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.