To some degree, all wargames are hypothetical. Even the most detailed simulation of an actual, historic conflict, with lavishly researched orders of battle and start lines, festooned with elaborate rules governing supply, morale, command and control, and a hundred other factors, deviates from history—becomes hypothetical—the moment a player moves a unit or rolls a die. History has changed, and everything from that point becomes conjectural. And yet what is typically understood as a hypothetical wargame, simulating a conflict that did not actually happen, tends to be devalued in the hobby despite potentially providing the same types of lessons and insights that other, historically-grounded wargames can, at their best, deliver. Though many wargamers carve out an exception to this rule for games on a (thankfully) potential Third World War and its ancillary engagements, titles depicting imaginary conflicts don’t tend to land well with the buying public.
It’s little surprise, then, that many hypothetical wargames come to market not as boxed games but as magazine games, given the lower price point and, one must confess, lower expectations that come with the format. Yet for that very reason, magazine games offer a fertile canvas for experimentation with approaches as well as topics. Thus we have Operación Backbone: La Invasión Aliada del Protectorado, 1942-43, from Spanish publishers Ludopress via their wargaming magazine Alea. The Allies drafted Operation Backbone, an invasion of Spanish Morocco in December 1942, in order to retain British control of Gibraltar and secure access to the Mediterranean should Spain have allied with, or been invaded by, Germany. In the event, such fears came to naught, and Operation Torch, with its invasion of Vichy French holdings in North Africa, takes place in the same time frame without spreading to the Spanish Protectorate. Operación Backbone is, it perhaps goes without saying, the only game to focus exclusively on this topic—the Europa module Spain and Portugal allows gamers to engage Spanish forces in Morocco, albeit with a much broader brush as a smaller part of an Allied invasion of the Iberian Peninsula—but does such uniqueness provide enough justification, enough insight into what would have been a significant alteration in the course of the Second World War in the European theater, to merit a spot on the table?
Overview
Operación Backbone: La Invasión Aliada del Protectorado, 1942-43
Ludopress, 2021
Alea 37
Designed by Antonio Rodríguez
Operación Backbone appears as the issue game in Alea 37 (September 2021) accompanied by a sheet of 144 die-cut half-inch counters, sixteen of which are variant counters for fellow Spanish publisher SNAFU Design’s Ambon and Batalla a les Illes Formiguesa, along with a semi-matte paper map measuring a bespoke 16″ x 23″, close to but not quite A2 sized. The game covers the hypothetical efforts of several US and UK divisions to invade the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco as a response to Spain allying with Germany and thus threatening Gibraltar and Allied access to the Mediterranean Sea. Operation Torch has already been carried out in this alternate timeline, as American forces begin the game in the base scenario well-established across French Morocco from Port Lyautey (Kenitra) to Taourirt. Operations in Gibraltar or mainland Spain fall outside the game’s scope.
Units are mostly regiments for the American, Spanish, and German forces, and brigades for the British, with a few company sized units in play as well, using standard NATO symbols color-coded to denote higher formation affiliations. A small flag flash adorns the bottom right corner of each unit counter to denote nationality, which is also designated by counter color; the corner ornamentation adds a bit of unwelcome busyness to the counter for my taste, which hews to the utilitarian in such matters, but judged by the standards of contemporary counters from some publishers, with their ornate watermarks and garish color schemes, it’s a minor quibble. Air and naval power is abstracted into points that are simply applied to combats as modifiers.
All ground units bear historical designations. In his design notes, Antonio Rodríguez indicates that he used the forces allocated for Torch as the basis for the Allied order of battle, which seems quite reasonable given the similarity in mission taskings, training, and theater presences. Likewise, the Spanish forces come from those actually in the Spanish Protectorate at the time, forming a well-grounded set of assumptions for this hypothetical conflict.
