The Italian Invasion of Greece, 1940
Articles: "The Battle of
Yelnia”; “The Churchill Conspiracy”; and “Okinawa.” The
wargame featured in that issue was Richard H. Berg’s Greek
Tragedy (GT), which covers Mussolini’s ill-fated invasion of that
country late in 1940. The game is, at least for the Italians, a
logistics nightmare. Most of what that player does will be concerned
with simply getting his available resources to Albania and Greece – and
that includes keeping his units in viable shape – and fighting the
machinations of Il Duce and his ill-chosen subordinates.
For both players, GT is a game
dominated by terrain and weather. Mussolini chose to attack in
mid-autumn in a country noted for bad weather and rough terrain. Until
the chosen day, the weather was fine and clear. On the morning of the
invasion, about an hour before the Italian army moved out, all across
the Albanian border it started to pour. It was downhill from that
moment.
There are two scenarios: the “Gamers’
Game,” and the “Historians’ Game.” The latter allows players to see
what happened, and why, and is intended for solitaire play. The former
is an Italian pipe dream, a best-case scenario for them, but one that
also allows for competitive balance between two players while showing
what could’ve happened had there been better planning and more strategic
insight in Rome.
There are 13,007 words in the rules. That
means two experienced players can complete a game in about five hours.
The game was designed with two-player play primarily in mind, but
solitaire play is doable.
The
scale on the 34x22” map is 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) per large hex.
Each turn covers one month. Units of maneuver range from battalions all
the way up to divisions. Each combat strength point is the equivalent of
1,500 men. Each Air unit represents about 20 planes. There are 280
small-size, NATO-style units in the counter-mix, along with the
errata-fix counters for issue number one’s Barbarossa game.
The sequence of play outline is presented below.
A. Initiative Determination Phase
1. Roll die
to see who goes first.
2. Check
weather.
B. Resource Phase
1. Players
determine how many resource points they want to use.
2. Roll for
available air support in rain or snow.
3. Place
arriving reinforcements.
4. Make
Italian corps assignments.
C. Marker Selection
Phase
1.
Initiative player chooses which command will start.
2. Place all
remaining activation and random event markers in the pool.
D. Activation Phase
1. Draw
activation marker from pool.
2. Activate
units for that marker (within port capacity for Italians)
3.
Operations Sequence
a. Units move.
b. Units engage in combat.
c. Units engage in construction.
d. Refit, which is repeated until there are no markers left in the pool. Then go to:
E. Isolation Phase
1. Apply
effects of isolation.
2. Determine
changes in isolation status.
F. End Turn Phase
1. Remove
air interdiction markers.
2. Proceed
to next turn and top of sequence
