Took the new Crusader Rex out for a spin

Game Store Tony provided the willing Guinea Pig for a play through of the newest version of Crusader Rex. While he'd played block games before, he'd never played this game or its earlier versions. Your truly had played the earlier versions a couple of times, but this was the first outing for the new edition.

Overall, my impression of the new game is that it plays well and seems more strategic in a good sense. Now that most of the units can return if eliminated (only the military orders and Saladin's family are permanently dead) there's not the severe unit shortages that could occur in the old version.

Well, at least, there's not inherently unit shortages. In our particular game Tony's Crusaders lost two early battles with devastating losses and this put his side down for the count early. He made a valiant effort to come back and did manage to conquer Egypt briefly and dispatch two of Saladin's relatives, but before long the green blocks seemed to be everywhere. Frederick Barbarossa showed up, but we called the game before playing the final year because it was obvious the westerners had no hope of success. The Muslim's held six of the seven victory cities and were in enough strength up north that there was little chance of Barbarossa taking even one -- and every chance he might lose the one he guarded.

My aim is to get it back on the table in early 2012 and see how I cna do with the Outremers.

Axis & Allies miniatures Crusader tanks

I will be posting, on an occasional basis, musings about particular pieces in the Axis & Allies series of miniatures.

As with most early war British tank designs, the Crusader only managed to be good in one of the three defining characteristics of a tank -- mobility, firepower and protection. It's forte was speed, but it was badly underarmed and ill-protected. This stemmed from the British tank doctrine which divided armor into two roles heavily armored but slow "Infantry" tanks for breakthroughs and infantry support and speedy, lightly armored "cruiser" tanks for exploitation. This might have worked better if the British had been able to provide their tanks with a good gun, but the 2-pounder gun used on nearly all early war British tanks was simply too small to reliably penetrate the armor of medium tanks and it lacked a high-explosive round making it nearly useless against infantry.

Later versions of the Crusader had the 6-pounder gun, which was an improvement over the 2-pounder but compared poorly with the 75mm/76mm guns being used on equivalent foreign tanks.

The Crusader had a substantial production run, with more than 5,000 of all versions made. In Axis & Allies Miniatures the Crusader is identified as the Crusader II, although the model in the Base Set actually appears to be a Crusader I because it has the small machine gun turrets of that mark. The North Africa set version does appear to be a Crusader II.

Base Set Crusader II

Stats:

Rarity: Rare

Speed: 4

Defense: 4/3

Cost: 11

Attacks vs troops at short-medium-long ranges:

5-5-4

Attacks vs vehicles at short-medium-long ranges:

9-8-6

Special abilities

Vanguard — After both armies are deployed, this unit can move at speed 4 before the first turn begins.

Prone to Breakdown — This unit can’t move while damaged.

North Africa Set Crusader II

Historical text:


Thanks to their speed, many Crusaders fought in the North African Campaign despite being mechanically unreliable.


The unit in history: The Crusader was meant to be an improvement on earlier British cruiser tanks as a "heavy" cruiser tank. compared to earlier cruiser tanks it had more armor, although it was still vulnerable to the most common German antitank weapons. Unfortunately the new tank proved to be unreliable under desert conditions with problems with the air filters and fans. Overall it was an interim design in the continuing British search for a fast tank that still had reasonable combat power.

The unit in the game: The Vanguard special ability allows the player to get a positional jump on the enemy, but the combat power of the Crusader is really too marginal to make optimal use of the ability. It's defense is too weak to hold any objective it might seize and it's firepower inadequate to deal with either tanks or infantry. About the best thing that can be said about the Crusader is that it's an inexpensive unit and the player can afford several. Overall though, the Vanguard ability is put to much better use by the Cromwell tank. Unfortunately that's not available until 1944 and the Crusader has to do until then.

Crusader Rex review

Crusader Rex is in the family of Columbia Games titles related to its very popular Hammer of the Scots. There are enough significant differences between the two that you couldn't call them sister games or part of a system, but they're at least cousins.

This is hardly surprising, as lead CR designer Jerry Taylor also designed HOTS. It's not a straight copy however. While both games are set in the Middle Ages, there are important differences in geography, culture and the historical situation that result in a very different game environment. Whee the games are most similar is in basic game procedures for movement and combat.

Crusader Rex is a block wargame, which means it uses wooden blocks to represent the combat units. The blocks are usually on the map placed on edge, so the owning player can see the current strength while the opposing player simply sees a block, Stratego-style. This provides a lot of scope for bluff and fog of war, especially because the strength of the opposing pieces can vary from 1 to 4 in combat value, depending upon which edge of the block is uppermost.

This elegant combination of fog-of-war and step reduction is the distinguishing feature of the block wargame genre and Crusader Rex makes good use of it. The combat ability of the block can vary considerably and both armies have much more territory to cover than troops available t do it properly, so there's a lot of scope for strategy.

The engine driving the game turn are event and move cards. Each turn six are dealt to every player and players use those cards to order moves by 1-3 groups of units from point to point. When friendly and opposing units occupy the same place there's a battle (or sometimes a siege) that involves up to four rounds of combat where units battle against each other.

There are significant differences between the rules in their currents state and the rules originally included with the game. Columbia Games is a big believer in "living rules" and the most up-to-date version of the rules for every game is available online as a free download. While overall a benefit to the player, one sometimes wonders if game companies using this policy aren't tempted to skimp a bit on the playtesting, figuring they can always fix it later.

In the case of Crusader Rex there have been major changes in the rules, especially as they relate to Saracen deployment. For both sides the majority of units are now permanently eliminated from the game when they lose their last step, which is a change from before when only select elite units were gone for good. The number of "nomad" Saracen units drawn at start has also been changed-- now 4, before it was 6.

These adjustments seems to have solved some early play balance problems, so they are welcome, although it would have been better to have discovered it before.

These changes also suggest how tenuous many design decisions may be in wargames. Many key game elements come about purely for gameplay reasons, not because of history. There may be good historical reasons to make units permanently eliminated or subject to being drawn again, but evidently they didn't come into play here. History-minded players should keep in mind the compromises that game play may require before getting too dogm,atic about what's "realistic" in a wargame and what is not.