Operation Walkurie

 Tim brought out this game from Command and Strategy magazine, designed by Roberto Morraglia. It covers 'Operation Walkurie', the plot to assassinate Hitler. It is designed as a solo game but we played it as a cooperative team game. The aim is to assassinate Hitler and take over the German government to negotiate peace and end the war.

The board is pretty abstract! Hitler is in the middle in the Wolfs Lair, and there are four tracks leading in, starting in Hanover, Munich, the Baltic and Ukraine. The track at the bottom records spaces raided by the Gestapo. 

The plotters are represented by individual personality cards (Rommel, Fromm, Canaris, Stauffenberg etc) with various personal characteristics. To assassinate Hitler you need to have plotters close to Hitlers square, but to take over the government, you need to have plotters ready to move to Berlin, so far away from the Wolfs Lair. The Gestapo randomly raid various squares, and if Hitler becomes paranoid, the rate of raids doubles.

The gang of assembled reprobates can be vaguely seen at the top of the screen, and the first three plotters are on. They enter in the extreme ends of each track. We avoided stacking to reduce Hitlers suspicions (Hitler becomes suspicious by rolling against the number of plotters in a square). 

More plotters turn up, and begin moving towards Hitler. They are moving in columns as plotters 'in support' count towards the assassination attempt. 

More plotters. Unfortunately Hitler is now paranoid so the Gestapo is very busy. Three of the plotters are suspected now (you can just see the cards flipped to their 'suspected' sides). If they get suspected again, they will be executed.

We've lost a few plotters by now, but this is as good as it it is going to get. Seven plotters lined up adjacent or in support.

Agh! the Gestapo blow great holes in the chains, that is one of the risks of spreading out. We only have five plotters in range now, but manage to roll a 5 on 2D6, which is just enough to assassinate Hitler. Hurrah!

Sadly, we haven't got any people near the exit boxes and fail to get anyone off at all, so Himmler takes over the government and the war progresses. You have to roll 1D6 for each unsuspected plotter for the number of boxes they can move to Berlin, minus various individual values (typically 2 to 4), so it is quite hard to get people off unless they are near the exit boxes.

It is quick enough to play again....

On the second run through we got to this position.

After a few turns of more savvy manouvering we managed to get all 11 plotters in a position to aid in the assassination of Hitler, and although some are suspected, none has been executed. This gives the best possible odds of killing Hitler (roll 11 or less on 2D6).

The assassination duly succeeded but then we managed to completely fluff our 'Nach Berlin' rolls, and only two plotters to Berlin. You need three to create a major uprising and shorten the war, and no less then seven to actually take the government over and end the war immediately. Tim said the best he had ever managed was three, and I can't begin to think how you'd get seven off them off, unless you go for a low odds attack on Hitler.

A very clever game with a lot going on under a simple surface, and a range of strategies to try. It is a model which would work for gaming any kind of coup, and the choices between where and how to deploy with plotters while maximising your chances of success and minimising the impact of the security forces are very interesting. One approach we didn't try was stacking, which is a high risk/high reward approach - it makes it less likely any group of plotters will be raided by the Gestapo, but if they do get hit, the potential loss is higher. Given the abject failure of our 'spreading out' tactic, it is probably worth giving stacking a go.