[Consim-l] Consim-l: Bloody Kasserine: a bit of explanation and response to Mircea

[John Best]

Mircea Pauca responded to my review of Bloody Kasserine:

>    Thanks for this detailed review and keeping the list alive!
> Is John Best not on Consim-L any more ?

Let me explain what happened with the Bloody Kasserine review.  I had first 
sent the review as a single large post, and Hjalmar, in his role as 
moderator of the list, sent me an email letting me know that the review was 
too big in its current format.  He also kindly forwarded it directly to 
Web-Grognards, which was its ultimate destination anyway.  I asked Hjalmar 
if I could break it down into two pieces, and he affirmed that the review 
should fit under the limits if I did that.  My computer showed the size of 
the file as 71 K, and I believe the maximum size for a post on Consim-L is 
40 K (I hadn't known about that).  I tried to break the post down into about 
two equal pieces, but I suspect that one of them may have still been too 
big.  If so, Hjalmar just went ahead and cut me a break and posted both 
peices to the list from his computer (Thanks Hjalmar!).   So the bottom 
line, yep, I'm still hanging out on Consim-L

> One thing that I wanted to ask the more collecting gamers
> along the evolution of wargaming - what elements of this
> Kasserine game led to the other series of van Borries that
> led to the great Barbarossa system ?

Great question.  Originally, my plan had been to review 3 Kasserine games: 
the old John Hill design (Kasserine Pass, 1970s), the GDW re-design (Bloody 
Kasserine, 1992) and finally ending up with the Vance Von Borries game, 
Decision at Kasserine (1980s, but I've only recently acquired it).  But I 
ran out of gas after reviewing the first two games, and I've moved on to 
some other games.  To be honest, I'm not really familiar with the Barbarossa 
series.  I do own Blitzkrieg in the South (a VVB design from 1993), which I 
set up one time and played for a few turns.  My notes on that indicate that 
it was a good game, and certainly looked impressive on set up.  But I can't 
comment on what the connection might be between the Battles for North Africa 
series that VVB designed in the 80s and the East Front series that appeared 
in the 90s.  I really think the BfNA series deserves a long article 
detailing its design philosophy and development.  This would be a good 
article for the Journal of Wargame Theory, which unfortunately does not 
exist except in my mind.


> And, on artillery ...
> [John Best]> "it's like each group has a battleship in tow"
>
> This clearly shows the concept of "shadow force" that many
> games can use - I posited it for War at Sea, also usable in
> Victory in the Pacific, Axis & Allies... essentially any in which
> a (part of a) force can choose its destination after the opponent.
> That force is like it would be multiplied to all places where it
> could apply - so not the raw "36" but the 36x typical multiplier
> should be considered as its contribution to Allied strength.
>
> The attacker's countermeasure is to make only one strong attack in each 
> whole area where such a shadow could operate.
> Then that multiplier becomes 1.
>
Nice analysis.  For those who might just be tuning in to this exchange, the 
reference to "36" refers to the differential between Allied and Axis 
artillery strength in Bloody Kasserine, and how that created a kind of 
"mobile reserve" that could be used by the Allies in the defensive part of 
their turn to create poor odds attacks by the Germans.  I like the 
countermeasure approach, which would involve the Axis mentally dividing up 
the entire front and calculating, based on the range of the artillery, how 
many extra strength factors could be brought to bear in each zone along the 
front.  Then the Axis would make only one powerful attack in each zone (so 
whether the Allies called in their artillery defensively or not, the attack 
would still be strong).  Whether or not the Axis could win the game that way 
is another question.  Thanks for responding Mircea, and to everyone else, 
thanks for reading.
John Best
jlbest at advancenet.net