Shrapnel Games Blog

Welcome to the first installment of Army Group Kitchen Table. Army Group Kitchen Table will be a critical look at small press wargames, quality out-of-print titles, and the occasional mainstream title. The idea is to give blog readers some more content and do so by spreading the indy love, but focusing on the world of cardboard.

Operation Weserübung: The Invasion of Norway (Grenier Games)

The Second World War was a vast conflict that saw combat in all forms around the globe, yet in the world of wargames certain battles seem to dominate the market. In an era that marks unprecedented levels of consumer control (after all, is it not the purchaser who tells the publishers what to release thanks to the various pledge systems?) many interesting battles and campaigns tend to fall by the wayside. If then consumers control what gets published one could argue that these battles must not be that interesting, but my personal belief is simply that events such as Normandy, Kursk, and North Africa are the equivalent of comfort food to most gamers. Hitting White Castle you know what to expect; hitting that new Serbian restaurant may provide you with an exotic new taste, but at the cost of venturing into the unknown. Many folks fear the unknown.

Thankfully there are legions of small-press and DTP (desktop published) publishers that have sprung up in the past decade to give wargamers a taste of battle outside the norm, or at least a different way to play. Grenier Games’ latest title, Operation Weserübung: The Invasion of Norway (henceforth referred to simply as OW), does both.

The German invasion of Norway in April 1940 has been gamed before, yet when compared to the towering stack of games based on another combined amphibious operation, D-Day, OW is a campaign that hasn’t seen much play. That’s a shame, because the Norway invasion is full of drama. A surprised, ill-prepared nation with a traitor in their midst. A seemingly unstoppable juggernaut attacking by sea and air. The rush by the Allied forces to try and stem the German war machine, only to fail by committing too few, and pulling out far too soon (sound familiar?).

From a gamer’s perspective it has plenty of excitement. Naval duels, airborne assaults, desperate defenses, rugged terrain, and an underdog to root for. It’s great subject matter for a wargame.

OW is a semi-pro DTP produced wargame, meaning that instead of being turned out at someone’s home office it was probably created at the local Kinko’s. In essence, production is a step up from your typical DTP title, but for someone who has never experienced what small press means to game publishing it may still be somewhat of a shock.

The manual is spiral-bound in plastic, and save for the cover, is black and white with no artwork or diagrams. Counter explanation, reinforcement listings, and purchase costs are found on a single player’s aid card. The counters are mounted, but are not die-cut, and due to how they are mounted could not be die-cut. They are simply thin sheets of cardboard, thinner than the back of a notepad, with the labels already affixed. While it is nice to see a DTP game have mounted counters, a couple of factors make the counters somewhat irritating.

To begin, the aforementioned thin cardboard, which makes picking up single counters quite difficult. There is also the issue that units have two steps, but instead of printing two-sided counters you are forced to rotate a counter 180 degrees to show step depletion. If you’re going to the trouble of sticking counters to cardboard why not do it twice? In play, especially when dealing with gamers who fail their dexterity check, it is far too easy to screw up the orientation of the counters. Additionally, many gamers are used to rotating counters to show that they’ve already used them in a phase. Can’t do that here, although Grenier Games does include several “used” counters for this purpose.

Mini-rant aside, the counters do at least look nice. Land units use NATO icons and their national flag. Air units have the aircraft type as an illustration, and naval units have a silhouette of their vessel.

The map depicts Norway and the surrounding sea, with holding boxes for Denmark and Great Britain. The map is clean and kept simple. Terrain is either clear or mountainous. Rivers, lakes, towns, ports, airfields, and rail lines are also featured.

The map itself comes in three overlapping pieces, and this leads to another gripe. Upon first opening the box (essentially a shipping box, the game could have easily come in ziploc form) the map sheets are rolled because they cannot fit in the box if folded. The sheets need to be trimmed and then folded, but the problem is paper has excellent memory, meaning that even after a couple of days of burying them beneath a stack of books, the maps still refuse to lie entirely flat. The maps are also on rather thin paper, making me nervous about creasing them too much, as it seems they would be prone to tear.

So the components are a mixed bag. The counters are visually nice, the map looks good and is functional, but the actual physical elements of the two could have been better. Normally in a DTP game you can shrug it off because they’re much, much cheaper than your typical mainstream published wargame, but OW sells for much higher, almost normal retail. Ten dollars cheaper and this wouldn’t be an issue, but at the current price point gamers need to know what they’re getting.

While the quality of components do figure into a gamer’s view of a game, it is ultimately the gameplay itself that matters, and here OW rises to the challenge. This is a game that provides players with constant choices, rewards long-term planning, and is constantly exciting and fast moving. There is a slight learning curve, created not by the gameplay itself but the somewhat muddy manual. At its heart OW is a rather straightforward game, but due to several spots of poor word choices in the manual, a gamer won’t discover that until playing through a couple of turns.

OW’s turns represent four days, with the game beginning on April 9th through 12th, 1940 and possibly proceeding to June 30th. The Germans win a decisive victory by forcing Norway to surrender by the June 8th through 11th turn. After that date period Norwegian surrender results in a draw, and if they can hold out until the last turn and the Allies have not lost more than five capital ships, it is an Allied victory.

Units are regiments (land units), individual ships (capital vessels), groups of ships (smaller ships, such as destroyer squadrons), air groups (several squadrons), or individual leaders. Each hex represents twenty to twenty-five kilometers. The game can be played by two to three players.

A turn involves a mixture of air, naval, and ground phases, with plenty of player interaction involved in each phase. The turn structure goes as follows:

1. Offensive Phase
2. Air Phase (Air Combat Movement, Air Interception, Air Combat, Air Movement)
3. Naval Phase (Naval Combat Movement, Naval Interception, Naval-Air Interception, Naval Combat, Naval Movement)
4. Combat Phase (Land Offensives, Air Attacks, Amphibious Assault, Airborne Offensives)
5. Movement Phase
6. Placement Phase
7. End Phase

In the first phase of the turn, the Offensive Phase, players purchase offensives for the coming turn. An offensive is any form of combat involving ground forces, even if it’s capturing an unoccupied enemy city. Whoever purchases the most offensives wins initiative for the turn, and doing so dictates the flow of the turn, deciding who goes first in each phase.

An offensive is purchased using National Morale points. Every belligerent in the game has a National Morale level. Norway, being the nation with the most to lose, has 50. Germany has 30 (Note: This was left out of the manual but a quick e-mail to the designer solved the problem. It should be appearing as errata on his website soon.), while the combined forces of Britain and France have 20.

Offensives cost one National Morale point. Additionally, repairing ships and aircraft, strengthening depleted ground forces, and rebuilding destroyed ground forces also cost National Morale points. Keeping too many ships out at sea will also impact your points.

Only Norway and Germany can alter their nation’s morale levels. Every Norwegian city has a point value, and once lost it is subtracted from Norway’s points and added to Germany’s.

Having to plan offensives at the beginning of the turn makes for some interesting decisions, as any unspent offensives are wasted points. While it is tempting to burn up a lot of points to launch a massive number of attacks that may leave the player with too few points at the end of the turn to strengthen damaged units or rebuild those destroyed.

The system does take some time to wrap your head around since most players are used to being able to make as many attacks as possible in a given turn. With this system, every ground attack must be planned from the beginning of the turn. This also has the interesting effect of making one turn’s movement very important for the next turn, as one must really think ahead and set up future attacks.

Once offensives are purchased the side who purchased the most hold initiative. In the air and naval phases this allows the player to choose who acts first. During the combat phase the initiative holder attacks first, but it then alternates between sides until all offensives are spent.

During the Air Phase air units move to attack enemy units, while the defending player may get a chance to intercept if the attacking air units pass within a few hexes. As long as the air unit survives any interception attempts it can then attack its target, unless it was a naval unit at sea. The ocean is a big place, and so air units must first locate their target. While there is a high probability of doing that, there is that chance they will be forced to return home with bomb bays still full.

All units in the game have a set number of actions they may perform. Air units have the most, being allowed to act in two phases in a turn, while all other units are only allowed one action a turn. Because of this it is not simply a matter of throwing every aircraft into battle in the phase. Interceptions must be carefully considered, as that means any squadron intercepting cannot be used again until a later phase.

In the game, and in history, the Germans are easily able to dominate the air. The British have a handful of available aircraft, and those available are hardly a match for the Luftwaffe. The Norwegians have it worse, defending their nation with one unit of Gloster Gladiators and one unit of really crappy Italian bombers. The Germans bring ME-109s and 110s, HE-111s, and Stukas to the party. Early in the game the range of German aircraft can be a thorn in their side, but capturing airfields early on allows rapid air superiority over the battlefield.

The Naval Phase is a lot like the Air Phase, only with ships. Ships move across the map and can be intercepted by other ships or air units. Combat on the high seas is not guaranteed, as once contact has been made the defending force gets a chance to evade. Since a naval unit gets only one action per turn there can be nothing more frustrating than moving to what should be a decisive battle only to have the enemy give your forces the slip. Interestingly, ships in port cannot be attacked by other ships, making the battle of Narvik an impossibility.

After the Naval Phase comes the main event, the Combat Phase. During this phase players alternate making land attacks, until all possible purchased offensives have been spent. It should be noted that combat is not handled in a manner most folks will expect. In fact, the combat system in OW may be seen by some as somewhat controversial.

Instead of an odds based CRT the game uses a roll to-hit mechanic mostly seen in naval and space games. Our upcoming Eat Electric Death! boardgame, designed by Digital Eel based on their Weird Worlds computer game, uses the same system.

During combat players roll a single d10 for each combatant, scoring a hit for each die roll that is lower than the unit’s combat rating. For example, a typical infantry regiment has an attack rating of 3 and a defense rating of 4, so when attacking the player would be looking for a 1-3 on a d10, and when defending a 1-4. Combat takes place simultaneously, and hits scored on a side are distributed by the owner, unless a 1 is rolled. Each 1 rolled allows a player to specify which enemy unit receives the hit. All units have two steps.

There are a handful of die-roll modifiers. Attacking across a river incurs a penalty for attackers, while defending in a mountain helps a defending unit. Generals also provide a bonus of one point to as many units stacked with them as their rating. The best general in the game is actually a Colonel, Otto Ruge of the Norwegian Army, who has a rating of 3. Most generals have a rating of 1.

So, a German regiment attacking a British regiment in the clear hits 30% of the time. A German regiment attacking a British regiment in the mountains hits 30% of the time (the defender gets a boost, but there is no effect on the attackers to-hit). A German regiment attacking a British regiment in a city, on the first Monday of the month, while eating a block of cheese the size of a human head, hits 30% of the time. You get the idea.

The system makes for quick combat resolution, and since damage and retreats are handled by the players themselves, makes for some interesting decisions. If a to-hit system is an anathema to you turning the system into an odds based system, or perhaps even a bucket o’ dice system, may work. Really though the mechanics work just fine, and most importantly battles still feel right.

Another possible controversial mechanic is the lack of supply lines. All units, unless completely surrounded, are always in supply. Since the ability to purchase combat offensives represents both the will of a nation to fight and the ability to sustain the fight, the lack of specific supply rules works out just fine. Like the combat system, after a couple of turns you won’t even miss supply line rules.

Once combat has been fought phase five, the Movement Phase, occurs. In this phase all land and air units that have not used up their actions may move. Since combat offensives count as an action this means only units that did not participate in phase four offensives may move.

This is another concept of OW that takes some getting used to after decades of game systems that use a move/fight/mech move system. All combat, whether it is air, naval, or ground (or any combination), uses a move to contact system. Combat takes place in the target hex, not in adjacent hexes like most games (although artillery support does reach adjacent hexes). So in phase four, the Combat Phase, you both move your units and attack with any unit that moved.

The final phases allow players to rebuild lost units, replenish damaged ones, and place reinforcements or units constructed from the previous turn. Too many ships out at sea during this phase will also have an impact on your National Morale usage, and if you go over the limit your naval forces automatically suffer losses. This keeps the British in check, balancing out their use of sea power.

As mentioned previously, OW suffers from a manual that will raise a number of questions, often due to either unclear presentations or poor wording. For example, under what a general provides the manual states:

The first is to add strength points to land units in the same hex as the General. Generals increase the attack or defense strength of as many friendly units sharing a hex with it as the strength of the General.

The manual then provides an example of a two-point General providing a bonus to two units by one point each. Since it is never explicitly stated that a leader only increases a combat factor by one point it leads to the question could the two-point leader apply both points to one unit instead? One e-mail to the designer and the answer is no, but without asking him directly a player would be left guessing.

Another example of poor word choice occurs when rail movement is discussed. Rail lines are friendly unless an enemy unit or an enemy unit’s zone of control encompasses any part of the rail line.

While that may seem rather straight forward the issue is the use of the phrase “zone of control”. ZOCs are Wargaming 101, so any veteran gamer knows immediately what one is. The problem is that this is the first, and only, time that ZOCs are mentioned, leading one to wonder if they missed the part of ZOCs earlier in the manual. You didn’t, there are no ZOCs. Except for figuring out rail movement. It would have been better if the designer just said enemy units adjacent to rail lines block rail movement.

Playing through a turn will answer most questions, so the best advice is to glance through the manual and then dive into the game. This is not the worst manual on the market, but one that definitely could have used a couple more sets of eyes on it before release.

Operation Weserübung: The Invasion of Norway, although not without blemishes, is a very engaging game, full of challenges. Throughout a turn players are constantly having to make decisions, and while some paths are better than others, there are vast numbers of strategic possibilities that need to be made. The British have mutually exclusive goals. They must figure out the best way to use their naval assets, but at the same time keep them out of harm’s way. The Germans will normally dictate the ebb and flow of the game, and like chess, the opening move will impact the rest of the campaign. Do the Germans try the historical invasion routes, or something more daring? The Norwegians are left to react to the Germans, but how they react will determine if their nation holds out or collapses.

The game is also ripe with tactical decision making. Which fleet do your intercept? Do you risk sending outdated fighters up to intercept a raid, or hold them back for supporting ground offensives? Which battles will your leaders have the most impact on? Do you battle to the death or withdraw to nurse your wounds?

This also helps make every game unique. Unfortunately there is only one scenario, the full campaign, and except for three optional German units, no what-if options. Normally this would lead to a case of been there/done that after a few plays, but thanks to the dynamic nature of Operation Weserübung, repeated plays are just as exciting as the first. And like any good game, players will want to come back and try out a fresh strategy they concocted in between sessions.

Fans of invasion scenarios would definitely do right by picking up a copy of Operation Weserübung, as would any gamer looking for a dynamic system that can be played in a day (expect to take it slower initially).

That wraps up our first installment, hopefully you enjoyed it! Next time we take a look at Richard Berg’s Blackshirt. Stay tuned!

-Scott