Clash of Giants II: The Campaigns of Galicia and First Ypres, 1914
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Clash of Giants II: The Campaigns of Galicia and First Ypres, 1914
Clash of Giants II: The Campaigns of Galicia and First Ypres, 1914 is the sequel to Ted Raicer's acclaimed Clash of Giants: Campaigns of Tannenberg and the Marne, 1914. As with the original design, CoG II
contains two separate games (both using the same basic system) covering
two of the most interesting (and least-gamed) campaigns of the First
World War, Galicia and First Ypres .
Galicia 1914 pitted the armies of Tsarist Russia and Habsburg
Austria-Hungary in a ferocious struggle along a 200 mile front. The
Austrian commander, General Conrad, refused to wait for the arrival of
his 2nd Army, which had been initially deployed to the Serbian front,
before going onto the offensive. The Austrian attack began on 19
August, with Conrad's 1st and 4th Armies on the Austrian left flank
striking the Russian 4th and 5th Armies on the Tsarist right. The
Austrians outnumbered the Russians on this flank, and initially drove
them back, and Conrad began to dream of pocketing the entire Russian
army group. But the absence of the Austrian 2nd Army gave the Russians
an even greater numerical advantage on the opposite flank, as two
Russian armies (the 3rd and 8th) struck the Austrian 3rd east of
Lemberg (Lvov). Soon it was Conrad's armies that were in danger of
being cut off and destroyed. The campaign was a catastrophe for
Austria-Hungary, but in the end the result was a fatally incomplete
victory for the Russians.
The First Ypres game is the first game to cover the
climax of the "Race to the Sea" on the Western Front that followed the
inconclusive Allied victory at the Marne. By 8 October the continued
outflanking attempts by both sides had nearly reached the English
Channel. A massive meeting engagement developed, with the Germans first
attempting to launch a massive cavalry raid around the Allied northern
flank in the direction of Abbeville. When this fizzled (due to the
timely arrival of a French infantry corps), the French and British
began their own offensive aimed at driving all the way to the German
border. But the Allied attack quickly ran into German troops of the 6th
Army, hurried north from Alsace-Lorraine. Falkenhayn, the German
commander, now planned to play his trump card, striking the BEF with
four newly-raised reserve corps of hurriedly-trained but enthusiastic
volunteers. In a month of brutal struggle in which the British lost
60,000 men, the Germans lost well over 100,000. Not realizing that the
BEF had been bled white and was on the point of breaking, Falkenhayn
called off his attacks in mid-November. The attempts to end the war by
Christmas were over.
Clash of Giants II uses a slightly modified version of the original system to model these dynamic and closely balanced contests. As in CoG,
the game emphasizes the difficulty of commanding groups of armies, with
a system where movement allowance for each army is separately
determined by a command roll. But CoGII adds an interactive
random chit-pull activation sequence, so that neither player knows
which of his commands will move next. Each player has only one combat
phase per turn, which he may declare at the end of any one of his
command activations, but which covers the entire map. This leads to
many difficult game decisions: "Do I declare combat now, with only part
of my forces in position to attack, or wait hoping to get more units
into the line, but risking the enemy either pulling back or striking
first?"
Once combat is declared, CoGII uses the unique combat
system so popular in Tannenberg and Marne, in which a unit's training,
equipment, and morale are factored into a Tactical Effiency Rating that
often counts more than mere numbers.
Galicia 1914 includes a corps/division OB and a map scaled at 9
miles to the hex that covers the entire front from Krakow to the
Romanian border. The victory conditions force the Austrian player to
attack initially in order to gain enough VPs to survive the strong
Russian offensive certain to follow. Galicia features special rules for
the great Austrian fortress of Przemysl, Russian cavalry replacements,
rail supply, Offensive Support Markers (representing heavy artillery
and the logistical and command preparations of a major assault), and
the arrival of the Austrian 2nd Army.
The OB for First Ypres is at division level (with the
odd brigade). The map scale is 3.3 miles to the hex, from Lens in the
south to the English Channel. Special rules include Offensive Support
Markers, the Belgian retreat onto the map from Antwerp, flooding the
Yser River line, French and German cavalry replacements, unknown
Tactical Efficiency Ratings for the German New Reserve Corps, and
British tenacity (represented by remnant counters). Victory goes to the
player who controls 5 of the 9 victory hexes at the end of the game,
and the game is sometimes decided on the final combat roll by a
last-ditch attack or defense of a single key hex.
Nine-time winner of the Charles Roberts Award, Ted Raicer continues his record of exciting WWI gaming with Clash of Giants II: The Campaigns of Galicia and First Ypres, 1914.
Highly playable solitaire, this is a title fans of WWI games, and fans
of "simple but not simplistic" game systems, will want to own.
Components
One 22" x 34" backprinted game map
Two 8.5 x 11 Player Aid Cards
Two 5/8" Countersheets
Two Six-sided Dice
Designed by Ted Raicer
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