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Introduction
The Second World War. The Western Front. The Belgian-Dutch border.
Landing in Normandy on the 6th June 1944 in the daring and spectacular amphibious military operation known as “D-Day”, Allied Forces proceeded, at great cost, to push the German Army back through France; Paris was liberated in August and the Allies continued to move east.
“But with the Allied victories came problems…”
And with that, which was one of the opening lines to the blockbuster 1977 Second World Film A Bridge Too Far, the context behind this game can be found. The opening narration to the film explained that supplies still had to be driven from Normandy, over four hundred miles away, and became desperately short. What’s more, two of the Allied Forces most famous generals, the British Montgomery in the north, and the American Patton in the south, disliked each other intently. With their rivalry at its fiercest, there were simply not enough supplies for both armies as each wanted to beat the other to Berlin. Add in another general, Bradley, and if a fourth player is available, one more general can join the Race to the Rhine!
Object of the Game
Designed for 1 – 4 players and aged 14 and up, Keep ‘Em Rolling! Race to the Rhine 1944 is about being the first Allied general to reach your designated victory space – a tricky endeavour.
The game itself is actually very simple: move your playing pieces, in this case, army corps formations represented by coloured wooden blocks with historical unit insignia on them, towards the Rhine River and Germany. If you go too fast and are unable to truck enough supplies to the frontline, you risk over-extending your supply lines. If you carry too much fuel and not enough ammunition you will likely be unable to break through the German defences when they are encountered. If you carry too much ammunition and not enough fuel then your advance will literally run out of gas. But even carrying enough fuel and ammunition won’t help you if you neglect to bring rations along with you, as when the refresh phase happens you will be unable to do anything at all until you have fed the troops.
Keep ‘Em Rolling! Race to the Rhine 1944 is very much a game of logistical planning and moving as fast and as far as the flow of supplies permit. Go too slow and see your rivals claim precious medal-winning locations before you do, but overrun your supply lines by going too fast, too soon, and you will eventually see your more pragmatic rivals over-take you in a “tortoise and hare” scenario. What’s more, the Germans are no longer retreating at this moment in the war, and the longer the Allies take to advance, the more organised and stronger the enemy defences will be as Germany comes into view, creating additional problems on your path to victory.
Components
PHALANX have enhanced what was already a well-developed and designed game by not only adding a standalone solitaire game and a fourth player to what was previously designed for three players, but by upgrading the components just enough to make this a more polished edition. The most notable improvement is in the layout of the rule book, which is worded better than the 2014 edition and provides some useful examples and optional rules that are worth including when playing.
Gameplay
Once turn order has been established, each player takes it in turn to perform two actions (or three if they have a bonus card achieved through play). Actions include moving their corps blocks by burning one fuel drum; adding supplies of one of each type or three of one type to their main supply base; taking trucks from the truck supply; placing trucks on the board and thus moving supplies to the frontline; using air support in the form of ammunition-adding paratroopers, or sneaking a look at the next card in either of the two decks. Each time a corps moves onto a space not yet controlled by the player, that player draws a card from their pursuit deck. The deck includes cards such as provide one food in exchange for a medal to feed starving civilians, and black-market trading, in which the player may swap one resource for another. The corps may move up to three spaces before its turn ends. If a corps lands on a German-controlled space, the player draws a card from the German deck and must fight a battle. This is a simple mechanic where the corps wins if it has enough of the supplies on the German unit card to defeat it (three ammo boxes for example). Each general has a bonus action they may perform once before each refresh phase happens, which is when all trucks from supply have been drawn. At the end of a player’s turn, a German reaction counter is placed by that player, stiffening resistance for later in the game. The German counter is ideally put down somewhere away from the placing player’s front to slow a rival’s advance, after all, this is a competitive race against rival generals who are not really working together as allies to defeat the enemy. Victory is achieved by either reaching the designated victory space, or if all German counters are in play, the player with the most medals claims a victory.
At the end of the day, Keep ‘Em Rolling! Race to the Rhine 1944 is a race and resource management game that can either be seen as a light wargame, or as a war-themed game that has been tastefully and elegantly put together to highlight just a few of the issues the Allies faced in the final year of the devastating Second World War.