One Page Bulge

 Regular readers may recall that I was frustrated by apparently losing my original copy of Steve Jacksons 'One Page Bulge'. I tracked down a replacement copy on ebay, and having got it, I thought I may as well give it a play. The original will no doubt turn up now, presumably tucked inside an old copy of the AHGC General or something. 

This is all very familiar, although I last played this over 30 years ago. The map is a pretty decent representation of the battlefield, the Meuse is that long river running across the northwest corner. There is a well represented road net, one wrinkle being that mechanised units can only enter or leave the numerous areas of 'rough ground' via roads, coupled with the many rivers, it severely limits movement and combat options in some areas. The rivers aren't impassable but impose a significant movement penalty unless at a bridge. 

All set up for turn 1 (the turns are days) and pleasantly surprised to find all the counters are there. The seller had even provided a custom turn marker (which isn't provided in the base game, I used to use a coin) ! The Germans are a coiled fist ready to strike west, while the US has a rather gappy centre but Elsenborn Ridge in the north  and the south around Diekirch are strongly held. Sorry, it is hard to see the white Allied counters on the map. 

The units (regiment sized or equivalent) all have designated setup areas marked on the map, sadly they don't have individual unit IDs and are very generic indeed. All infantry have a combat strength of four, while the armour is a bit more varied. Mech infantry are four (Allied) or five (German) and armour is eight (Allied) or nine (German) and the Germans have two 10 factor units which apparently represent 1st and 12th SS Panzer Regiments. The Allied units are all significantly more mobile, representing their greater provision of transport and fuel. The Allied infantry are faster than the panzer units!

One of the reasons for the generic units is the reinforcement track, there are more Allied reinforcements than counters, so you are supposed to use counters from the dead pile. It is a play balance mechanism, as if the Germans haven't destroyed enough units, the Allies wont get extra reinforcements. Clever.

The CRT is quite eccentric. Terrain gives minuses to the dice (towns and rough ground -2, rivers -1), which is a very powerful effect, far more so than column shifts or doubling, although 7:1 odds is an automatic victory. Combat is mandatory unless across a river or out of a town, and while units can soak off, entire stacks must be attacked, so it encourages stacking rather than distribution. The CRT also includes 'no effect' results, and if a unit is unable to retreat due to ZOC, the attack is re-rolled with DR treated as DE, while exchanges are on a unit not CF basis. These sorts of things all favour the defender and make attacking quite frustrating.

After turn 1, 5th Panzer Army has gained a foothold over the river in the centre, 7th Army has locked down the south but is too weak for major offensive action but 6th SS Panzer Army have had great success and largely cleared Elsenborn Ridge and Camp Elsenborn. St Vith held out though as the Germans couldnt bring enough force to bear. 

The Allies get 1-6 Air power points power turn (representing variability in the weather), and even just one point can be enough to shift the odds of an attack down as it is applied after the Germans declare their attack. It was air which saved St Vith.

I'm not being overly precious about min maxing the SP of the various attacks, as far as possible I'm stacking up units in divisions and fighting with those, although I am more careful with the allocation of regiments in contact to specific combats. The road net and terrain preclude fancy manouvering anyway.

The red counter behind Elsenborn is the US blowing up a fuel dump. The victory conditions are harsh and require large German forces to cross the Meuse for even a marginal victory, and my recollection is that is almost impossible to achieve. One optional rule is to use various supply depots marked on the map. These are worth varying amounts of VPs and may be captured outright, blown up or evacuated. The Germans get half VP for demolished ones but none for evacuated ones, although it is very hard to evacuate larger dumps due to the time (measured in movement points) required. 

Behind the demolished dump is a large fuel depot northwest of Malmedy, if the Germans capture it intact, it will give them a movement bonus. It is worth 10VP and would require US units to spend 10 MP to demolish it (or 30 MP to evacuate it).

Day 2. St Vith falls and 2nd Panzer Div makes good progress towards Bastogne. 7th Army grinds slowly forward, reinforced with 15th (?) Panzergrenadier Division. In the far north the US dont quite have enough units to demolish the 1st Army fuel depot, and instead the survivors from St Vith focus on shutting down the road routes west as it really isn't far to Liege from there.

In the centre, the US defence has now become a screen to impede German road movement, but it has taken the Germans too long to get across the rivers, and US reinforcements are well on the way to Bastogne now.

A big turn for the Germans in the north and centre. Volksgrenadiers capture the 1st Army fuel depot giving the Germans a short lived move bonus. 1st and 12th SS Panzer are halted at Trois Ponts and Vielsalm however, the US defences were just strong enough to hold them as the German infantry is lagging behind.

Panzer Lehr pushes back 9th Armored Div in front of Bastogne and 2nd Panzer starts to bypass from the north, also pushing back an armoured Combat Command. 5th Panzer Army isnt going to get to Bastogne first though.

Two more panzer divisions arrive from reserve (I guess these are 9th and 10th SS?), I assign one to each panzer army.

The US decide it is time to cut and run rather than fighting in the open. Bastogne is strongly garrisoned while units in the south fall back to key road junctions. Other units fall back behind the river northwest of Bastogne, blowing fuel dumps as they go.

The real US problem is in the north where they are very thin on the ground, however in the nick of time a fresh infantry division (3 x 4-7 units) arrives and added to the remaining US mechanised units, locks down the roads through the rough ground west of Trois Ponts.

The Germans have two potential road routes to the northwest though, both north of Bastogne. The Germans have to stay within three hexes of a road to remain supplied, so the road net is crucial.

Another important turn. 7th Army continues to grind forward slowly in the south. 6th SS Panzer Army makes contact in the north but isn't strong enough to do more than push one US stack back. They are now thoroughly enmeshed in the horrible terrain up here. It may look there is a big gap opened up, but until the SS can clear the road junction in front of them, they cant move through the rough ground to exploit it.

In the centre, 2nd Panzer suffers a catastrophic defeat as it attempts a river assault. US airpower intervenes to dropthe odds to 1:1, and they they roll a 1. Attacker Eliminated! Ouch! Panzer Lehr doesnt like the look of Bastogne at all and bypasses to the north but naturally the rivers and lack of roads make this a slow job, although the fuel captured by 6th SS helps.

Fortunately 9th and 10th SS Panzer are now arriving at the front to bolster the attack.

German losses mount. So far I've managed to mainly take exchanges from German infantry who have kept up due to the generally slow progress. Most German infantry divisions only have two units, so that is four divsions gone. The tank casualties are from 2nd Panzer.

The Germans are  largely ignoring Bastogne now, instead focussing on setting up 7th Army to screen the south. This in turn allows the US to route reinforcements up to the centre, using their superior mobility and access to the roadnet.

In the centre and north however, the Germans score some successes now their infantry and the two extra panzer divisions have caught up. Panzer Lehr and 9th SS push forward in the centre, while 1st and 12th SS score big tactical victories in the north with (unplanned) 7:1 attacks which annihilate the US defenders and finally open up a route out of the awful terrain.

Large US reinforcements arrive from the north,  they don't have any option but to defend Liege (with a 20VP main supply dump!) and to attempt to limit progress down the roadnet by holding key junctions. There  is a big gap in the US line south of the Meuse, but fortunately no roads through it.

1st SS Panzer Div reaches the Meuse! They push the US defenders across it. The rest of 6th SS Panzer Army is struggled forwards, but they've even managed to keep two infantry divisions with them.

5th Panzer Army thinks about going for Celles and Dinant, but there are just enough US and British forces in the way to make that unattractive. They instead focus on moving parallel to 6th SS PA, and mass armour and infantry ready to advance northwest. The US focus on screening the route west as it will take two turns for 5th PA to reach the Meuse going north.

US forces cluster around Liege to limit the extent of any river crossings.

1st and 10th SS bludgeon their way across the Meuse, but 12th SS is repulsed from Liege.

Panzer Lehr and 9th SS approach the Meuse but strong Allied forces deny an easy crossing to the north west. The Germans start to worry about their ever extending southern flank as more US infantry arrive from the south, allowing US armor to concentrate.

5th Panzer Army closes on the Meuse but fails to cross. However a massed assault sees Liege fall to 6th SS Panzer Army, but not before the depot is demolished. All the available panzergrenadier regiments are assigned to support 7th Army protecting the southern flank, and a final panzer division (9th? 116th?) has been released too.

US and British armour is now advancing east along the northern bank of the Meuse to limit the size of the German bridgehead,

Allied counterattcks north of the Meuse push the Germans back but don't inflict many significant losses. The German front is looking quite solid, and has two supply routes leading back to Germany.

In the south more Allied armour concentrates around Bastogne. The German lines look quite sketchy here. The two critical points are the towns north of the 5-6 panzergrenadiers as they control 5th Panzer Army's supply route.

The Allied counter offensive breaks the German line north of Bastogne. The writing is on the wall as unless the Germans can get a blocking force in the way, the Allied armour can cut off the entire German armoured spearhead in one move  now.

The Allies counterattack north of the Meuse and compress the German bridgehead but again fail to inflict decisive losses.

And with the Germans firmly established around Liege, the game ends on 26th December. Even without the VP for the blown or captured fuel dumps, it is a decent German win, although with Allied armour pushing up from the south, it is likely to be quite short lived!

Well, I think that is the first time I've seen quite so much German armour over the Meuse, my memory is more of the Germans beating their heads against huge Allied stacks sitting in bad terrain. I'm probably a bit rusty on running the defence, but the Germans maintained a high enough rate of attrition that it was very difficult for the Allies to accumulate enough reserves for local force superiority. They barely had enough to maintain a line, and were constantly playing reactively, although the US could probably have been a bit more aggressive in the south once the main panzer spearheads had passed.

Anyway, that was a lot of a fun and I'm glad I played that again. It is a lot of game in a small space and manages to capture the essence of the campaign in a playable format. I'd originally intended to play it over an afternoon and a morning, but in the end it only took three hours including setup, so I got it down in one session. I'm not minded to try it again immediately, but I may revisit it at some point. It has got me thinking about playing some of my other old boardgames though, probably not Third Reich, but I do have some other fairly accessible games.