Shrapnel Games Blog

Blackshirt: The Italian Invasion of Egypt, 1940 (BSO)

(Note: While the official homepage of BSO games, the site is rather behind and does not even include this title. Worse, it’s a Tripod site. You’d sorta think Richard Berg would have a better site. Anyway, onto the review!)

Blackshirt: The Italian Invasion of Egypt 1940 is the latest WWII game from Richard Berg’s BSO line of DTP wargames, following on the heels of his Sicily invasion title, Bitter Victory (and yes, Avalanche Press also has a game called Bitter Victory). Both Blackshirt and Bitter Victory share general mechanics, and so players of one game will be able to easily pick up the other game, and vice-versa.

This is a two player game (one player the Italians, the other the British and her allies) covering the period from the initial invasion of Egypt by Italian forces, to their historical rout by Commonwealth forces in February 1941.

The Italian player has a tough task ahead of him, softened slightly by the victory conditions. If the Italian player is able to have at least one in-supply unit within Egyptian borders by the last turn of the game he wins. He can also win at any point by occupying Mersa Matruh with an in-supply unit, though this is a rare situation. The Commonwealth can achieve an instant victory at any point by capturing Tobruk and Bardia (and he doesn’t even have to keep the occupying forces in supply). He also wins an instant victory if he can put all the Italian units out of supply during a turn.

There are eleven turns in Blackshirt, with each turn representing two weeks. A hex covers 8.5 miles, and units represent battalions to divisions, with both single step and double step counters.

BSO games tend to fall on the high end of the DTP scale, both in terms of production and cost, and Blackshirt is no different. For your money you get a single sheet of counters that need to be mounted, six pages of rules, two cardstock sheets of cards to be cut out, and one 11”x17” single sheet map.

Blackshirt’s map, by Pascal Da Silva, is a thing of beauty. It easily stacks up against any “professional” game map, and towers over the typical DTP map. Da Silva also did the map for Bitter Victory, which is another excellent map, and far more impressive than the Avalanche Press map on the same subject. The only issue with the map is the choice of the area depicted.

On the western side of the map the southernmost village is El Grein, seventeen hexes from Tobruk, which occupies the very northwesternmost hex. The southeastern side is barren desert. Due to very strict Italian supply rules the chances of any Italian unit operating in the southern half of the map is practically nil. The Commonwealth have slightly looser supply rules, and could potentially use portions of the southern map to advance beneath the Italians, but probably won’t. In a typical game most of the action takes place along the coastal highway between Solium and Sidi Barrani, not in the south. As such, it probably would have been better to alter the scale and concentrate the map on the north half, rather than encompassing the area portrayed.

The counters unfortunately don’t live up to the same high standards as the map. Purely functional, they are simply NATO icons with combat and movement points on them. Granted, sometimes counters can get a little too busy, so for most folks the counters will probably be just fine but personally I wouldn’t mind seeing some tank silhouettes at least.

The cards are nice though. Each side gets ten cards to use during play, allowing players to modify situations. Unlike the cards in Bitter Victory these are in color, at the expense of someone forgetting to include cut lines, so be careful when slicing them up.

While Richard Berg is known for cumbersome mechanics, Blackshirt plays pretty straightforward, and can make a good introductory wargame to entice new gamers into the world of wargamers. Of course, if you want them to keep playing wargames you probably don’t want to stick them with the Italians. With lots of subpar units (like oh, an entire army of them) the morale of the Italian player will be tested throughout the game. Unfortunately, there’s no bordello counter to help out.

The sequence of play goes as follows:

1. Initiative Determination. High roll goes first, automatic Italian initiative on the first turn.
2. First Player Resource Phase. The player pulls a random resource counter from his pool.
3. First Player Activation Phase. Player checks his supply, moves and attacks, removes interdiction markers, discards cards.
4. Player two than repeats steps two and three for his side.

For both players the resource phase is by far the most important phase of the turn. The amount of resources gained will often decide the tempo of the turn, and forces a number of decisions on the players.

Resources are gained through a pool of six counters. Each side has their own counter pool, and are radically different. The Commonwealth player has one counter worth 4 resource points (RP), four that are worth 3 RP, and one worth 2 RP. The Italian player has one 3 RP counter, three 2 RP counters, and two counters worth 1 RP. Each turn one counter is pulled from the pool and the side gains that number of RPs in the turn. RPs can be spent immediately, or accumulated turn to turn.

With a single RP players can do the following: bring in one reinforcement, restore a reduced unit to full strength, build a fortification, or draw a card. So, do you add to your force pool, refit your broken units, or draw some cards? Or maybe save your points for a rainy day?

The Commonwealth player, averaging more RPs a turn than the Italian player, can be more liberal with his application of points. For the Italian player, final victory often means carefully considering the use of each and every RP. Is it more important to keep the units on the front lines functioning at peak efficiency, or should you bring in more units in an attempt to overwhelm the Commonwealth? Or, should you invest in cards, which can truly sway a battle?

Cards are a constant siren song for the Italian player. As mentioned previously, each side has a deck of ten cards. The cards are reshuffled at the end of every turn, and a player may only hold two of them at a time. The cards available to each side are similar, but not exact, such as the Commonwealth have more air support cards than the Italians, but the Italians have more artillery cards.

The proper card at the right time can really save one’s bacon. For example, the air support card works in two ways. The first, it interdicts a road and prevents supply from being traced on it, which can cause great grief to the Italians.

For an unit to be in supply it must be within eight movement points of a primary road and that road must trace back to a supply source, and also the road must be free from enemy ZOCs. Supply can also be traced to within eight movement points of a supply source, which for the Italians means Tobruk and Bardia, while the Commonwealth player’s supply sources are any controlled city , or the road hex beneath Mersa Matruh. Because the Italian player is restricted to two city supply sources their operational limits are entirely dependent on the coastal highway. Cut the highway with an air support card and suddenly the Italian push comes to a screeching halt.

This leads to the second use of the air support card. An air support card can also cancel the effects of your opponent’s air support card. As the Italian player do you spend RPs trying to acquire the air support card to prevent the Commonwealth player from using his? And if you do have it, do you attempt to put his units out of supply, at the risk of having your card negated by the possibility of his use of air support?

After the decision to spend RPs is made the phasing player moves his units and makes his attacks. This is standard stuff, with motorized/tank units exerting a ZOC that halts movement of opposing forces. Combat takes place between adjacent units, and occurs last in the phase.

The combat procedure involves a bucket of dice technique. Real gamers love the feeling of slinging half a pound of plastic across the table, fondly remembering their days casting fireballs as a high level wizard in 1st edition D&D, so this is a welcome combat resolution method. The only downside is that since the Italians have a lot of units with low combat scores you really don’t end up throwing a lot of dice.

Every unit has a combat strength, and one six sided die is rolled for each point of its combat strength. Terrain and cards will reduce the number of dice in the pool. Units designated as “heavy weapons” (i.e. tanks) hit on “5” and “6”, while “small arms” hit only on “6”s. Some cards will alter the type of roll, such as the Commonwealth “Anti-Tank” card that changes all Italian heavy weapon dice into small arms dice.

The first hit will cause one unit to be reduced (player who scored the hit chooses which unit takes the hit), while hits above the first are distributed by the player being scored upon. These hits can be taken as damage, or as retreats. If negating a hit with a retreat the unit must retreat two hexes.

Since the combat system allows units to exchange hits for retreats, expect to see a lot of running to the hills. Much like the actual desert war, battles tend to see-saw across the map, as players attempt to preserve their best units. The Italians’ strongest unit is a 3 strength armor unit, and then a whole lot of 1 strength units. The Commonwealth player has a British 3 strength armor unit, a number of 1 strength units, but also plenty of 2 strength units.

It should also be noted that the Italians have more units that can only be used in defense (with a 0 strength on the offensive, 1 on the defensive) than the Commonwealth. Oh, and if that’s not bad enough, Italian units, which already have a worse movement factor than the Commonwealth forces, end up with an even worse movement rate when reduced. Ouch!

Yes, it’s tough being the Italian player. The key is to remember that all you need to win is to make sure you have one supplied unit inside Egypt on the last turn of the game. Sure, your army is probably annihilated by that time, and Rommel is on his way to clean up your mess, but a victory is a victory. It may not be glorious, but winning doesn’t have to be pretty.

The victory conditions is one aspect of Blackshirt that keeps it playable. As the Commonwealth player it seems like you have an easy path ahead. You have better units, more resources, and the ability to operate much freer than the Italians. But if you don’t keep an eye on the turn track all it takes is one Italian unit to win the game.

What truly makes the game playable, and definitely engaging, is the resource allocation. You’ll never have enough points to do everything, and so you must operate like a triage. Who can be saved, and who’s a hopeless cause? Are the points better spent refitting the units that took a beating in the last combat, or should your bring new units onto the map? Cards are always helpful, but are they helpful enough to spend points on that turn? Do you save up in preparation for a massive offensive, or use them all now?

Blackshirt is a good example of making a seemingly lopsided campaign playable, and even fun. With low unit density, and clear, concise mechanics, games can be completed pretty rapidly, allowing for multiple plays in a day. The number of decisions players will have to make also creates a high level of replayability, as multiple options are explored. The game even comes with solitaire rules.

All in all, Blackshirt is a good game on the war in North Africa. The fact that most games on the subject start off after the events portrayed in Blackshirt, also makes the game welcome. Fast, fun, and playable, there are worse ways to drop twenty bucks

Finnish War Movie

Looking at someone’s con pics in Finland I came across this album, which appears to be the making of a movie on the Continuation War’s battle of Tali-Ihantala. You’ll find some rather cool tank pics in the album.

Tried to dig up info on the movie, did see one forum post from I think ‘04 saying it was supposed to be released in ‘07. Anyone from Finland know the status of it?