Blitzkrieg

Version 3.1.0. Great Blue against Big Red, and the five small countries between them.

How to begin

Choose a campaign, a ground and an opposing commander on the opening sheet, then press Open the campaign. You command Great Blue and move first.

Two grounds are offered. The printed mapboard is the same continent every war and is not even ground, so the Campaign Game carries a par of +7 to Great Blue and your result is read against it. A fresh continent is raised from the seed and turned 180 degrees about its middle hex, so both powers face mirrored ground and par is nil.

Controls

• Click a hex to select it. Click a hex ringed in cream to march there.
• Hover a hex to read the ground, the town and every formation standing on it.
• Drag to pan; wheel, + and - to zoom; 0 to fit the continent.
• Arrow keys pan. Enter ends the phase.
• #seed=1965 in the address opens a campaign you can send to somebody else.

Turn order

One power moves at a time, through three phases:

1. Movement. Requisition new formations, fly air missions, and march.
2. Combat. Declare attacks and throw the die.
3. Exploitation. Armour that broke through moves again and may attack once more at half weight.

Movement

Each formation has a movement allowance, printed third on its counter. Ground costs what the table says; a road or rail hexside costs 1 whatever the ground beneath it, and crossing a river costs 1 more. Entering a hex beside an enemy formation stops the march there, and no march may pass through such a hex.

No more than 2 land formations may stand on one hex, or 3 at sea.

Combat

Pick an enemy hex marked with a cross, choose which of your adjacent formations will make the attack, and read the odds: total attack factors against total defence factors, with the ground multiplying the defence. That ratio names a column; one die names the result.

• AE — Attacker eliminated
• AR — Attacker back two
• EX — Exchange
• CA — Contact
• DR — Defender back two
• DE — Defender eliminated

Attacking across a river is at 0.67 of weight; an assault from the sea at 0.5 unless it is marines. A capital defends itself with 9 factors of its own works whether a corps is standing there or not, so it must be stormed rather than walked into.

The order of battle

Supply and production

A formation must trace 7 hexes back to a city of its own, clear of enemy formations. One that cannot fights at half and dissolves after 3 turns. Towns pay production every turn: a capital 4, a major city 2, a minor town 1, and 1 more for a port. Bombers knock 2 off a city’s output.

The minor countries

Marching into a minor country brings its army and its cities in on the other side — 3 corps raised against you. Its ground is often the short way round somebody’s mountains, so it is a real decision rather than a prohibition.

• Vasska — The northern march, and the road round the desert.
• Corland — Open country under the Great Kolfax Desert.
• Ostmark — The middle ground, and the crossings that matter.
• Thelen — Farmland and forest on the southern road.
• Ambria — The southern coast, and the long way round.

Winning conditions

Storm the enemy capital and still hold it after the reply, and the war is won outright. Otherwise the campaign closes at its turn limit and the margin — your production against the enemy’s, with casualties as a tie-breaker — is read against par:

Losing conditions

Lose your capital for a full turn and the war is over. Short of that, a margin far enough below par is a defeat on points.

Saving and restarting

The campaign saves itself in your browser after every completed phase and after the machine’s reply, under a single key. Reload and choose Resume to carry on, on the same ground. Choose New war from the verdict card to start again. If the browser refuses local storage the game plays perfectly well without a save.