Description

Description from the designer:

Today I began full-on work on my next CounterFact magazine design, 1938: What If? which presumes the Czechoslovakians refused to accept the Munich Dictat. Longer story short: On or around 1 October, the Germans put "Operation Green" into effect and war starts. The sides are: the Czechoslovakians and Soviets vs. the Germans, Poles and Hungarians.

I believe my treatment is original here in that, unlike all the games I'm familiar with on this topic, I'm presenting an examination of the larger picture here. That is, rather than the map just covering Bohemia/Moravia and environs, this one shows (at 20 miles per hex) all of Czechoslovakia and Poland, along with the German, Hungarian, Romanian, Lithuanian and Soviet border lands thereunto appertaining.

The turns equal three days each, and the game has a maximum of 10 turns. Units of maneuver are two-step corps all around, except the Germans' 7th Flieger (proto)-division gets its own counter (and a likely suicide mission).

I'm using an adaptation of my "Zhukov's War" system (which doesn't mean anything to any of you yet, because that parent design itself hasn't yet appeared.

At the system's core, there are 10 chits, one for each maneuverable nationality's movement phase and another for each one's combat phase (the Lithuanians, if they get dragged in, just defend their capital; so there's no chit for them).

All but the two German chits go into a pool at the start of every turn. The two German chits are held out. The German player may interpose either of those chits at any time in the turn (together or separately, in either order), but otherwise the phase sequence is determined by blind draw (and, in this particular case, Turn 1 will always start with the German combat phase, thereby kicking off the overall war).

That system neatly shows the advantages of having the advantage in C3.