Scott Muldoon (silentdibs)
United States
Astoria
New York
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Soft Underbelly, recently published in World at War magazine, is a game on the first mainland phase of the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943. The system is based loosely on Ben Knight's classic Victory in Normandy, and if I'm good that will be the last time you hear ViN mentioned because this game does not really resemble that game at all in the way it plays.
My first inkling that might be the case came after setting up, and seeing less than a dozen German units expected to form some kind of line to defend Italy. The Allies have a sudden death victory condition: to exit a unit (any unit, supplied or otherwise) off the north edge of the board, which ends a few miles south of Rome. Already the game seems impossible.
Dutch Raspler arrives and we get started; he takes the Allies, since I had them when we played ViN last year. The Germans get 6 Command Points (CPs) per turn and the Allies 7. We barely have enough units to spend all our CPs. How is this going to work??… Ah, but you do have to buy replacements with CPs, and attacks cost 2 CPs per hex, so perhaps there is more here than first glances suggest?
So I play out my first turn as the Germans and try to hold some important chokepoint terrain (there are mountains to break things up), and we move on to turn 2… and things start to really get nutty. By the rules, there are two possible scenarios -- the historical campaign, or "Watch on the Tiber", which finds Hitler scraping together a reconstituted 5th Panzer army and shipping it along with an SS Panzer corps down the boot to inflict a bloody nose on the Allies. At the start of turn 2, you flip a coin and that tells you which scenario you're playing.
I had assumed Dutch and I would skip this coinflip and just play the historical campaign straight up, but after some discussion we made the die roll after all -- Watch on the Tiber it is. We review the additional rules and get to it. The alternate scenario gives the Allies more forgiving victory conditions: They need to hold Taranto, take Naples, clear the vicinity and set up the supply source there, then hold a line of communication between the two cities at the end of 23 turns. Easier than the historical conditions of controlling all towns on the map, and the north-exit instant win still applies.
OK, fine, so the Brits in the south have an easier time, not having to run around and mop up all the towns in the south. On the other hand, I get the SS Panzer corps sometime between turns 3 and 5, and eventually (in the second half of the game) I get 5th Panzer army when things are bound to go pear-shaped. There's still going to be a bloodbath as the Allies try to breakout from Salerno and move on Naples.
Well, things heat up around Salerno early, as the Brits knock out one of the two defending German divisions and fly out to take an undefended Naples -- the SS Panzer corps had arrived but I stupidly had them in a reserve position NOT in Naples. Well, I take the Move+Fight option… wait, did I explain the Move+Fight option? The Germans (not the Allies, mind you) can activate a stack not in EZOC to both Move and Fight, not normally possible otherwise. Right. So, I declare Move+Fight with the SS Panzer corps and hit the Brits in Naples hard, which also happens to put them out of supply.
The Americans move out to support the Brits and reopen their supply line, but the new Allied Naples garrison is more or less pinned down. The Panzers don't budge for the next several turns, and their intimidating strength, er, intimidates Dutch from attacking it until the bitter end. But I get ahead of myself.
The next several turns see some failed attacks against the German line near Salerno, as the Brits move up slowly from Taranto opposed by three German divisions barely containing them in the heel. Another two divisions hold off a Brit corps in the ankle mountains. Small forces with lots of room turn into a Mexican standoff as neither dares leave their flank open. Units not in EZOC get double moves, and with 8 MPs the ubiquitous mechanized forces can cover a lot of ground if carefully placed.
As 5th Panzer army gathers offstage, jostling manages to pin and render unsupplied some German divisions in the south. It's time to cut losses -- I allow the Allies to link up and establish their LOC between Taranto and Naples, but here's the catch: to "clear" Naples and convert their supply source over, the Allies need to prevent the Germans from maintaining even one unit within two hexes of Naples, and guess where the SS Panzer corps is parked…
So as 5th Panzer army streams southward and the handful of German divisions spread out every three hexes across Italy, the Americans finally pound the SS Panzer corps, including their heavy bombers and spending most of their CPs to wallop the Nazis; the entire stack disintegrates, leaving a sizable hole in the German line. The Naples garrison uses doubled movement to fly to the north edge of the map, threatening auto-victory. I make a desperate attack with off-map reinforcements, but fail to knock out the flying Brit column and they exit on turn 15, ending the game with an automatic Allied victory.
Huh.
So, yeah, Belly is pretty absurd on the surface. It's a fragile tightrope of a game that feels like it can spin off into WTF-land at any moment. And yet… it did basically work. Each side feels it's a division or two short of being able to secure its position or make the crucial attack… but despite the fat CP allotment and low counter density, it somehow held together right up until that final breach of the line. The doubled movement for unengaged units feels like a gamebreaker, but it ends up driving you to carefully position every piece and dread every CP spent. Even when Dutch held an advantage, one wrong placement and I could fall on his beachheads for an instant win. Yet my line was always one lucky attack away from being irretrievably ruptured. It felt strangely like we'd timewarped back to old AH Afrika Korps.
It feels like the scale is wrong, although it's remarkably close to the scale of the original ViN (distancewise; turns are not daily, but represent anywhere from 2 to 15 days, increasing as winter sets in). Apparently this shoestring feeling is deliberate, as designer Ty Bomba likens this period of the Italian Campaign to North Africa. I am not in a position to say if the comparison is apt, but I do think that those looking for a rigid approach to modeling history will not like what they find. In other words, you probably already know if this game will irritate you or not without needing my opinion.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the play of the game, although the abrupt ending left a bad taste in my mouth. I would like to play again, if only to see how different a result one gets with another playing. For all I can tell, there is no typical result. And that might not be bad at all.
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J. R. Tracy
United States
New York
New York
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sdiberar wrote: ...if I'm good that will be the last time you hear ViN mentioned...
...although it's remarkably close to the scale of the original ViN...
Fail!
Seriously though, great writeup. Sounds like another one of Ty's minor miracles, where all the plates are spinning and you're just waiting for them to come crashing down...but they don't, and you end up with an enjoyable game.
Did the German infantry movement factor errata play a role? Also, how long did it take? Suitable for a Tuesday night? Sounds like a lot of turns, but not a lot of units.
JR
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Scott Muldoon (silentdibs)
United States
Astoria
New York
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jrtracy wrote: sdiberar wrote: ...if I'm good that will be the last time you hear ViN mentioned...
...although it's remarkably close to the scale of the original ViN... Fail!
Well, I did say "If I'm good"...
Quote: Seriously though, great writeup. Sounds like another one of Ty's minor miracles, where all the plates are spinning and you're just waiting for them to come crashing down...but they don't, and you end up with an enjoyable game.
Thanks. That's a very apt description, except there might have been a couple plates that hit the floor...
Quote: Did the German infantry movement factor errata play a role?
No, we knew about that, and it was not hard to remember.
Quote: Also, how long did it take? Suitable for a Tuesday night?
It took us 6, but normal humans could do it in 3 without all the hemming, hawing, asides, socializing, dinner, bamboozlery, etc.
Quote: Sounds like a lot of turns, but not a lot of units.
Yes and no - those 6 or 7 moves require precise placement since lines are so fragile. The game seems to be mostly about denying opportunities to your opponent, so you have to envision their moves as well as your own, which slows down the process.
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Peter Mc
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
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I never cared much for Victory in Normandy. I didn't hate it but it never grabbed me...I can't say why as it isn't a bad game.
This one was alot more interesting to me. With very special rules the system was able to handle a whole host of issues (like how to simulate the difficulties of crawling up the "toe" of Italy).
I thought it was one of the best games I played in 2010, but I admit it caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting much from this system which hadn't liked in the past.
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Marc Guenette
Canada
Laval
Quebec
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I might write a Analysis for VV. Need to play it soon. Thankx for the review :-)
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Marc Guenette
Canada
Laval
Quebec
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Peter, ViN is a clever game/system with minimum wristage.
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Mike Szarka
Canada
Oshawa
Ontario
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jrtracy wrote:
Did the German infantry movement factor errata play a role?
Where can I find the errata?
I was gad to see this discussion. I know the system well (have played Victory in Normandy, Second Front Now!, and Operation Sea Lion) and just set up Soft Underbelly: Italy 1943 on the table, but I'm wondering how this game can possibly work with such low unit density. The other games have a defender smothering an invader until the inevitable breakout, but in this case there is already an advance on multiple fronts and scarcely any units to defend (depending on the Watch on the Tiber die roll).
Can you actually try to smother the beachhead and do a fighting withdrawal or are you pretty well forced to retreat straight to the Gustav Line as soon as you can build the forts?
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John Teixeira
United States
Charlottesville
Virginia
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I really,really wanted to like this gane...but the poorly written and lousy layout of the rules frustrated me. The comments about the scarce unit density are right on target. The Brits can run up the Adriatic flank of the Germans and make an end run (using column or 2x movement) for the border.
It had a very strange WTF feel for it and I usually love Ty's games and am a sucker for the Italian Campaign.
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Scott Muldoon (silentdibs)
United States
Astoria
New York
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For the record, I had no trouble with the rules themselves (other than the "does this really mean what it says??" WTF factor.
I found the high move rates and low unit density gave it a crazy tense chess-like quality.
Dutch and I are due to play it again tomorrow (2/23). I'll report back if we do.
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