36.
DESIGNER’S NOTES
In a depression among the sand dunes before El Agheila, on the western
frontier of Cyrenaica, lay a British reconnaissance patrol:
Lieutenant Fred Miller dozed in the silent night near El Agheila. All he
could hear was the snoring of his comrades. And at that moment the war
began to “breathe” again.
The clank of tank tracks... Then silence and an oath. Fred Miller was on
the alert, but there was no need for him to wake the others. Clark, too, was
peering out from under the scout car. They lay on their bellies and stared
ahead at the mighty shadows, which rattled as they moved. They heard
shouts. “Tanks,” whispered Miller, “German tanks.” The monsters drove
past 30 yards away in a southerly direction. “One, two, three, four, five...”
Clark stopped counting. The sixth veered and made directly for them. The
commander was standing in the turret. He had spotted them. “Move off,”
yelled Clark. The driver and wireless operator were already in the car.
The self-starter hesitated. “Get cracking, man!” At last. The rattling shadow
was almost on them as they drove off. The desert suddenly sprang to life,
the shadows coming from all directions.
FOXES OF THE DESERT; Paul Carell
Those allergic to nostalgia are urged to move down about ten paragraphs.
To our remaining readers, it is hard to believe over a quarter-century has
passed since the young boy this writer once was read the stirring account
of a British patrol sitting in the dark night, on the edge of Cyrenaica. A
lifelong interest in the war in North Africa during World War II was liter-
ally ignited by Paul Carell’s seminal book, Foxes of the Desert.
Carell’s book was not the first military history tome to tickle my fancy.
That place will forever be held by Tregaskis’ Guadalcanal Diary, bor-
rowed from the school library in a bright-green, reinforced-binding with
penciled-in title elementary school edition. My interest in reading was a
flame fanned by my beloved fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Melamed. It was a
year for Babe Ruth and Abe Lincoln biographies, the Hardy Boys, and
books about bugs. Then came the war. Or more accurately, the wars.
The ‘dots’ would later be connected between Tregaskis, Ernie Pyle, Paul
Carell, and Hal Hock. All unseen, lying in wait in the future not unlike
Clark and Miller waiting in the night on patrol...then watching something
important thundering by. Not quite sure what the import of it would be.
Incredibly fascinated by military history, something apparently lost on this
generation’s young if recent reports of national testing are to be believed.
Long before discovering TOBRUK this writer was a ten-year old boy that
was just sure there had to be something like wargames out there. The first
hint came from the Woods Edge Game. Purchased from an advertisement
in the back of a Metal Men comic book. Then that cardboard ‘footlocker’
with “over 100 men, tanks and ships”, that happened to also include a map
1
printed on polypropylene (think plastic sacks at your local supermarket) and the rest is history. This Tobruk kid would have the chance to bring
and rudimentary rules. These were duly set up, after surviving the four back his first boardgame love for one more ‘dance’.
month wait that followed posting off the requisite two bucks or so. Me, my Before the project could be completed, sadly, Hal suddenly passed away
cousin Vinny and my best pal across the street Brian bought every comic on December 7, 1999. The decision was made to go on but the deadline
book ‘wargame’ there was, including the one with the rubber-banded two- was blown right out the door when we lost Hal. His lifelong and intimate
piece plastic tanks that ‘exploded’ when you pressed in their middle with knowledge of the war in North Africa was a resource that could not be
your finger. replaced. Nor could his kind and gentlemanly nature, interest in the Titanic
We played these things. And played them. Our little group was so out of and love of his dogs. As for our success in bringing back Hal’s labor of
the loop that we knew Helen of Toy, yet never heard of Milton Bradley’s love in a new edition, we’ll let the reader decide.
TANK BATTLE. I picked up the latter at an, er, ‘antique’ (read: junk) The New Edition
shop in rural Pennsylvania last summer while traveling with the wife and My intent in the new Tobruk was to build an entirely new game system
kids. For five bucks. And I had to finally hide it in the closet or my six-year around some key precepts set down by Hal Hock and found in the previous
old son would still be having me play it with him nightly. Suffice it to say edition. I feel a fairly successful job was done along these lines.
we use house rules.
Infantry in the original Tobruk was all about casualties. You shot at some-
Fast-forward a couple of three years and we find this writer a thirteen-year one and something happened. The original Casualty Table simply listed
old kid experiencing serendipity in the dusty corridors of the former the number of men that went down with each shot—and there were few ‘0’
Westchester Hobby Center of East Post Road in White Plains, New York. results on the table. And whenever casualties were absorbed, the personnel
A small stock of wargames was tucked in among the myriad trains, Airfix unit would have to ‘check morale’. This system is retained in the new
soldiers and radio-control airplanes of the one-channel ‘pulse’ variety. My game, albeit in a modified form. Instead of looking up the number of gun-
father was instantly made a prisoner as I pored over the best way to spend fire factors on the Gunfire Factor Table, these are provided right on the
my office-vacuuming and cleaning ‘business’ money, suddenly burning a counters. We lose a little ‘grainy’ detail with our simple system of Gunfire
white-hot hole in my pocket. on the counter—halved for ‘long range fire’ out
TOBRUK was my first wargame. The back of the to double the printed range. We pick up a LOT
box sold me. I wanted to “recreate all of the furious more convenience, and that results in faster play
action of tank-to-tank battles on the Western Desert Tobruk is the first wargame— and far less tedium.
during World War II”. I was a late-bloomer and to the best of my knowledge, the The original Tobruk used a system wherein ca-
hadn’t discovered girls yet. About twelve bucks in only board wargame—that sualties were marked off on a separate ‘roster
singles was peeled out of my wallet and plunked pad’, man by man. The major downside to this
down for my very own tank battle in a cardboard shows what a ‘close up’ tank
was that all personnel counters on the map looked
box. This was going to be good. battle is really like.” exactly as they started the game when they were
The good times didn’t last long. When I got this Mark Saha, Fire & Movement ‘fresh’. The only way to discern the status in
puppy home it became pretty evident there was no terms of casualties was to check your roster pad.
way this thing was going to be played by me or my
Number One
This was a major hassle as one needed to know
best comic book gaming buddies. ‘Programmed’ the exact number of men in each personnel unit
instruction notwithstanding. I carefully packed it all whenever tallying up gunfire factors to make a shot. This was no minor
back in the box and begged a ride back to Westchester Hobby to return the disadvantage and is done away with entirely in the new system with little
thing. Actually, I swapped it for AH’s Stalingrad. Now that we managed loss in detail. A squad now has five ‘steps’ instead of the original ten or so,
to play. each represented by a ‘man’ in the former edition. A squad can be in its
Our readers are so devilishly smart I know you’ve already guessed the ‘fresh’ state, marked with a casualty marker, flipped to its reduced side,
story doesn’t end here. Sure, Stalingrad was fun. And easy. But the unre- flipped and marked with casualties, and eliminated. This comes down to
quited love with actually riding in my very own tank courtesy of TOBRUK accounting for every two men worth of casualties. Considering that over
just would not go away. Quite the contrary. It grew. Until finally, newly- half the categories on the original Casualty Table resulted in 2-9 casual-
earned greenbacks in hand I found myself back on East Post Road, in a ties, one can argue that we lose nothing in the new translation.
brisk gait passing the amazingly sun-faded plastic models languishing in More written records were required when firing tanks at one another, the
the display window since before the first Walther was born. I had a date very heart of the game. Same for guns engaging tanks. Each target had to
with TOBRUK. There would be another bite at the apple for this young be listed on a target roster pad in order that the proper rate-of-fire, initial or
man. acquired, could be used for subsequent shots. This slowed the game down
My very own TOBRUK. Well, not exactly. It wasn’t the same copy I had quite a bit, as even a court reporter needs to commit something to the page
returned. But it would be mine. As I type these words my ‘Copyright 1975’ to assist one’s memory. Even broken and surrendered units had to be me-
copy of the game is sitting on my desk, next to my dog-eared copy of Fire morialized to identify their status.
& Movement, issue Number One. Picked the latter up new at the hobby The entire load of note-taking has been lifted from the players shoulders
shop too. This time around I had set my teeth to getting this game. As in by the new Advanced Tobruk System. Burst-On-Target markers are used
learning it and playing it. And my pals had been sold on the idea, albeit as to mark acquired targets. There are markers for casualties, broken, and
long as my cash was put on the barrelhead. It wasn’t long before the sec- surrendered status. And infantry can’t ‘run’ for two turns in a row, as in the
ond ‘bite at the apple’ paid off and we all became Tobruk fans. Plenty of original game. Now there is just a ‘winded’ counter to mark these tired
face-to-face and play-by-mail followed. It was a keeper. men with. A plentiful supply of marker counters is provided, practically
Moving forward twenty years found this writer at the National Archives eliminating the need for record keeping, such that it is not an integral part
buried in the still photo department when an acquaintance on hand asked if of game play any longer. This serves to speed things up dramatically.
I’d like to meet Tom Jentz and Hal Hock. A brief introduction to Mister Another benefit is accrued from the extensive use of marker counters in
Jentz followed an interesting and cordial session with Hal that led to more Advanced Tobruk. Players can simply scan the ‘battlefield’ and instantly
conversation at dinner at Hal’s choice (he was buying), a Ruth Chris see just who is broken, winded, surrendered, and more importantly, gun-
Steakhouse in Georgetown. On the way there Hal was putting his new fire can be tallied up easily without taking one’s eyes, or attention, off the
Ford Taurus SHO (mutual car-guy thing going) through its paces when as map. This is no minor point. The ability to review the status of your units
an aside, he said, “you know I have the rights to Tobruk back.” Later a on the game map allows for an enhanced ability to play the game well. The
letter from Thomas Shaw legally returning all rights was duly produced combat potential of each unit, and more importantly the corporate poten-

2
tial of your on-map forces in keeping with their myriad capabilities simply
cannot be understated. And my designer’s intent is for players to seek the
rewards of playing the game as experts. That’s one reason for the inclusion
of two dozen carefully picked and documented scenarios. That’s part of
the ‘throwback’ approach. Instead of a mountain of unremarkable scenarios
that may never get played, and certainly never get played more than once,
the plan is to move the conversation to picking apart every nuance of a
smaller, more compelling, batch of actions.
The shell vs. armor plate system is new and intuitive. Our collective hats
are tipped to Lorrin Bird, co-author of World War II Ballistics: Armor and
Gunnery (Overmatch Press; 2001). His tome combines original research
with an extensive compilation of government ordnance and ballistics data.
Our new system literally jumped from the pages of the book. The armor
for each tank is rated using nine armor factors, cross-referencing front,
side and rear with turret, upper hull (superstructure) and lower hull as-
pects. A track hit can also be obtained. Armor factors are the thickness at
that aspect (adjusted to zero degrees using Hal Hocks’s favorite slope ef-
fects data) in millimeters divided by ten. Gun penetration is also in milli-
meters at specific ranges, also divided by ten. The K-KILL table brings it
all together, and is based on the penetration probability data from U.S.
tests presented in Bird’s book—modified for ‘real world’ effects at the
advice of the author himself.
Bringing it all together results in a very different approach from the origi-
nal edition. Appearances may be deceiving on that score, though. Upon
closer review one will note the exact same results are available in terms of
tank warfare outcomes. AFVs may be K-KILL, F-KILL or M-KILL vic-
tims. Tank crews may also bail out in certain situations. When combined
with the feel of hitting tanks on specific facings and aspects, this all starts
feeling a lot like Tobruk. Abeit without a thousand dice rolls.
The issue of game length has also been re-worked with the 90-second game BECOME A DYED-IN-THE-
turn. Simply put, scenarios are much shorter than before and game play
takes a fraction of the time it used to. In the new game, a short platoon-
WOOL ‘DESERT RAT’
level action can actually be played during lunch hour. Advanced Tobruk is a new tactical-level game system
Advanced Tobruk is not just a tank game any longer. It is designed with and has its own learning curve that needs to be trav-
the express intent to use the system to portray infantry warfare across the elled before you can start calling yourself a true Tobruk
length and breadth of World War II and other eras. To that end while we’ve ‘desert rat’. To that end we’ve created the Advanced
been working on Tobruk our eye has always been on the need for the Tobruk GAMERS GUIDE.
system to have the flexibility to ‘move’ to other fronts. We’ll be putting
that intent into action shortly with France 1940, ‘Finland at War’, Buna, Stuffed with all the history and game play you can
and other interesting modules. Don’t worry, the desert war has lots of at- handle, the guide gets you up to speed quickly with a
tention coming as our first three Advanced Tobruk modules are in hand. move-by-move scenario replay, complete with exten-
WAVELL’S 30,000 brings alive Alan Moorehead’s The March to Tunis sive notes communicating the players rationale for each
with the 1940 British campaign against Italian forces in Egypt and Libya, move. And they’re out for victory in this heated match.
culminating at Beda Fomm. Carell’s The Foxes of the Desert comes alive We don’t want to spill the beans, BUT the game action
in the ROMMEL RE-TAKES CYRENAICA module. And El Alamein spilled over into some insane gaming that takes the
literally jumps from the pages of C.E. Lucas Phillips, Alamein in our new
word ‘competition’ to a new level. Suffice it to say ‘fog
DEVIL’S GARDEN module for Advanced Tobruk.
of war’ will be putting it mildly when you get the scoop
It is my hope that you pull on your suede boots or Rommel goggles and get
down in the sandbox with us. If you haven’t noticed by now, Advanced
in your very own copy of the Gamers Guide.
Tobruk is a turn-key miniatures system. Simply convert the 50 yard hexes Advanced Tobruk EXPANSION MODULES are now
to your measurement of choice and use the marker counters alongside your available, each featuring 12 scenarios that literally place
favorite miniatures. you in the middle of some of the most intense actions
RT in the annals of war. Each module has a theme and
includes new overlays, scenario cards, and new over-
lays, maps and counters as needed. The first three
modules are WAVELL’S 30,000 (1940 Campaign),
ROMMEL RE-TAKES CYRENAICA (April 1941) and
DEVIL’S GARDEN (El Alamein).
The best place to keep up with the latest TOBRUK ac-
tion is at our website, www.Criticalhit.com. Be sure to
sign up for our free electronic newsletter.

3
 SAMPLE AFV CARDS FROM ADVANCED TOBRUKTM

Pzkw IIIh Pzkw IIIj

CMG: 5 AP | HE | APCR CMG: 5 AP | HE | APCR
TUR: +1 | +1 BMG: 4 HE: 2 | 6 TUR: +1 | +1 BMG: 4 HE: 2 | 6
MF: 10 | 6 AAMG: na ROF: 1 MF: 10 | 6 AAMG: na ROF: 1
Armor Factors CT | T Armor Factors CT | T
TU R UH LH 50C TU R UH LH 50B
Front 4 6 7 ML: 7 Front 5 7 7 ML: 7
Side 5 3 3 Size: 0 Side 5 3 3 Size: 0
R ear 3 5 6 Tracked R ear 3 7 6 Tracked

Gun Type Ammo 0-2 5 10 15 20 25 30 40 50 60 Gun Type Ammo 0-2 5 10 15 20 25 30 40 50 60

50C AP 8 8 7 6 5 5 4 3 2 2 50B AP 10 9 8 7 6 6 5 4 3 2

50C APCR 13 12 9 8 6 5 4 3 2 1 50B APCR 15 13 11 9 7 6 5 3 2 1

Stuart I
CMG: 6 AP | -
TUR: +2 | +1 BMG: 4 HE: na
MF: 15 | 6 AAMG: 6 ROF: 1
Armor Factors
CT | T
TU R UH LH
37A
Front 4 6 6
ML: 7
Side 3 3 3
TS: +1
R ear 3 3 3

Gun Type Ammo 0-2 5 10 15 20 25 30 40 50 60

37A AP 8 7 6 5 4 4 3 3 2 1