Bonus AAR! Rommel Attacks, ’43 (part 1)
What does a 4-player throwdown look like in Gary Grigsby’s War in the West: Operation Torch? The gang at Matrix Games shows us ~
Matrix Games, 9 October 2015
This is an AAR of a 4 player game of the Rommel Attacks 43 scenario from Gary Grigsby’s War in the West: Operation Torch. Rommel Attacks is a short 5 turn scenario that covers the Axis counter-attack that led to the Battle of the Kasserine Pass. In the actual battle, after initial success, the Axis attack was halted and the German command withdraw some of the forces to focus on the British 8th Army arriving from Libya. In this scenario, the German forces are retained by the Axis player for the duration of the scenario, so the Axis side is expected to seize critical objectives and hold them.
Operation Torch allows each side to be split in two for true multiplayer play, with one player commanding the air forces and the other the ground forces. The players in this game, all from the Torch development team, were:
- Axis Air Commander – Randy Seger (scenario designer)
- Axis Ground Commander – John Young (scenario designer)
- Allied Air Commander – Erik Rutins (producer)
- Allied Ground Commander – Joel Billings (game developer)
This AAR will mix in comments from the different players. This was John’s first play through the scenario, while Joel had the advantage of having played an earlier version of the scenario as the German ground commander in a 4 player test game.
There are 7 territorial objectives in this scenario, with various victory points awarded, each turn and at the end of the game, for control of these objectives. In addition, victory points are awarded for causing casualties, but the bulk of the victory points in the scenario stem from control of the objectives.
