The Desert War

Overview

The Alliance has massed a large force to accomplish its goal, but its forces are unused to desert warfare, and have gotten off to a slow start, giving up the element of surprise. The Commonwealth colonial army is small, but mobile, and used to desert war.

Both sides are involved in a see-saw battle for the seas around their colonies, so the quantity of supplies arriving in this backwater region is never certain, and some forces may be pulled out of the desert theater for strategic reasons beyond the scope of this scenario.

Terrain

1. Treat all clear hexes as desert.

2. Ignore the RS production centers.

3. The edge hexes across the northern edge of the board are considered coastal road hexes, connecting Mersa Brega with the road system leading to Burkhat.

4. Foreign territory. All land hexes east of the Birkanal on board 10 belong to foreign neutral powers. The canal hex itself is Commonwealth territory. Units may never enter foreign land hexes during the game.

5. The Commonwealth owns all territory from the Jabal Tibesti mountains to the Birkanal, as far north as the Arish river on board 10, and Ben Mufta on board 6. The Alliance owns all other non-foreign territory.

Setup

The Alliance: 1 FA-3, 1 DB-3, 4 IN-4, 2 IN-3, 4 IN-1, 2 AY-2.

Set up first. All units must be in friendly territory, on or adjacent to a supply line. All units over CV-2 must be within 3 hexes of a Commonwealth town or city.

The Commonwealth: 1 AR-4, 2 MK-4, 3 IN-2, 1 AY-3, 2 SU-4, 1 FA-3, 1 DB-4.
Set up second, in friendly cities and/or towns.

Special Rules

1. Turn Sequence. Use these Supply-Based Turn Sequence rules to play this scenario. The Alliance has the initiative and a bid of 1 for the first turn.

2. Production. During the Production phase, each side receives 7-12 pp; each player rolls 1 die per port city he controls, takes the score of the highest die, and adds 6. The pp value of cities on the board does not contribute to production.

3. Replacements. Steps may be added to any unit which can trace supply back to a friendly port.

4. Counter Mix. Each side may only build units available in its counter mix. The units in the counter mix are those units received at the start of the game, and any units received as reinforcements.

5. Building Units. Except as noted in the Reinforcement Table, each side may only build SU units in the Production phase, in any city which can trace supply to a friendly port. All other pp must be used to add steps to existing units.

6. Supply. Only ports may act as supply bases.

7. Alliance Supply Problems: In the Victory Check phase of Turn 4, the Alliance player may remove any of his SU units from the board and counter mix and add the total CV value to his VP score.

8. Commonwealth Aircraft Reassignment: In the Production phase of Turn 2, the Commonwealth player may remove any of his air units from the board and his counter mix and add the CV value of these units to his VP score.

Reinforcements

Victory

The pp value of each city is also its VP value.

The Alliance player gets double the VP value of any Commonwealth city he posesses in the Victory Check phase at the end of turn 1.

Each player gets the VP value of all cities he owns in the Victory Check phase of each even-numbered turn.

Each player keeps a running total of victory points for the whole game. The winner is the player with the highest VP total in the last Victory Check phase.