Thursday, December 07, 2006

East Front 2



So it finally happened. Jon and I met on Tuesday this week to play this beast (the battle front in the background.... actual active battles set aside in the foreground). What an engrossing game.

We played the Summer of 1943 scenario, which is right about the time when Russia (red blocks....me) starts pushing back the Kraut offense (evil black blocks...Jon).

I focused so much on getting the rules right....the hexside limits, the terrain effects, the weather effects, unit movement, round phases....and getting a good sense of the actual inherent power of each unit type.... that I really ignored formulating a decent strategy. Heck, we didn't even know what the victory conditions were until the actual end of the game, when we realized Jon had achieved a Major Victory (Decisive being the max). But at least we messed up probably just a couple of minor rules. It was a great learning game (bad terrain and weather can be horrible, armor units are sweet in clear terrain, use terrain to your advantage defensively, etc).

All in all, it was an amazing large scale experience of this interesting period of time, in 5hrs of gaming (with 30min just to set up the armies). I hope to play again in the not so distant future (5hrs is doable on a Monday night!), even as it faces distractors like BattleLore, Marvel, WoW expansion, and after 12/18 Combat Commander.

4 Comments:

At 4:38 AM, December 08, 2006, Blogger Ben said...

Don't forget Dunwich Horror, Descent Well of Darkness, and TI:3 Shattered Empire as distractors!

In the mean time, I'm totally interested in playing. Are the rules on-line? I have a few airplane rides to get up to nuclear missile country in Wyoming this weekend and snuggling up with EF2 sounds like a good use of downtime.

 
At 8:48 AM, December 08, 2006, Blogger Rob said...

It is online, but with no map, it may be a bit hard for some concepts. It's a relatively simple map, so you'd have to at least take a look at the different terrain stuff. With a little bit of imagination, it shouldn't be that hard.

 
At 7:42 PM, December 08, 2006, Blogger Ted said...

I'm anxious to play EF F2F. I've done some solo, and it was really cool.

Chris Farrell (sp?) loves it like crazy, saying that it's got great decisions at several levels: tactical (hexside limits), operational (which HQs to activate), and strategic (how to spend PP).

 
At 11:44 PM, December 08, 2006, Blogger Rob said...

ahhhh....poetry to my ears. Seriously, all very true. You'll see all that while truly enjoying the 'large-scaledness' of the game.

 

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