Alamein: Allied Options, Part One
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2010

Many players of our games like to use them to examine "what really happened." But I don't really see games as a path to that; for one thing, human behavior is extraordinarily complex and I just don't see that it's possible to build an accurate model at all, let alone with paper and cardboard. What you can do, as a game designer, is to craft a game where, when compared to the actual events on which the game is based, similar decisions yield similar results. And give the players the ability to make different decisions.

Giving each player all the forces at the command of his or her historical counterpart, and placing them in the exact same locations, could be seen as a model of "what really happened." Even then, there's a lot of subjective judgment involved in assigning abilities to those forces, but it can be done in some fashion. Yet that approach doesn't account for the inexact knowledge that each historical leader possessed regarding their own side's abilities and forces, and even less for those of the enemy.

But people don't react based on "what really happened," but on their perception of what happened. And thanks to my impressive degree I could go on for quite some length about that, but today we'll just limit it to the battle of Alamein. The game gives each player the forces that were really present; but it doesn't give a lot of slack for forces that either might have been present and were not, or those that had no objective chance of appearing but the other side thought they might.

For the game designer, one of the basic choices is to draw the line between those classes: present, might have been present, thought they might be present. If you stay strictly within "reality" then players won't react like their historical counterparts, because they'll know too much. if you go too far toward the "thought they might appear" end of things, then the players will object that the game doesn't match their vision of reality.

Our Alamein game leans closer to the "present" category, though it does include an American armored division, which falls firmly in the "thought about" column. There are many more of these possibilities, and I tend to think that including things that didn't happen, but commanders had to worry about happening, makes a history-based game more rather than less accurate as a model.

Germany could have committed more troops to the invasion of Egypt, a possibility we looked at in a series of earlier installments. Supplying them once they were there would be a problem, but with a great deal of luck on the battlefield they might have broken past the Allied defenders of Alamein and headed for the great goal of the Suez Canal.

That vision assumes that the Allies would give up the Canal without a fight. Throughout the war, British propaganda made much of the "thin red line" holding off the Axis in many places, including Alamein. In reality, Middle East Command had many more resources to throw in front of a rampaging Afrika Korps. Rommel would not be allowed to stroll up to the pyramids without a fight.

Within Egypt were a number of other formations available to rush quickly to the front. Some of them were in the process of forming or training, while others helped garrison the country, nominally independent since 1922 but under firm British occupation. The Polish II Corps was forming in Egypt, a second brigade of Greeks was there as well, plus several British units. Further afield, the British 10th Army garrisoned Iraq with several incomplete Indian infantry divisions plus an Indian armored division, while a combat-ready division of African troops stood in Italian East Africa.

Variant One: A Greek-like Struggle

We looked at the 1st Greek Brigade and its participation at Alamein in an earlier installment of Daily Content, including new counters to represent the unit at something closer to its actual combat capability. The 2nd Greek Brigade, even less capable than its sister unit, did not go to the front and remained in Alexandria and the Nile Delta during the Alamein campaign.

Variant One: Fight Like an Egyptian

Egypt had an army of its own, having grown to about 100,000 men in 1942 from about 30,000 before the war. Italian pre-war planners had expected the British to make extensive use of Egyptian manpower, but the Royal Egyptian armed forces were considered unreliable if not pro-Axis. The British removed the Egyptians from their frontier security forces in 1940, and they spent the rest of the war garrisoning Egypt's major cities.

Had the Germans and Italians broken through to Alexandria, they would have found an Egyptian infantry brigade in the city awaiting them. Whether it would have fought them or joined them is difficult to say this many decades later. Egyptian anti-aircraft gunners manned most of the city's flak batteries and certainly showed no hesitation in firing on Axis planes. But the Army was riddled with nationalist sentiment, embodied in officers like Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. The Army did not intervene when the British overthrew the prime minister in February 1942 and installed their own choice in his place, and some have suggested that its leaders were bought off by the British.

Egypt possessed some armored cars, a handful of tanks and some artillery including one modern "regiment" organized along British lines. The British had trained and equipped the force, but it was led by officers trained at the Royal Egyptian military academy at Abbassia.

If an Axis unit enters a hex within seven hexes of hex 55123, the Allied player immediately places all units of the Egyptian 2nd Brigade (three infantry battalions, one machine gun battalion and one motorized anti-tank company) in any hex of Alexandria, and then rolls one die for each. On a result of 1, the unit deserts and is removed from play. On a result of 2 through 4, desertions cause the unit to lose one step (it is removed if it only has one step). On a result of 5 or 6 there is no effect. He or she also places the 1L Egyptian artillery and Egyptian recon battalion in any hex of Alexandria; these units will not desert.

On the third AM turn following deployment of the Egyptian 2nd Brigade, the Allied player places all units of the Egyptian 1st Brigade (three infantry battalions, one machine gun battalion and one motorized anti-tank company) in any hex of Alexandria and repeats the desertion check process outlined above.

The Egyptian 2nd Brigade was present in Alexandria throughout the Alamein campaign, so one could argue that this variant should be in use in all games and not an option, but it's obscure enough that it probably should remain optional.

NOTE: More variants follow in Part Two. FREE downloadable counters make up Part Three of this variant. Keep watching Daily Content for the rest!

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