the new game’s ‘play-testing’ phase: time after time, one or two weak British brigades would completely block the eastward progress of the Deutsches Afrika Korps. No matter what the Axis player tried — when faced with a competent Commonwealth opponent — Rommel simply could not win. The problem was that there were simply too many British units, too few Axis supplies, and too many map hexes between Tripoli and Alexandria for the DAK to cover in thirty-eight game turns. Something radical needed to be done.

Enter Thomas Shaw. Shaw’s solution to Roberts’ problem was as simple as it was ingenious: unlike the combat rules in previous Avalon Hill titles such as WATERLOO (1962) and STALINGRAD (1963) in which weak units could be sacrificed — whatever the odds against them — to effectively block the advance of much stronger enemy forces for a single game turn, Shaw came up with a radically different approach to combat for AFRIKA KORPS. Shaw’s innovative rules change stipulated that attacks at 7 to 1 or 5 to 1 (surrounded) immediately eliminated the effectiveness of the defending unit and cancelled its zone of control; he decided to dub this special type of combat with the somewhat eponymous title: ‘automatic victory’ (AV).

Tom Shaw’s inspired creation of the ‘automatic victory’ type of battle — basically a form of attack in which the hitherto separate game operations of movement and combat are combined — has to stand as one of the truly great innovations in the history of game design. Moreover, this dramatic change in the combat rules of AFRIKA KORPS completely transformed the play dynamics of Roberts’ creation and, at the same time, also laid the groundwork for virtually all of the many ‘overrun’ movement/combat systems that have become widely-accepted within the hobby, today.

The inclusion of ‘automatic victory’ as a new type of combat went a long way towards opening up the battlefield in AFRIKA KORPS. However, subsequent AV rules interpretations, culminating in the publication by Avalon Hill of the game’s Third Edition rules in 1980, transformed it. The most important 3^rd Edition rules clarification pertaining to ‘automatic victory’ was in the realm of establishing supply to units performing AV attacks. What happened was that, in the course of clarifying and expanding the AFRIKA KORPS game rules in 1980, Don Greenwood made explicit a unique characteristic of AV supply that had first emerged in the Q & A section of the Avalon Hill General many years before.

This special AV rule had to do with when and how the mandatory five-hex path between AVing units and their sustaining supply counters was to be traced. On this point, Greenwood was clear: any units performing an ‘automatic victory’ attack were required to be within the legal (five-hex) supply range at the moment that the ‘automatic victory’ was first established; however, the sustaining supply could then move out of range of the AVing units, so long as attack supply was restored before the conclusion of the phasing player’s combat phase. This AV rule, when used in concert with the rules governing the ‘capture’ of enemy supplies, can produce a devastating ‘one-two punch’ for the attacker. Moreover, this combination of AV and supply capture is not just a threat to the unwary novice; more than a few seasoned players — in games both past and present — have also succumbed to this bit of tactical ‘slight of hand’. For this reason, I counsel AFRIKA KORPS players, whatever their level of experience, to always be on the lookout for the battlefield conditions that create these types of opportunities: they may occur infrequently, but when they do, they are almost always ‘game breakers’.

USING CAPTURED SUPPLY FOR AUTOMATIC VICTORIES

Setting the Scene: A ‘Real World’ Example

To help readers visualize what can happen in the course of play when the special type of AFRIKA KORPS combat situation that permits an 'AV supply capture breakthrough’ arises, a series of game maps have been included to illustrate both this unique battlefield opportunity and its offensive exploitation. These maps are not, by the way, hypothetical examples. Instead, they are the exact records of the moves that occurred in the course of the previously mentioned tournament match between me and the other expert AFRIKA KORPS player who, despite decades of experience, had never personally run across this tactic prior to our game. Also, for brevity’s sake, only map illustrations for the final three moves from the match in question have been included; thus, the locations of the Axis and Commonwealth forces are displayed beginning with the unit positions prior to the British September II ’41 player turn and culminating, two turns later, with the unit positions at the end of the Axis portion of the October II ’41 game turn.

September II ’41 Positions Prior to the British Move

West Map Section September II '41 Game Turn

The September II ’41 game turn finds the British commander in very difficult straights. During the just-concluded Axis player turn, the DAK has eliminated three British units (all 1-1-6s) in hexes Q62, L60, and K59 at a cost of a single supply counter. Moreover, the Axis player has enjoyed fabulous luck with his supply rolls: in fact, he has two more supply units racing towards the front, and an extra captured supply counter already in the battle area; and he has yet to lose a single unit in combat. The Commonwealth commander, on the other hand, has suffered very heavy casualties and finds himself with his back to the wall: he is rapidly running out of both space and units; moreover, desperately needed reinforcements are still three turns away. Rommel is virtually guaranteed to launch three more attacks before the Allied portion of the November I game turn, so, unless the British player does something dramatic, Alexandria is doomed to fall. With his Home Base on the verge of capitulation, the British player asks himself the obvious question: "What can be done to dramatically turn things around?"

October I ’41 Positions Prior to the British Move

October II ’41 Positions Prior to the British Move

Tobruk Front October II Game Turn

The German retreat is both welcome and expected by the Allied commander. However, with Rommel now apparently poised to strike at Tobruch, the overly-ambitious British player makes a fatal blunder during his October I player turn. He has become mesmerized by the possibility of holding the fortified port through the Axis portion of the November I ’41 game turn (two more Axis attacks), so he sends the 7/7 Mechanized Brigade out to sea. At the same time, he brings Supply #2 and 4I/7 into Tobruch and swaps the weak infantry brigade for the 2/3 Armored Brigade in H25. Because Rommel only has a single supply unit that can reach the Alexandria battle area, he confidently walks into the Desert Fox’s trap by first moving 5I/29 into the blocking position at K49 and then by establishing a second line anchored on the Alam Halfa Ridge. The Allied player has grown steadily more optimistic about his chances: the dispatch of a powerful unit to reinforce the fortress garrison may yet preserve British control of Tobruch until November, and with his El Alamein line beyond the reach of any Axis supply that is supporting an attack against K49, the Commonwealth player feels that the worst has passed. He is wrong; the weakness of the El Alamein position along with the unprotected supply counter garrisoning Alexandria will be his downfall.
The British move creates just the opportunity that Rommel has been waiting for. The Desert Fox seizes the chance both to restore the Axis position around the Allied-controlled fortress and, at the same time, to crush the British forces defending at El Alamein. Rommel strikes without hesitation. As his first order of business, the Axis commander moves to reestablish his siege of Tobruch by attacking the British outpost unit (4I/7) on H25 at 3 to 1 (surrounded). An exchange is not particularly worrying as Division Savena will reach the fortress perimeter just in time to completely seal in the port’s garrison on November I, even if one of the attacking divisions is lost in combat. The real action, however, is in the east. Here the DAK begins with a 6 to 1 (surrounded) AV attack against 5I/29 on hex K49. This critical first combat is sustained at the moment of the AV by captured Supply #4 which then proceeds past the now ineffective Allied block to its final position on M59. The rest of the DAK surges east through the Matruh Gap right behind Supply #4. The next target on the Axis “hit parade” is 7/3I Motor which is overwhelmed by the two German panzer regiments at 7 to 1. This attack, like the preceding overrun is also sustained at the moment of the AV by the ‘hard-working’ Axis captured Supply #4. This second attack allows 15/115 and 15/33 to advance past the main Commonwealth block at M61. The 15/33 Reconnaissance Battalion continues on to end its move adjacent to the Allied Home Base and British Supply #4. Because the Allied supply unit in Alexandria is unprotected, it is automatically captured, converted to Axis captured Supply #5, and is then promptly dispatched west to restore supply to the original overrunning Italian divisions on hexes L49 and J49. To complete the destruction of the British forces around El Alamein, Rommel posts 15/115 to complete the encirclement of the two Allied brigades covering the Coast Road and, at the same time, orders his last two remaining units to attack 7/7 S.G. at 5 to 1. Rommel’s communiqué to Berlin and Rome is a short one; it reads only: “Alexandria ist gefallen.”

CONCLUSION

Recommended Reading

See my blog post Book Reviews of these titles; both of which are strongly recommended for those readers interested in further historical background.