Sirocco - Desert Raiders Battle Game

The rather garish box lid….

….and the underside.

The playing surface - note the use of offset rectangles. You can see the airfield and supply dump - vital for the basic game victory conditions.

One of the games that was included in the humongous bundle I acquired a couple of years back was Sirocco, published by TSR Inc. The game is described as follows:

“In 1943, General George Patton’s 2nd Corps fought a see-saw battle with Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in Tunisia. The SIROCCO game allows two players to recreate a portion of this epic desert clash by manoeuvring plastic pieces representing German and American troops and vehicles across a game board depicting a portion of North Africa.”

It the goes on to state that in order to win the game: “The first player to move his general onto his opponent’s supply dump or airfield, or eliminate the opposing general, wins the game” although this applies only to the basic game, the ‘Masters’ version has victory points among the scenarios instead.

Samples of the command cards

The game uses cards to regulate orders and they tell you how far you are able to move so for example, a card that says ‘Tank 3’ means that you can move all your tanks three spaces. Players have a hand of five cards and a reserve of three. You can play two cards a turn or five if you call into play your reserve hand. Combat in the basic game is solely against adjacent enemy pieces and uses d6 (varying depending on the unit type) with only two outcomes - the attacker wins, in which case the enemy unit is destroyed or there is a tie, in which case the attacked player has to retreat two spaces. The advanced rules allow ranged anti tank combat, terrain modifiers, concentrated units (two units occupying a space opposed to the one in the basic game), supply, command ranges, minefields, troop quality and hidden units. there is also a form of step reduction in that a destroyed tank is replaced by a jeep which is in turn is replaced by a foot soldier. That would be easily changed by the simple expedient of reducing the combat dice for each loss rather than changing the troop type.

The components are basic and so alongside the mounted map board  - the map could have used terrain overlays rather than printed for more variety - there is a deck of 54 command cards, 6D6, and 82 plastic playing pieces: 20 tanks, 16 jeeps, 12 AT guns, 32 infantry and 2 generals. In truth these plastic playing pieces are truly horrible! 

These are the playing pieces - essentially thick profile views made from polythene. They are truly ghastly!

When you consider that when this game was released in 1985, Axis and Allies, with all those useful plastic pieces was also available. You have to wonder what TSR were thinking of releasing a game with such abysmal playing pieces especially as they had produced their own figures etc for other rules and games. Perhaps the production budget had been reached - who knows?

In many ways this game puts me in mind of Memoir ‘44 but without the ‘stuck with cards for the wrong sector’ effect - a cause of perennial angst amongst seasoned Memoir ‘44 players! Seriously though, in a light wargame way this game has much to commend it - fast playing, straightforward game mechanics and eminently suitable for expansion into other theatres.

So what am I going to do with this then? I will definitely be playing it although I have plans to replace the playing pieces with 3mm models which will improve the look immeasurably. I would probably replace some of the jeeps with lorries and factor in some transport and towing rules and would look to produce a play sheet at some point.

There you have it, a quick m cheap and cheerful light wargame for WW2 in the desert (it could easily be used for the steppe of the eastern front methinks) and certainly a game that was in many ways ahead of its time.