Tiny Tin Men: Raid on Zeebrugge (Crisis 2001)

For Crisis 2001, after some thinking and looking up history books, we came up with the Raid on Zeebrugge. This was a World War 1 commando-action, in which British troops stormed the mole of Zeebrugge (Belgium), and blocking ships were to be placed in the harbour entrance. This all to prevent German submarines for sailing into the Atlantic.

In reality, the raid on Zeebrugge took place entirely on the mole of the harbour, and the naval blocking action took place in the harbour entrance. We decided early on that this would not produce a very interesting game, so we extended the game to an full invasion, also involving the beaches around Zeebrugge and the harbour itself. We decided to allow an invasion with landing crafts, maybe somewhat uncharacteristic for WW1, but from a game point-of-view, the correct thing to do (In reality, troops were only put on land through big troop carrying ships on the mole). We based the layout on maps we found in a number of books covering the raid, and ened up with a wargames table measuring 2x2 meters. The initial sketches (from which we deviated significantly afterwards) can be seen below.