Angola '87

I had a chance to finally try out Angola '87 and was favorably impressed- kudos to the designer Joe Miranda!

I played it solitaire so admittedly there's all the inherent flaws but it still was pretty good and very fast-moving. It's a see-saw battle like others have pointed out and the airpower greatly helps the South African player. However, I somewhat disagree on the usefulness of Communist airpower- while true it doesn't really help the ground war, it was useful for disrupting artillery and reinforcements. At two key moments I was able to use bombardment attacks on the South African artillery and successfully suppressed them. Also it delayed part of the 82nd Brigade from arriving to throw its weight into the attack.

I do have to agree that there's a slight edge to the South African but not a deal-breaker. I will have to play this one some more but overall, I like what I see.

The second time a played Angola '87 solitaire, the result was vastly different for the South Africans. In short, it was a slaughterhouse with the Communists destroying a significant number of SADF units.

What really hurt was that most of the destruction occurred in two turns where the random event table rolled up "UN Focused on Angola" which in game terms means that the victory points for destroyed units are doubled (4 SADF units destroyed x 6 points each). The Communists were so far ahead in points that they even deployed the two East German special forces units at the cost of 8 victory points and still were way out in front. To add insult to injury, the Communists were able to use the E. Germans on the last game turn in an encirclement move and managed to destroy another 3 SADF units.

The lesson learned here is: ZOCs are everything and be careful how you deploy your troops. Also, don't be greedy for big encirclement battles utlizing airmobile forces if they're exposed to counterattack- I got pretty cockey with the airborne and commando units and got nailed.

I beginning to like this game more- it's tough and you really have to be on your toes- it's pretty unforgiving if you make a mistake.