Description: Is Air Assault on Crete by Avalon Hill any good?? In article <2nuvjjINNiuu@uwm.edu>, Jason Christopher Pipes wrote: JP> Saw this game a few places, it looks really neat. Is it? Can you JP> decide where to drop your paratroops? what does the map look like? JP> What is the level of organization? what is the scale of the JP> map/units?? JP> JP> jpipes@csd4.csd.uwm.edu Traditional turn sequencing: Axis bombard, move, combat; then Allied movement and combat. Units have attack, defense, and movement values, as well as stacking limits. Standard terrain effects. Zones of control, but there's no mandatory attacks. Artillery have ranged fire during friendly combat, and defensive fire during enemy combat. Combat is based on ratios; there are die roll modifiers, etc. So most of the mechanics are standard. The interesting part is the German assault. They parachute in companies; the German specifies his target hex then rolls a die for each company to see where they land. The die roll is modified by AA batteries. At worst, the company will end up three hexes away from its drop zone. You can reform companies into battalions, which become stronger than the sum of their components. There are also sea-borne reinforcements, which you secretly plot, but have to roll to see if they arrive. The allied player has an amazing hodge-podgge of stuff, much of it weak (like Greek infantry and hospital units). There are three airfields on Crete. The German wins if he controls one without losing "too much," as defined by victory points for casualties taken, and without letting "too many" Allied units escape. Overall, I liked the game - its not over-complicated, but there are some cute special rules, like the parachute dropping and the sunken cruiser in Suda Bay that is a flak trap for German planes. You also get the bonus of two games in one box - mine came with Invasion of Malta (same system); I think they all did. Cliff Hansen hansen@math.gwu.edu