AAR 1

From: JT Thomasovich jthomas@nac.net

On the weekend of February 5-7th I had the privilege of being the head umpire for a campaign depicting the entire Battle of Crete. This campaign was one of series collectively called JodieCon and is conducted primarily by the staff and cadets of the US Military Academy Prep School at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey. The chief JodieCon movers and shakers are Army MAJ Pete Panzeri and Jodie Lindberg, who do a fantastic job of organizing weekend-long campaigns in many different historical eras. We selected the boardgame Operation Mercury to form the strategic basis of the campaign; it was used by both sides for overall planning, to control the allocation of air and naval forces, resolve naval actions and regulate the movement of reserves. Although it is out of print I was able to track down four copies of the game - one for the controllers, one each for the German and British commanders and, amazingly, a boxed copy for me! Some day I hope to actually play it in its intended format.

Tactical battles were fought using Command Decision III miniatures rules with hundreds of 15mm figures on four 10'x6' tables. Each of the 8-hour campaign sessions depicted one day of battle. In case you're curious, the Germans finally captured the Heraklion airfield during the third day and were able to hold on. Despite the rough edges inherent in a project of this magnitude the campaign succeeded beyond our wildest expectations and was well-received by the players. The fact that a game of the appropriate scope and unit scale was commercially available reduced the planning and organizational burden by several orders of magnitude.

The only trouble now is that so many players expressed an interest in purchasing the game and unfortunately I couldn't refer them to a reliable source. Any chance a search will turn up some lost copies? On behalf of the JodieCon crew please pass along to all those responsible for Operation Mercury our thanks and kudos for an excellent event.