The Bulge (FAB)

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From Rick Young, designer of Europe Engulfed, comes a series of fun, tense block games. The Fast Action Battle (FAB) games place you and your opponent in the roles of field commanders for memorable 20th Century battles. FAB games focus on speed and playability with low-unit density while keeping the history both accurate and exciting.

Volume 1: The Bulge brings you the Battle of the Bulge from December 16th through December 27th. You command the division and brigade level units using the historical orders of battle. Like Bradley and Montgomery or Model, you order your forces to key points, and decide how and when to order extra Assets to bolster them. There are never enough of these Assets to give to all the units begging for them, so you need to weigh your decisions carefully. FAB games also make use of Special Actions, which allow the players’ opportunities to the turn the tables on one another throughout the game.

FAB delivers an exciting new blend of units and decisions to the block game genre: your forces are a mixture of wooden blocks and die-cut counters. This blend allows players to face tough command decision choices in a fresh new way.

For example in The Bulge, students of the battle will expect to find special handling for the various elements of Operation Greif involving desperate attempts to confuse the American units behind the front lines. These Events represent unique opportunities which you can use to influence the outcome, although you cannot count on exactly when these opportunities will be available to you.

Another strong element of FAB is the Special Actions, which have been proven in GMT’s Europe Engulfed design to give flexible, exciting game play. Special Actions give you tense choices in deciding how and when to seize initiative or interfere with a sudden move by your opponent. Should you hold a division back at a key crossroad waiting to see which country path an enemy armored division will plunge down? Should you rally the beleaguered but defiant defenders (instead of more conservatively placing another reserve division at a key undefended road junction)?

You can play an entire large-scale battle in one evening, using intuitive mechanisms that give you the experience of making bold decisions (or facing crippling indecision) – centered in a historically accurate setting. The system is designed to simulate battles and invasions in all 20th Century theaters. As the series moves to these different theaters, new types of assets will be developed to match the specifics of those theaters (Seabees, sappers, commandos, etc.).

Volume 1: The Bulge contains the following scenarios:

“River Dance” (the campaign game covering all 12 days), which plays in 4-5 hours once players have mastered the game’s systems, and gives both sides the chance to attack and defend.

“To the Meuse” (a three hour Tournament Scenario covering the 16th through the 21st of December).

Blocks: your divisions and brigades are multi-step wooden blocks with printed labels on one side only, with step-losses represented by rotating the blocks. This feature of the blocks evokes a strong sense of the “fog of war” for players.

FAB delivers a new twist on units: The pips on the edges of the blocks are color coded to represent troop quality, which can change as a Division suffers losses. Elite Units can lose their edge and become Veteran, while Green Units can harden and become Veteran as they experience the strains of combat.

Counters: Die-cut counters represent (1) additional Assets available to you as the Field Commander and (2) major Events that could have or did occur during the battle.

Assets represent engineers, army level artillery, independent armor and infantry regiments/battalions, and other small units that can be temporarily assigned to the battles that you deem important to your strategy.

Randomly drawn Events provide units or actions such as divisional replacements, air strikes, interdiction teams, and parachute drops.