Rommel’s Battle For Tunisia, 1943
A Two-player Military History Simulation
Designed by Vance von Borries
Published by GMT Games (2001)
The Situation: When the Allied forces landed on the coast of Algeria and Morocco on November 8, 1942 (Operation Torch), it seemed that the war in North Africa would last only a few weeks. The Axis defeat appeared inevitable. Instead, German and Italian reinforcements rushed to Tunisia, creating a new front that stopped the Allied advance. In addition, Rommel’s veterans of Panzerarmee Afrika withdrew from Libya to join hands with troops already in Tunisia, thereby giving Axis forces an opportunity for strategic advantage.
Axis Command thought it had a realistic chance for victory with unified forces by separating and defeating each Allied army in detail, starting with the inexperienced US forces. On Valentin’s Day 1943, the most dangerous of these Axis offensives began. Had it succeeded, the war in North Africa would have been lengthened, possibly delaying the Allied invasion of Europe. This offensive offered the Axis a chance for a major battlefield success to offset the disaster at Stalingrad. Kasserine proved to be the last realistiec chance for the Axis to reverse their fortunes in North Africa.
Kasserine is an operational-level game of the WWII German and Italian offensive in central Tunisia that took place in February 1943. The game is intended for two players. One player controls the Axis forces of Germans and Italians, and his opponent controls the Allied forces of Americans, British and French. The players manoeuvre their units across the map and conduct combat according to the rules of play.
(from the rulebook – page 2)
Vance von Borries is something of a North Africa expert when it comes to designing wargames. The mechanics of Kasserine are quite similar to those of another of his designs, Operation Mercury. 18 years before Kasserine was published Vance von Borries had a game called Decision at Kasserine published in The Wargamer Magazine – while Decision at Kasserine is a fine game in its own right, there are some substantial differences between it and Kasserine.
What You Get
The components are of the usual GMT quality and include a 22” x 34” map, 420 counters, the rule book, two large player aid cards, three smaller player aid cards, 3 double-sided allied set-up cards, 3 double-sided axis set-up cards and a ten-sided die. If you go the GMT website you can also pickup three pages of errata and clarifications.
How It Works
The Sequence of Play is fairly standard for those of you used to operational-level world war two games of the Panzergruppe Guderian ilk. There is a Strategic Segment where you check weather, reinforcements, supply and air functions. Next the Axis player has an Operations Segment where they move, the Allied player reacts, the Axis player resolves combat and then Axis motorized and mechanized units get a second movement. The Allied Operations Segment mirrors the preceding Axis segment. Finally there is a Reorganization Segment where engineers do their stuff, units are reorganized, you check for victory and then move to the next turn.
The Nitty-gritty
There is a lot of detail in Kasserine. Reading the rules, combat probably appears to be more complex than it really is, although it is certainly a step-up in simulation value from the standard combat result tables of the 1960’2 and 1970’s where you would just work out the odds and roll a die. Mechanized/motorized units have the ability (in many cases) to select either an Assault or a Mobile CRT – there doesn’t appear to be a great deal of difference between the two although the attacker is slightly less likely to receive an adverse result when using the Mobile CRT. During combat both Attacker and Defender select a “Lead” unit whose efficiency rating will be used to check for co-ordination. If the Lead unit passes its efficiency check then other units (air, artillery and non-artillery ground units) to join in the combat. Mechanized/motorized units also have a chance to reinforce nearby battles during their Reaction move. The use of mechanized and motorized units is crucial. You also get combat bonuses for things such as combined arms and leadership. The big plus with the combat system is that it creates a high degree of uncertainty, especially when combined with a ten-sided die.
As is the case with several of Vance von Borrie's game designs, stacking of units is based on stacking points. This contributes to another number on each counter (its stacking value) and the need for players to pay careful attention to stacking as they execute each move.
Nice Features
The game comes with six different scenarios. In the scenario details there more player notes than you would expect. There is also an extended example of play at the back of the rule-book.
Bad Features
As is the case with many of Vance von Borries games, deploying units at the start of the game is tiresome and fiddly – I guess this is part of the price you pay for an accurate and well-researched order of battle. Given the large amount of numbers on each counter, larger counters would have been easier to read, although the printing is particularly clear, just small.
Playing the Game
As you would expect in the game it is a war of mobility, despite many of the terrain features restricting mobility. The Allies, although outgunned initially, has the choice of using its mobility to fight a withdrawl action and make use of the many choke points (passes) on the map or to try to achieve local superiority in a particular area.
Once you have set-up a scenario the system moves along quickly. It is a game which nicely reflects two very different armies in a most uneven situation. In most scenarios the Axis can almost certainly take control of just about any part of the map that they wish to. The problem for them is two-fold – how many parts of the map should they take control of and can they hold them against the allied counter-attacks that will come with time.
Last edited on 2009-10-26 15:34:28 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Mon Oct 26, 2009 1:11 am
