Why did we decide to do a game of Operation Crusader? Despite the fact that we love making games, we’re not entirely sure ourselves. There are many reasons why we think that the battles of North Africa make great gaming stuff and why the campaign was so fascinating, but at the forefront must be the place itself and the mystery and spectacle that surrounds it. At first we thought that the desert, is in a sense, a (nearly) literal sandbox where we can study tank to tank combat and fighting in near laboratory conditions. But as we read on and on, piling combat histories, academic studies, and oral narratives upon each other, we discovered that desert combat was anything but clinical.

The desert is a strange, and in ways insane, place to have a battle. Despite the fact that Operation Crusader took place nearly eighty years ago, it still feels like something out of the golden age of science-fiction. It possesses an eerie study in contrasts and in many ways, it saw the future to come – not just in regards to technology and decentralized warfare but to the interconnectivity of human enterprises between themselves as well as how humans have come to realize their interdependence on nature as such.

While desert operations resemble an almost a post-modern kind of warfare, where the importance of material places and objects are what you decide to give them, it is at the same time grounded in harsh environmental conditions that no one at the peril of one’s life can ignore. Likewise, it can be seen as either a sheer mockery of Clausewitzian doctrines, where the hindrances to fight, not to mention survive, are such as to make it impossible to count at anything other than chaos, it is also warfare made free. While there is nothing in the desert to possess, in the presence of nothing, not one piece of ground becomes more important than the other, it paradoxically offers an open field devoid of what fighting men see as limitations on their ability to conduct warfare in a way that comes close to True War as possible. There are no civilians, very few human built structures, and as the Germans saw it, there was nothing but the fight itself. An ideal state of warfare. To the British, so far from home but still within their empire, it was a fight even devoid of emotion, a War without Hate. Of course, it was probably neither. In all likelihood, it was messy and dirty. Sometimes at extreme distances but more often, up close and very personal.

Operation Crusader was a fight where man and machine were dependent on each other, at an age before geopositioned systems, spy satellites, helicopters, all terrain drives, and night vision goggles, but where both sides still felt they had the cutting edge in technology. But even with modern tools, the desert is a harsh place. Machinery, clothes, and men break down at an alarming pace. Not to mention how quickly lines of communication get confused and how even a single day or night in this hostile environment without access to basic supplies like food, water, shoes, head gear, lubricants, or petrol might render a unit inoperable or worse. Suddenly, one side’s technological edge might be considerably less important than having access to a certain piece of equipment. For example, it doesn’t matter if your foe has the worst anti-tank gun in the history of mankind if he’s got one and you do not.

In the desert, space seems nearly infinite while line of sight is not. You might think that it would be perfect for long range firefights, but in reality, the heat distortion, the amount of dust in the air, and various minor height differences altogether make the idea of long range combat a mirage at best. Often units passed close to each other without knowing that they were a hair’s width away from death and at other times they ran into each other and started fighting at places where neither side expected a battle to occur. Routes went in the wrong direction and retreats could turn into valiant attacks. A battle line in the desert means nothing across distances that lacks reference points, nor would anyone have enough people to man it against incursion. As it went, it took quite a while for the Germans, and in particular Rommel himself, to even discover that they were under attack.

Finding each other was hard enough, but when you finally met what could be an opponent, it often turned out to be someone from your own side that had lost his way. This often made a prudent commander wonder if it was he or them that was off course. And what about the enemy, where was he in all this? Even with the top notch optical devices that the British had, it was hard to tell friend from foe. Recognizing your opponent’s vehicular shape wasn’t something that could be taken for granted. At a certain range all tanks have the same blurry shape, and supply columns had been captured and re-captured so many times that it was hard to tell, even at very close range who they actually belonged to. Even when they responded in a foreign tongue it could just as easily be a captured driver as an enemy column. Identification was problematic to say the least.

Even when dunes were absent and line of sight seemed to be a non-issue, the weapons used were so powerful that they shook up huge clouds of dust, quickly making it impossible to aim over open sights and spatial awareness became a challenge. It was often hard to decide in which direction you had to go if you needed to scarper.

One reason why Operation Crusader makes such excellent gaming material is because of its drama. It was a hard fought brawl between two very different opponents, both with their strengths and weaknesses, which makes for a fun asymmetric experience. Despite the campaign game being the main event of FAB: Crusader, we still believe that the replay value is excellent. When you switch sides you face completely different challenges, and maneuvers that seemed so easy to pull off from the opposite side suddenly look nightmarishly complex.

The Brits knew what the score was. As there was no point in trying to control anything, they felt their primary objective had to be the very destruction of the axis forces, especially the German armor which they considered to be the greater threat, before relieving Tobruk.

The Brits were well prepared but almost immediately got split up when the Germans had the audacity of not being where they were supposed to, so the orders were reversed; Tobruk first and German armor second.

The Germans had not the same chances to prepare. They were focusing in their turn to capture Tobruk from the brits. When Rommel finally realized that this was a major Allied offensive, they had to make on the fly decision and for them it was lucky that they were so good at just that sort of thing. 

In FAB: Crusader we will see many unique features new to the FAB-system. Crusader was nothing like a traditional battle; it was a series of battles with no distinct frontlines. The Crusader battles could better be described as a dogfight. Units were sandwiched between each other and sometimes even telling friend from foe was problematic. Because of this, the game needed some special rules and treatment. For example, new capabilities and special functions to units and assets had to be incorporated, not just to combat but movement as well. In Part 2 of this article series, we will take a closer look at the various units and assets. For ease to have all of this as a quick reference to the players, the following Game Piece Notation Card will be included:

Regards,

CJ Håkansson and Michael Gustavsson

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