From: ROBERT GAMBLE Subject: Crisis: Korea 1995 - Additional Info The following should give people additional ideas regarding the flavor of the game. There are probably two major 'chrome' elements to the game, at least in my initial glance over of it. 1) Sequence of Play: There are two different sequences that can be used during the game, for now I'll focus on the standard game. If the game turn is a 'contested' turn then it looks very 'vanilla'. Weather - Air/Naval Phase - Movement & Combat - Reorganization - Reinforcement & Replacement - Victory Determination - Game Record The movement & combat phase is merely 'First Player' moves, 'First Player' attacks, 'Second Player' moves, 'Second Player' attacks. As I said, vanilla. Where it gets interesting is if one side or the other has intiative (normally North Korea Starts with it, and it's based on victory points earned per turn). If a player has intiative, then there's a First Movement & Combat Phase preceding the normal Movement & Combat phase and it looks like this. A) Initiative player moves (land/air/naval) B) Intiative player attacks C) Non-initiative player performs 'elite reaction'. Units with a certain efficiency rating are permitted to move. NO air or naval movement permitted. D) Initiative player performs exploitation movement (units not in ZOC, or light infantry are permitted to move to the extent of their allowance). E) Initiative player exploitation combat. All units permitted to attack whether they moved in D or not, at a negative column shift. F) Non-Initiative player movement segment (land/air/naval) G) Non-initiative player combat segment. As you can see, this allows the Initiative player to be _very_ aggressive. In a solitaire situation, I see no problem with this, but I do wonder if in F2F whether the non-initiative player might get bored, since there's not as much for him/her to do. 2) Special forces: North Korea in particular has numerous Special Forces assets. They achieve most of their 'specialness' in the Advanced Game where they can perform various types of missions (raiding supply dumps, HQs, etc and many more) to create havoc behind the South Korean lines. In the standard game, this is represented only by the North Korean Light infantry being permitted to attempt to infilitrate _through_ an enemy hex during movement, to an adjacent, empty hex (adjacent to that enemy hex). This could lead to some very interesting tactics in the advanced game when Supply lines come into play. If you can infiltrate numerous Light infantry behind the South Korean line (this leads me to think that the South Korean/USA player would want to keep a double line at almost all times, but if North Korea has initiative, they could cause major problems in any event), you could cut off large portions of the South Korean forces from their supply lines, and then hit them from the front of the line with the stronger units. Infiltration is also important because you receive beneficial DRMs (die roll modifiers) for attacking from 3-4, or 5-6 hexes simultaneously, and units are not allowed to end a retreat in an enemy ZOC (instead they take step losses). Add to the special forces the normal paradrops and amphibious assaults both sides can do, and this leads to a very fluid situation with confused battle lines. So, based on reading the rules, briefly fiddling with the system in the first scenarion, it seems that many of the games (at least that start at the 'beginning' of a war - and they include various levels of involvement from the USA and China, which of course have their own units), likely will fall into the following pattern. Start of Game: North Korea attacks as hard and as fast as it can since it has the initiative. Hopes for a strong knockout punch (due to some automatic victory conditions that require a roll to see if the other side surrenders) and attempts to keep the initiative while doing so, before reinforcements can even the score along with sea control moving to the South Korean player and air superiority switching to the other side. South Korea and USA attempt to minimize the damage, blunt the attacks, and hold on until air and sea superiority switches to their side. Mid Game: If it's gotten to this point, the North Korean player probably is sweating. Not a foregone conclusion that the other side will win, but with the greater capability for amphibious assaults and naval + air control being against North Korea, it will take ingenious, sometimes desperate maneuvers to gain initiative (this is where the Special Forces will be most useful), or at least keep the other side from gaining it. End Game: North Korean player is probably now just trying to minimize the victory level the other side will get unless their efforts in the Mid Game were successful. I would bet that this is a game of many psychological highs and lows, with the initiative switches, the special forces and the like. If anyone else has played this, especially F2F (but solitaire too is of course welcomed), I'd love to hear of any experiences with it. One rules question. When it comes to the Paradrop rules it says to trace a line of hexes from the airborne unit to any hex not containing an enemy unit, and this path may not pass through an enemy unit. Is this line of hexes confined to land, or can it travel over ocean hexes? I would _imagine_ it would be logical to allow travel across sea hexes, but am making sure I haven't missed a rule. Robert