@CWO:
A wargame which takes seven time longer to play, in practical terms, than the duration of the actual military campaign it depicts strikes me as being somewhat excessive, or at least as being a little too ambitious.
This game has details for every aspect… The Italian troops in World War II were outfitted with noodle rations, and in the name of historical dogma, the player responsible for the Italians is required to distribute an extra water ration to their forces, so that their pasta may be boiled. Soldiers that do not receive their pasta point may immediately become disorganized, rendering them useless in the field. It’s a fact of life really: if the Italians can’t boil their pasta, the Italians may desert.
It was a joke, by the way. Richard Berg, the game designer and author of The Campaign For North Africa, said so himself. He’ll happily admit that this was an unreasonable game for unreasonable people.
Every military division has a sheet of paper, and on it you’ve got a box for every battalion. It’ll tell you how many guns you have, but more interestingly, it’ll also list the fuel and water. Every game turn, three percent of the fuel evaporates, unless you’re the British before a certain date, because they used 50-gallon drums instead of jerry cans. So instead, seven percent of their fuel evaporates. Every F’ing turn you go around and make a pencil note of how much fuel you have. The pasta rule is funny, but this is what the game is about. Just doing tedious calculations all the time.
