The Seeds of Disaster

Shortly after Poland was conquered in 1939, Hitler begin urging an immediate attack in the West. The original plans were uninspiring and his generals feared an attritional stalemate. Over the winter the Germans keep taking the measure of their opponents and hit upon a plan was that inspired, risky, and utterly decisive. Ironic of Hitler to assume his remarkable success was simply the new template for all future campaigns. His eyes turned east. But why, exactly, did France fall? Against the Odds 2017 Annual features four top designers all tasked with re-examining the 1940 campaign and answering that very question. The Seeds of Disaster is a game about how events of the 1930s affected World War II, most especially the German invasion of the West in 1940. This game connects a war campaign with the military preparations, intelligence developments, and diplomacy that preceded it. It is an attempt to represent a piece of history as interconnected with other historical developments. This is a two-player game in which one player takes the Germans and the other the Western Allies, including France, Great Britain, Belgium, and Holland. Victory is determined by control of Mobilization Center and Objective Areas at the end of the last turn of play. In broad outline, what you see here is a game that is multi-dimensional and coupled. The initial phase of play creates a game history of the 1930s to generate the concrete situation for the German invasion of the West in 1940. By intertwining fresh dimensions of Intelligence and Command, the game creates new ways in which the 1940 situation can be distinctive from one play of the game to the next. The invasion campaign is the culmination of the game. With this partially scripted history, how does the war progress? The geography will be the same, the deployment of the forces may be similar, but the details of the forces and their Intelligence and Command postures can be very different.