Rommel Opteraiton Brevity

Last Thursday (11/30) John introduced me to Rommel a game by Sam Mustafa.  I'm always interested in Sam's games(I've enjoyed Maurice, and Longstreet is an all time favorite of mine) and Rommel might well prove to be another winner.  Rommel is an operational level game where units represent companies or battalions an you the play are in the roll of the Brigade or Division (or perhaps higher) commander.  We played Operation Brevity which is available on Sam's website (link above)

Same usually has some innovative command and control arrangement and here its something similar to a Saga Battle board (though John tells me the Honor Forums looks with distaste on this name). You spend dice to move and to get special modifiers for an attack.  the Modifiers are lost once used until you reset your board by rolling smaller pool of dice (3 instead of 6)

John and I had quite a back and forth dessert battle going.  I focused on holding two of the three objective while smacking any British unit I thought was exposed.

One of the aspects of this game that I liked is that even out classed units like Italian Infantry are had to destroy in an Alpha Strike.  They usually do some damage and take a few turns to destroy via attrition this seems very real. They may not hold the ground but they don't just vanish.

John's attack stalled in the center but he was able to mass troops on the right and after a few attempts smashed his way through to the objective.

I used several of my tactical abilities to hit his tanks when they were in a vulnerable position on the rough ground.  I hit them hard but John's armor was just strong enough to hang on. He was able to move up infantry the following turn giving him the win.   I enjoyed the game quite a bit, it reminded me of the old PC game "Panzer General"  if your looking for a game where you get to be a general instead of a Sargent, Captain or Major (like Bolt action, Chain of command or Flames of war, all good games mind you) this might be the game you are looking for.