I finally finished my solitaire game and the end result was a NATO marginal victory. The Soviets took alot of ground but the offensive ran out of fuel by about roughly along a line leading from Venlo south towards Liege. The garrison rules didn't help the Soviets in that close to 2 1/2 divisions were soaked up as garrison units (per game rules, to get credit for seizing city hexes, they have to be garrisoned by a Soviet unit- not merely have been passed through.
Overall impression: The rules and game system need some more development and polishing. Overall, things are OK but calculating the effects of terrain and interaction of the various types of units is clunky- it's not integrated very well and you constantly have to be referring to various charts and rules. It just seems clumsy and it gets tiring after awhile.
However, it's got some interesting ideas, especially in the varying combat results depending on unit quality. Also, the airpower and air transport rules are interesting with the possiblity of both sides operating at the same time at the risk of loosing points due to anti-air fire (unfortunately, the system for recording available/expended air asset points versus points permanently lost is not very functional and it requires you to keep track on scratch paper).
Whatever good qualities this game might have are lost due to the half-baked game system development and as such, it becomes just one of a large number of hypothetical NATO vs Warsaw Pact games that were churned out during the 1970s and 80s.
As such, it's probably not really worth doing a makeover on this one- there's a number of superior designs that are out there now.
Overall impression: The rules and game system need some more development and polishing. Overall, things are OK but calculating the effects of terrain and interaction of the various types of units is clunky- it's not integrated very well and you constantly have to be referring to various charts and rules. It just seems clumsy and it gets tiring after awhile.
However, it's got some interesting ideas, especially in the varying combat results depending on unit quality. Also, the airpower and air transport rules are interesting with the possiblity of both sides operating at the same time at the risk of loosing points due to anti-air fire (unfortunately, the system for recording available/expended air asset points versus points permanently lost is not very functional and it requires you to keep track on scratch paper).
Whatever good qualities this game might have are lost due to the half-baked game system development and as such, it becomes just one of a large number of hypothetical NATO vs Warsaw Pact games that were churned out during the 1970s and 80s.
As such, it's probably not really worth doing a makeover on this one- there's a number of superior designs that are out there now.
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