Wavell’s War
Europa XIII: East Africa, North Africa, and adjacent theaters, 1940-1943

• Year of Publication: 2005
  
• Publisher: HMS/GRD
  
• Design: Frank Watson

On August 2, 1939 British General Archibald Wavell accepted the position of Commander in Chief of British forces in the Middle East. In doing so, he took personal command of Allied forces that would campaign on five distinct fronts – the Western Desert, East Africa, the Balkans, Iraq, and Syria – spanning parts of three continents. His responsibilities stretched from the Dinaric Alps to the Kenyan savannas, from the oases of the Sahara to the Elburz Mountains in Iran. Only rarely would one commander face a situation of such scope while operating with shortages of troops, equipment, and supplies.

Wavell’s War (WW) is a Europa module that combines the games Balkan Front (BF) and War in the Desert (WitD), and extends the area covered by Europa to East Africa. This creates one game recreating the entire war from 1940 to 1943 in the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Near and Middle East. It focuses on the situation faced by General Wavell in balancing multiple campaigns on three continents. Although the game continues well after Wavell was replaced in command of Allied forces in the theater, decisions had already been reached in all of these areas except North Africa itself. Neither Generals Auchinleck nor Montgomery who succeeded Wavell would have to juggle separate operations in the way Wavell did.

WW updates various systems found in BF and WITD to the standards of later games and integrates the rules of the two games. It presents rules, maps, and counters for adding East Africa to Europa and adds several optional rules that have previously appeared in the pages of Europa magazine as well as several new rules.

BF, published in 1989, is a two-player game recreating the Axis campaigns of conquest in the Balkans, from autumn 1940 to summer 1941. WITD, published in 1995, is a two-player game recreating the military situation in North Africa and the Middle East from late 1940 to mid-1943.

Between the publication of BF and WW, Europa has experienced many changes. WW repackages the BF and WitD scenarios for the newer rules set, and creates a consistency between the two widely differing supply systems and sequences of play used in the BF and WitD games.

WW includes a set of maps covering East Africa from southern Egypt south to Tanganyika and Uganda. There are rules for one scenario involving East Africa by itself, “The East African Campaign”, and rules for including East Africa with any of the WiTD or WW scenarios. Counters for use with the East Africa map set are included in WITD and WW. Both of those games are needed for a complete East Africa counter set. In Europa, “The East African Campaign” is the successor to Africa Orientale, originally published at a non-standard scale in issue #135 of Strategy & Tactics magazine.

In addition to the scenarios originally presented in BF and WITD, and “The East African Campaign”, WW presents several linking scenarios of its own and provides ways to use any combination of the five theaters in a game that fits players’ inclinations and space available. It also presents rules and orders of battle to expand any of these or any of the WITD scenarios to include the initial moves by Marshal Graziani’s Italian army into Egypt – “Graziani’s Offensive”.

This module requires components from Balkan Front and War in the Desert.

• 21 quarter-size maps covering East Africa and parts of the Arabian peninsula, plus one replacement partial map for Balkan Front.
  
  
• Three counter sheets (20AR, 21AR, 22AR)

Current Errata & Extras

Europa Games

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Drang Nach Osten!
Unentschieden
Narvik (1st ed)
Their Finest Hour (1st ed)
Case White
Marita-Merkur
Narvik (2nd ed)
The Fall of France
Their Finest Hour (2nd ed)
Western Desert
The Near East
Spain and Portugal
Fire in the East
Torch
Scorched Earth
The Urals
Balkan Front
First to Fight (1st ed)
A Winter War
Second Front
For Whom the Bell Tolls
War in the Desert
First to Fight (2nd ed)
Storm over Scandinavia
Wavell’s War
Barbarossa Unleashed

Errata & Extras
Index of Maps
Index of Counter Sheets
Index of Nations