Operation Barclay

Description

Operation Barclay is a two-player game of low/medium complexity about the intelligence war between the Allies and their Abwehr counterparts in the Mediterranean theater in 1942-1943.

With the Axis powers ejected from North Africa, there was debate as to where the Allies might strike next. At Casablanca (January 14-24, 1943), Roosevelt and Churchill agreed the next target: Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, would begin July 9 1943 — but there was a problem. The Axis powers suspected Sicily would be the target, and knew there were deception activities in motion to attempt to mislead them about what they already knew.

On top of this, with Operation Husky already planned for early July, there was little time for Allied intelligence to work with. In these six months, Allied intelligence had to create sufficient disinformation to persuade their intelligence counterparts, the Abwehr, that the primary attack and a suspected secondary attack would be aimed elsewhere within the Mediterranean. This essential intelligence operation was dubbed “Operation Barclay”.

Operation Barclay puts players in the shoes of competing military intelligence directors who are attempting to mask or learn the truth about the Allied invasion plans for 1943. The Abwehr must attempt to learn where the Allies intend to land next. The London Controlling Section (LCS), the core intelligence agency responsible for Allied intelligence, must prevent the Abwehr from discovering the truth.

The LCS player uses a variable set-up, placing tiles face down to establish where amongst the five geo-strategic options in the Mediterranean a primary and a secondary offensive will occur. Over the course of the six game months, the Abwehr player attempts to win sufficient evidence tokens to be able to turn enough of these tiles face-up to reveal where the Allied offensives will come. Every evidence token the LCS player wins prevents another tile from being revealed.

To win evidence tokens, players build hands of five cards to take tricks, similar to poker. While having the best hand will secure two evidence tokens, correctly betting after each player reveals the first three cards of each hand on who will have the best five-card hand is worth three evidence tokens. Thus, getting and bluffing and seeding disinformation is more important than being lucky with a card draw. In addition, each player competes for another evidence token by having the most raid or reconnaissance icons on their cards.

Further, players have ways to manipulate the decks from which they draw. They may create a double-cross deck, allowing them to leave cards useful to them face down in a deck to draw from when they choose later — unless the other player takes those cards instead…but perhaps the player who planted those cards was bluffing and hoping the other player would waste their draw on a useless card…

Alternatively, players may draw from their own dedicated deck to augment their hands with unique abilities inspired by historical figures, events, and capabilities. The LCS has access to Ultra — decrypts of German codes — but this alone will not be enough if it’s not used carefully.