Bomb Alley's End
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2010

When we moved our warehouse from Virginia to Alabama, we learned fairly quickly that inventory figures from the old place were not always accurate. Inevitably, some items meant to be stored together got separated in the course of the move, including parts for one of our key naval games, Second World War at Sea: Bomb Alley.

Bomb Alley was still in stock when we moved the warehouse, but only just barely. Less than a dozen complete copies made the move. The inventory sheet appeared to indicate that we could make a couple thousand more if we just made new boxes, but I had my doubts about this. There did not seem to be enough playing pieces (counters, in gamer jargon) to match that figure, but the boxes had become scattered during shipping — they did not arrive together, and had been slung into the new warehouse in separate locations.

Slowly, over the past year, we've gathered them together. When a box of maps for the reprinted Battle of the Bulge went missing, it was time to take apart the last unmapped stacks of component boxes. The Bulge maps were in there, but only one more box of Bomb Alley counters surfaced to be placed with the others. If we want to bring back Bomb Alley, it's going to need a complete reprint: boxes, maps, counters. With so many new products clamoring for press time, that's just not going to happen anytime soon. So it's time to say goodbye to Bomb Alley.

That's a sad necessity, for a number of reasons. Bomb Alley's release marked a change in Avalanche Press. We released it just as the market for d20 role-playing supplements crashed, and we set a record for single-month sales that still stands seven years later. Bomb Alley became a staple of our game line, and it was specifically to keep this game constantly in stock that we changed our production model to include a print-on-demand capability (that is, we brought in the giant printing machine, the printernator, to make sure we'd always have Bomb Alley scenario books and charts available).

Bomb Alley is my personal favorite of all our naval games, maybe of all of the games we've done. Peggy Gordon did the ship drawings, as well as the map and the box art — we now had the capability to craft games in our best-selling line completely in-house.

In terms of game design, it's a very satisfying achievement because it met my expectations. Previous games in the series, like Midway, had taken place over wide stretches of open water. In comparison, the Mediterranean is a bathtub, with enemy ports and airbases within easy striking distance of all the vital sea routes. In most scenarios, contact between opposing forces would be relatively easy to make (except if I'm the one rolling the dice).

As a historical subject, the Mediterranean campaign is almost perfect as a game setting. Both players are trying to force convoys across contested waters, sometimes at the same time. Thanks to the furious ground campaign going on in North Africa, these have to go forward at whatever cost, and in a fairly constant stream. That yielded fifty scenarios, with both the Italian and the British player acting as the aggressor.

I was pleased with the scenarios, mostly thanks to what was then a sharp break in Second World War at Sea design practice. In Bomb Alley, neither player has a discreet order of battle for air units. Instead, they roll dice and consult tables that yield a varying number of aircraft. That way, neither player knows what the enemy might have, and cannot be assured of his or her own air strength. Additionally, thanks to service rivalries the Italian Air Force might refuse to carry out naval missions, while the Germans are even more reluctant to help out. These game systems yield results very much in keeping with the sort of chaos facing the players' historical counterparts, and make for a great deal of historical validity (I dislike calling a game "historically accurate," as getting all the right units and such into your game design should be a given).

And finally, the game has lots of toys, something I consider vital in a game like Bomb Alley. There are scads and scads of aircraft pieces, including some wonderfully odd ones. The Italians get their P.108 heavy bomber and a range of aircraft from the hopeless Cr.32 biplane fighter to the deadly Mc.205. The Germans have the expected squadrons of Stukas and Messerschmitts, plus a helicopter (and helicopter carrier). British aircraft are better than most of the Italian machines, but usually not as good as the Germans. But unlike the Germans, the Brits won't suddenly pretend not to understand Italian just to duck out of a fight.

At sea, the orders of battle are pretty comprehensive. I had to cut things off after the summer of 1942, as Italian fuel shortages pretty much ended the naval campaign. The Royal Italian Navy still fields a pair of aircraft carriers plus an impressive fleet of destroyers, cruisers and battleships. It's theoretically a match for Britain's Royal Navy — but the fuel to get all of those ships into action at once is rarely available, so the Italians are often at a disadvantage at sea while most of their fleet swings at anchor. Still, we have a number of unusual vessels in Italian green: captured Yugoslav destroyers, anti-aiorcraft cruisers originally built for Thailand, an ancient pre-Great War armored cruiser and the heroic torpedo boat Lupo.

Britain counters with a fleet built around reconditioned battleships from the First World War, plus a large number of modern light cruisers and sometimes an aircraft carrier or two. They get some odd vessels as well: the old target ship Centurion (dressed up as the new battleship Anson), high-speed minelayers and the world's first aircraft carrier, the aged HMS Argus.

And then there are the other fleets: France has a pair of battle cruisers, a couple of old battleships, a bevy a cruisers and best of all, the super-fast super-destroyers Mogador and Volta. There are also Greeks, Americans, Romanians, Dutch, Poles and Soviets.

Will we ever re-make Bomb Alley? I certainly hope so, but games of its size are going to become increasingly rare at Avalanche Press as we focus on smaller, more affordable titles. I wish we had a few thousand more of them on hand, but instead it's time for Bomb Alley to retire to Valhalla. Once the boxless copies are gone, so will Bomb Alley fade away.

Order Bomb Alley while you still can!