No mere sideshow

Was there ever a better example of the horror and futility of War than Gallipoli? - a botched campaign in a botched war, where the flower of four nations were sacrificed to the flower of a fifth, by Generals so remote that they never left the invading ships? Yet, the modern nations of Australia, New Zealand and Turkey were born at Gallipoli. Reputations were made and lost. And not just those of politicians and generals. In addition to the fall of Winston Churchill and the rise of Mustapha Kemal, the Murdoch media dynasty took its first steps towards prominence here. The legacy of this so-called sideshow lives on.

Here in Australia, Gallipoli is as alive as history can be. Each year, tens of thousands of Aussies – many of them 25 or under - travel 12,000 miles to Anzac Cove in Turkey for the Dawn Service on April 25th – the date the Entente’s troops landed, and a public holiday across Australia. Yet few people really know what the campaign was for. And that’s appropriate, because few of the participants did either. Even those who thought they knew were probably wrong.

Winston Churchill thought he knew; shell Constantinople and the whole Ottoman Empire will fall. Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, and so in a position to make things happen. There was a horrible inevitability to the campaign, where the decision makers had been conditioned by months of hideous slaughter to think of casualties in the thousands as light. First, destroy the forts at the tip of the peninsula; then, sweep the mines; when that fails, damn the torpedoes and run the forts at the Narrows. When this fails, bring in land troops to destroy the guns. The first landing on the peninsula involved parties of 50 marines. 9 months later, half a million casualties had spilled their blood in an area smaller than Long Island. And for what? The evidence that a few ships off Constantinople would knock the Ottomans from the War is scant in the extreme. It is just the last of a series of ironies that the only well executed part of the campaign was the allied withdrawal.

We have been waiting a long time for a good game on Gallipoli, so ATO's latest offering on the Dardanelles Campaign - A Fatal Attraction - was a must buy. And at first glance it looks pretty good.

A look in the box

A Fatal Attraction comes with ATO 20. The very striking cover shows a burning peninsula from the perspective of a battleship turret. As it turns out, the power of naval bombardment in the game makes this a wholly appropriate choice. But much more on this later.

The magazine itself contains a decent article on the campaign, a couple more on the ANZACs in WW1 and Vietnam, a look at another botched campaign - Huertgen - and some odds and ends.

The game components are pretty good to my eyes – 12 pages of nicely laid out rules, 4 pages of charts which really do let you play without the rulebook in hand, a highly functional and quite attractive map, counters on which ATO’s trademark graphical oddities are less intrusive than usual. Figure 1 shows how the game looks in action, so you can judge for yourself.

Figure 1. The Aussies storm ashore at Gaba Tepe



The game is area movement, combined arms, with infantry, artillery, air and naval power all represented. Typical divisions for both sides are made up of three brigades of infantry and an artillery unit. There are individual counters for capital ships, and for flotillas of minesweepers.

The system is pretty novel. The dynamics of forcing a heavily defended and mined strait with heavy warships look well thought out on initial reading of the rules, and I can't think of many other games which cover this type of operation at a similar scale. It certainly packs a lot of game into a small package. Amphibious assault, artillery bombardment, air observation, supply, random events, naval bombardment, mine laying, minesweeping, naval gunfire and entrenchment combat all feature. Weather makes a BIG difference to almost everything, and supply constraints can shut a side down for months at a time.

In fact, there are really three different games, reflecting three separate routes to victory for the allied player. He can try to sweep the Turkish ground troops from the peninsula, and strike out for Constantinople on foot. He can sweep the mines, and the Turkish navy from the straits, and sail on into the Sea of Marmora. Or he can go for a win on points, by causing more casualties than he suffers, releasing troops for the Western Front bloodbaths, and holding onto to the peninsula’s high ground. Lack of supply will prevent him from chasing all three, so some tough early choices must be made. The Turkish player will be largely reactive, but also must choose between up front or in depth defence both on land and sea.

Refreshingly, there are no idiocy rules for the Allies, and disappointingly, no explicit rules for Mustapha Kemal.

All in all, for around $40, delivered half way round the world, this package is excellent value for money. However, all is not quite as rosy as it seems.

Well, I have seen the rules - they are awful rules and you will never get through..

This paraphrase of Kitchener’s famous assessment of Gallipoli is entirely apt. The game just cannot be played using the rules as written. Paul Rohrbaugh (designer) and Lembit Tohver (developer) maintain pretty current addenda online, and there is an extensive Q&A by Paul also on line, but even with this help, it is impossible to play the game as intended without extensive reference to Consimworld. Luckily, between them Paul and Lembit will answer most questions the same day.

The nub of the problem is caused by one of the game’s strengths. Each turn comprises a variable number of impulses, with the first player chosen randomly each impulse. Units are allowed one standard and one second activation per turn. Second activations are VITAL, and deciding when to use them provides much of the game’s fun in play. Unfortunately, the rules for who can second activate and when, are impenetrable, contradictory, over-concise, and have confused everyone I know who has played.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most beginning players seem to find it difficult if not impossible to pull off an amphibious assault. It turns out that previously disrupted defenders have to retreat from combat even if they PASS all morale checks, making it much easier to force the allied troops ashore. However, no reasonable person could interpret the rules that way.

If the allies try to sweep the straits, then the Turkish navy must do its bit to disrupt the allied mine sweeping operations. Fortunately for them, they are allowed to sail adjacent, blaze away, and then second activate out of harm’s way. This vital piece of information, sadly, is not to be found in the rulebook.

There are many more examples. The rules could do with a fully articulated sequence of play, a good, detailed example of the game in action, and probably a complete re-write. However, before the ATO team wastes their time on this, they better fix the victory conditions, because as it stands, the allies can win the game without coming out to fight.

Winners are grinners

You know a game is in trouble when all the post publication talk is about the victory conditions. Virtually the first errata published changed the award to the Turks for keeping the straits mined from 2 to 3 VPs per turn. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out why. The game is nine turns long. The allies can gain 26 VPs by withdrawing troops, and at 2 VPs per turn for the Turk, the arithmetic just didn’t stack up. Let’s be charitable and say that this was a typo, rather than a testing lapse. Does the change fix the problem? As things stand, if the allies keep the troops on the ships, then the end game VP score will be 27 to 26 in favour of the Turks. This fix will be broken if the Allies can find 2 cheap VPs somewhere. Unfortunately, they can. Sitting right at the entrance to the Dardanelles are three forts (Hellas, Sedd-el-Bahr and Kum Kale) which are worth 2 VP each if the allies can destroy them. The Royal Navy alone can engage the forts on turn 1 with no less than 13 primary and 23 secondary battery shots. Each shot will hit 70% of the time, and between 20% and 40% of hits will cause damage. The expected damage level from this barrage of shell is over 7, and only three are needed to destroy a fort. And if this does not succeed on turn 1, then there are 8 more turns to go…

Because of this, the Turkish player MUST mine the entrance to the straits as heavily as possible. Unfortunately for him, however, this will not be enough. The allies start with enough supply to second activate their battleships out of any minefields BEFORE they have a chance to take damage. Truly, the game is broken. Though it is not a sure thing, the odds are too good. I guess that the allies can win this way more than 80% of the time. The irony of this is that, in reality, the entrance forts were not even there when the game campaign begins (March 18th 1915.). They had been destroyed by the allies in February! It is a pretty unsatisfactory victory, of course, and players can mutually agree not to play this way.

Or can they? Both the other routes to victory are a very hard ask for the allies. I have never seen them even come close to being able to achieve an automatic victory by exiting units. Clearing the straits is closer, but if the Turk rolls well for mines, keeps his Navy intact, and judiciously “back fills” the straits with a mix of dummy and 1 factor minefields, then the best the allies are likely to do is to force a last turn crapshoot. Winning or losing in the last turn after 6 hours just because the number of impulses rolled was less than the number of mine factors rolled is every bit as unsatisfactory as the “blow up the forts” cheap shot win.

Clearly, the victory conditions need some work…

And if you know the history, it's enough to make your heart go oh oh oh oh...

I have played the game 7 times now - once solo, 5 times face to face, and once via Cyberboard against the game’s developer. In the majority of games we ended up with results that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the historical campaign. Perhaps because of this, there were a number of details which seem very unhistorical, and really jarred. In no particular order:

• It is much too hard for the allies to make it ashore. In April, successful landings were made at four different locations. If the Turk defends the beaches, this will NEVER happen in the game. The only way to invade is to concentrate the navy at a single area to blast the defenders into quivering remnants – again, a completely ahistoric capability, and a completely ahistoric outcome

• The "Marine" division as represented in the game did not exist - the Royal Navy Division did. Kitchener and the War Council EXPLICITLY forbade invasion of the peninsula before the naval option had been exhausted. Allowing the allies to try a divisional level invasion in March is nonsense

• As described above, the forts at the entrance to the straits were gone by the time the game starts - the allies destroyed 49 guns in February, and the Ottomans did not - and could not - replace them

• The weather appears to get worse rather than better in the summer

• The Ottomans had no capability to mine in the Aegean and their ability to re-mine previously swept areas is vastly greater than their actual capability. In addition, the allies improved their minesweeping capability as the campaign unfolded, and this is not represented

• The Queen Elizabeth was there - and in action - from February

• There was no real air observation capability

• The Turks already had their fort ammo stockpiled, so it seems unfair to force them to expend supply, at least the first time they fire.

More generally, it seems very difficult to create a plausible narrative at other than the highest level - e.g. "after the Royal Navy failed to force the Dardanelles, an amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula quickly petered out into a hopeless attritional stalemate." Beyond that, you descend into farce. For example, it is very easy for the Turkish ships to sail adjacent to the entire Royal Navy fleet - 12 capital ships - stop, aim, fire, sink 1 or 2 minesweepers, conduct a second activation, then sail back to base before the British sailors can even fire a single shot in reply. Even if this is a wonderful piece of design for effect it is so counter intuitive and implausible that - for me and for everyone with whom I have discussed or played the game - it renders the narrative ridiculous.

Playing the game

Despite all of the above, the game is actually fun to play. Both sides have to make plenty of decisions, though as mentioned most of these will fall to the allies. There is plenty of variability too. A small number of crucial die rolls – when will the Suvla force be available, how many mines can be placed in the Aegean, how many impulses in a crucial turn, who wins the initiative for the key impulses etc – can really change the landscape of the game. The game is easy to play – turns move quickly, especially in the mid game, there is very little down time and the area system means there are no clumsy stacks to knock over. Players face plenty of decision making too, and will often be sweating on the result of a die roll.

Games can unfold in a variety of ways. In one playing, the Ottoman player rolled well for mines, and especially well for mines in the Aegean. As a result, the Royal Navy was confronted by what turned out to be an impenetrable 12 factor mine field at the entrance to the straits (2 each in Besika & Hellas, 4 each in Sedd-el-Bahr & Kum Kale.) After the English Admiral showed too much Nelsonian spirit pursuing the Turkish navy (sending Goeben to the bottom in a hail of shells,) the mines ripped the heart out of his fleet. The carnage was dreadful. 12 RN capital ships had to face 7 mine attacks each (!) and ALL were either sunk or crippled. There was no way back from that!

In another game, the Entente player rolled a "6" for the Suvla invasion, therefore putting the Allied "destroy the forts" quick win strategy out of easy reach. The mine rolls were much less favourable too. The combination of this - especially the lack of need to defend the entrance forts to avoid an auto loss - persuaded the Turkish player to go for a defence in depth strategy for the straits. By the end of turn three, all that stood between the Entente and Constantinople were 1 Turkish Battleship, the Breslau and a single dummy minefield. However, the weather closed in on Turn 4, a single impulse turn was rolled, and that provided the breathing space the Ottoman player needed to re-mine the straits. The Aussies were ashore at Y beach, but that was all. When we called the game around the end of turn 4, both players were confident of losing, which is always a good sign.

My game against Lembit took a much more measured turn. The allies came within a hairsbreadth of clearing the straits on turn 3, but fell short. By turn 8, the map of peninsula resembled the historical situation, as Figure 2 shows.

Figure 2. Stalemate on Land



The allies looked like clinging on to a 2 point victory – based on holding 2 hill areas at game end – when the Submarine E-7 random event put matter beyond doubt.

Here is the essential conundrum of AFA – warts and all, I have enjoyed it every time I have played it. But I may not play it again, until either the system is tweaked to weed out the worst historical absurdities, or the victory conditions are changed to make it a genuine contest.

And the band played Waltzing Matilda…

The guys I game with are a tough crowd. You would expect a bunch of Anzac gamers in a Sydney Returned Services club to be interested in a Gallipoli game, and they were. Most liked the look of the game, and many took issue with its lack of history. One of the kinder comments to me was, “If you’re so smart, why don’t you fix it?” Well, I have neither the talent nor the time to do so. But I wish someone would. This game has consumed my every gaming moment for two months. It has sent me on a well overdue frenzy of reading, about a seminal campaign in the history of my adopted country, and I am very glad of that. There is so much to like about this game; the scale is perfect, the components are excellent, the system is innovative, manageable and fun. As one of my opponents said, the game has charm. It just isn’t finished, and I wish that it was.

Last words to Eric Bogle, who wrote The Band played Waltzing Matilda about this campaign. Try listening to Shane McGowan sing it without a tear in your eye….

"Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shell
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia

But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again"

If they fix it, I’d love to start the game all over again, too.

Stop Press: The pendulum swings

Since this article was drafted, ATO has introduced two very significant rule changes. First, Capital ships now suffer mine attacks whenever they leave a minefield. This is a very good change. As a result, the allied shoot-up-the forts cheap win becomes much more risky, and certainly not a sure thing if the Turks mine the fort areas. To win, the allies will need to find 2 VPs somewhere else. The obvious place is use naval bombardment to vapourize any hapless Ottoman troops guarding any un-mined beaches, so a savvy Turk will defend these beaches from adjacent high ground. This means that the Allies will get ashore easily, and probably in a number of places, but will face a grinding attritional battle for the high ground – sounds just like history, especially if the players agree not to use the “Marines” ahistorically on turn 1. I like the Turk’s chances after this change .

The second change allows minesweepers to move AND sweep during a second activation. This substantial increase in the allied minesweeping capability may well make a clear-the-straits win possible, and I suspect the allies are favoured again as a result. The AFA VC pendulum is still swinging.