Totaler Bonkers: A Totaler Krieg Review

So, first of all, a bit of a general update. My last review was a bit of a mess and it really drove away any desire to write long complex reviews of games for quite a while. I created it on a premise that just did not work and after writing thousands of words for it, I actually deleted it and almost started from scratch. I find I have an issue with writing something that I don't passionately care about. No game really came around that fired up my creative juices, but to get back into the spirit of it, I have decided to do a general review. Not something trying to make an overarching point through an overtly elaborate comparison between two games, but instead make a nice, straightforward review. Of two games. One which I haven't even played yet. Wait, shit. Something has gone wrong...

With that little intro over and done with, let me introduce to you a game that I have absolutely fallen in love with: Totaler Krieg. Now, I am not very experienced with Grand Strategy wargame: I have tried stuff like Here I Stand, which I can't really stand anymore (yeah I went there). I won't go into details why I dislike Here I Stand (it's the combat system), but regardless, I wasn't soured to the Grand Strategy experience: I just had to find the right game.

My experiences with World War II games are not really as extensive as some of you might think. For a long time it was limited to the various No Retreat, Red Winter (debatebly part of World War II), Combat Commander and Barbarossa to Berlin.  I had a small attempt at playing OCS and although I could see what a wonderful system it was, I couldn't get my head around it, although I have been meaning to give it a try (Reluctant Enemies looks interesting, for a start). In terms of WWII Grand Strategy though, I had only heard of the classics like the 3rd Reich system and that was pretty much it.

It was about this time that a few of my fellow wargaming goons let me know about Totaler Krieg. It sounded good but I had always felt that games like that were too big: too much to read, too much to keep track, even for a wargame. I did decide to give it a try and after having a brief look through the rules, I saw that the combat system was somewhat similar to the one present within No Retreat. After reading the rules, however, I still hadn't realised the true extent of how crazy this design really was.

The combat system in Totaler Krieg is pretty standard, although it has a few interesting points. It uses force ratios, much like No Retreat, with bonuses mostly being column shifts rather than DRMs. Some of the interesting points of it are that, in a city, you can stop your troops from retreating, although it means that your troops take additional damage. Retreat can also be stopped by using HQs, which are one of the more interesting parts of the game: they can project combat factors, meaning that they can support attacks or help defend even if they aren't on the frontline. They are, however, limited to one attack/defense per round, which means that you can sometimes do diversionary attacks to force your opponent to use his HQ before you do your main attack.

Another interesting point is that there are actually two combat impulses in the game: Blitz combat and operational combat. Blitz only occurs when a unit is blitz enabled, which requires a blitz token to be placed near the area where the unit is. Blitz tokens can also be placed in cities to force units to withdraw (although HQs will stop this retreat if they are used in the combat). I will explain how Blitz tokens are acquired later.

So far, so standard. Combat results usually determine how many spaces the enemy retreats, how many points worth of units they lose, etc. Anyone familiar with No Retreat should have no problem switching, although a few things will catch you out (like, for example, mud doing combat penalties for the attacker). The Zone of Control rules also lead to a very sticky game, especially in mud, in which you are not allowed to move out of EZOCs.

Another interesting part of the game is the way support units, like the air force, navy and convoys are handled. Instead of having a position on the board, the support phase involves attempting to place a support unit from your unified pool of tokens and then seeing if your opponent intercepts the placing or not: if they do, they are both rolled at the end of the turn to see how many turns it takes for them to come back (which is admittedly quite random).

Air units can be used to provide bonuses while attacking/defending, as well as doing the absolutely crucial task of removing potential avenues of retreat (the game has a brutal 'pick up all units you retreat through' system, which coupled with the 'destroy anything that is stacked in a hex over the limit', is an absolute killer). Naval units, on the other hand, are useful for cutting supply lines or even creating amphibious invasion (although this can only be done by air units). The system is a bit abstract (and doesn't feel QUITE right in the Pacific Theater of Operations game of the series, Dai Senso), but it's fast and relatively easy once you get your head around it.

Victory in Totaler Krieg is decided by a series of objective hexes and a tug-of-war Victory Point system. Objective hexes can either be soviet, axis or allied: controlling one of your own side doesn't give you VP, but it does prevent your opponents from getting it. It's a fairly standard system.

Now, you might wonder about the title and why I earlier referred the game as being crazy. From what I have said so far, the game sounds fairly standard for a WWII game. So what DOES make it stand out? That would be the diplomatic system, which is tied to the production system of the game. And this is where the craziness mixed with the sheer genius of the system comes in.

Totaler Krieg, really, is a deck management game disguised as a wargame. At the start of the game, each side receives a deck of card that decide not only diplomacy, not only production, but also random events AND historical offensives. The deck is divided into three phases: Pre-War, Limited War and Total War, with transition between one and the other decided by how the cards are played.

The cards are played on the first turn of each season (with all seasons, apart from summer, being two turn long). Which card you play, however, is decided in the previous season, which leads to a certain degree of risk-taking, especially with cards that require specific conditions on the board to be present. The cards themselves contain pre-conditions, how many steps you gain as replacements (either armour or infantry steps), one-off events, political events and conditional events.

Political events are how you can influence other countries and get them to your side and is the part of the game that leads me to say that Totaler Krieg is the first 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' wargame I have ever played. To understand why this is, it is necessary to understand that, in terms of diplomacy, ANYTHING can happen in Totaler Krieg. Do you want Poland to ally with Germany and attack the soviets before the allies? Sure, why not. Want to have Italy side with the Allies while Sweden and Norway side with the Axis? Again, possible.

Anything and everything can happen. The Republicans can even win in Spain. Or maybe they don't win, but the Basque country becomes a breakaway republic. Or maybe Poland gives in a cedes the Polish Corridor to the Germans. Or maybe Czechoslovakia doesn't give in to German demands.

This doesn't only extend to outside diplomacy, but also internal policy. As the Soviets, you can decide NOT to purge the army (although this forces you to face an red army mutiny later). Or maybe you want to construct the Stalin Wall and use it more extensively in your defence. Maybe you decide to be a Nice Guy Russia and go for a co-prosperity league rather than trying to gain land like Soviet Russia did historically.

As the Western Allies, you can decide to create not only the maginot line, but the Gimelin line as well. Or maybe you opt to modernise your army and make it more mobile instead. The amount of freedom given in the game means that games are NEVER gonna be the same, because all sort of crazy things could happen depending on dice rolls of political events and what cards are being played. This isn't JUST World War II, this is YOUR World War II, and every single time it is going to be completely different.

In effect, the game sets a stage for what the combat later in the game (where diplomacy is more limited) is going to be like. The differences in allies gained/lost can make a lot of difference. What if Italy remains neutral? What if Germany attacks Russia first? The game almost feels like it is in two phases: one where you set the scene and the other where you actually get to fight in the universe you created. It's a very incredible feeling, really.

This is what makes Totaler Krieg crazy, but it also makes it stand out. ETO games can get rather boring: you are always facing the same situation in the end. For Totaler Krieg, that couldn't be further from the truth.

There are some issues, however. For a start, sometimes you can play diplomacy cards that do absolutely nothing: maybe realistic, but rather boring and disappointing as well. As well as that, the rolls sometime tell you to roll on one table, which tells you to roll on another, which rolls on another and then just says 'nothing happens'. Funny, but frustrating and seemingly pointless at times.

The only major issue with the game, however, is the balance of some of the cards. This is kind of understandable: some of the options that could be chosen are historically worse than others. Unfortunately, some of the choices either limit your choices or are so obviously superior that the only reason why you would pick the other option would be for variety and attempting to try something different. For example, modernizing the French Army is almost always a bad choice, as well as choosing co-prosperity for the Soviets or not picking Fortress Europa (a card which changes the victory conditions so that the Axis can go on the defensive).

Another issue is that, at the start, your deck of cards is incredibly intimidating. You don't know what choices to make, what should be played when or what shouldn't be played if you want to remain competitive. This of course gets easier with more in-depth knowledge of the decks, but even I got caught out in my last game because of a card which outright knocked out the Italians out of the war for me. It is frustrating to get blind-sided by something that you didn't know was there in the first place.

Overall, though, Totaler Krieg is an incredible experience, although it takes a very long time to play. I played around 17 hours and I was still around 2 years away from the end of the war (going from 1937 to 1946). Fortunately, there is a pretty good Vassal module online. I wouldn't recommend buying the game, however, since here in England it costs around 100 pounds, which is an incredible amount of money for a single game. You also need a fairly large table, and an even larger one if you are planning to play Axis Empires (the combined Totaler Krieg/Dai Senso game). Overall, I would still strongly recommend trying it out if you get the chance, although be prepared to be confused by the rules at points.

You might be wondering what OTHER game I was referring to at the start of the game. The game in question is Unconditional Surrender, a new Grand Strategy game just recently released by GMT. There are many things within US that remind me of Totaler Krieg and having recently bought it (and clipped it), I might get a chance to give it a try soon. Reading the rules seemed to suggest a slightly easier to play version of TK, so I am very interested in giving it a go. Look out for a small AAR soon.

Overall, I really really like Totaler Krieg, but I don't know if the future will see me just playing US instead as a quicker, easier (and cheaper) game that packs the same emotions that are present within Totaler Krieg. Only time will tell, but in the meanwhile, Totaler Krieg is a solid 4 angry King Philips out of 5.