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When Books Inspire PG Play
I am approching half-way through Alan Moorhead's trilogy "The Desert War".
This was written and published during the war itself. Moorhead was a reporter and followed Britain's Mediterranean and desert exploits all over the place. I believe the third part of the book goes to Tunisia as well but I have not got that far yet.
Its a good book and I have enjoyed the writing style. I will give one word of caution on it though. Some of the results of battles and casualties need to be taken with a secondary look at other sources. Because it was written during the War, the casualty counts are extremely pro-Allied and do not hold up to scrutiny. That is not Moorhead writing a tissue of lies, but merely him repeating official numbers reported at the time. A good example is Crete, where it claims a 1000 German aircraft and 20,000 German casualties compared to 7,000 Allied casualties. In reality, those numbers for troops casualties are practically reversed.
Anyway, point is this. I have read through the section of the book dealing with Wavell's command in North Africa. This covers the initial Italian advance, Bardia, Agheila, Beda Fomm and 2 x Tobruck. These fit perfectly with the first campaign in PG's Campaign and Commanders "The Kings Officers". A 9 scenario campaign.
Brett (nebelwerfer) and I are therefore going to play through it. We are not going to do the individual officers promotions, but just play through the battles. these will be won and lost individually based on the VP's in each game, and then totalled at the end to see if there is an overall winner.
I was thinking that a 30% margin in points per scenario for a minor victory and 50% margin for major victory. I think this is going to be fun as our first game has the Italians quite aimlessly advancing into Egypt followed by a couple of tough 'Digger' scenarios as the Aussies get nasty. Look out for the reports.
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