John Vinal - 06:34am May 8, 1999 PST (#1568 of 1568) Has anyone played either of Perry Moores recent titles Death & Destruction or Death To The Soviet? If so what did you think? I just received the Iran-Iraq game, and I haven+t had a chance to play it. I have played the Panjshir Valley game once, which makes me an unqualified expert :-) The Soviet units come on the map and try to capture cities and towns and kill Afghan units. The Afghan player tries to kill the Soviet ground units and air units. Victory points are awarded for these objectives. The Soviet player must score at least 110 more points than the Afghan player for a victory. In the game I played, I killed lots of Afghan units but lost badly, because I did not realize a cardinal rule: The Soviet player must not lose any units at all, if it can be helped. The Afghan units are basically guerillas, along with a Massoud (their leader) counter. The Soviet player has ground troops, jet planes, and helicopters. Besides moving from hex to hex, the Afghan units have to capability to -jump- to a particular hex. If an Afghan unit is in the zone of control of an adjacent Soviet unit, it must roll for evasion first. When a Soviet player is moving his units, he has the option of moving into hexes occupied by Afghan units and having a firefight. The Afghan player attacks first, then the Soviet player. If the Afghan player chooses not to attack, or the Afghan units are destroyed, the Soviet unit can continue to move. Firefights are part of movement; there is the normal combat phases later on in the turn. There are no defense strengths as such. There are die roll modifiers for the defenders, depending on the terrain they occupy. So the attacker rolls the die, selects the appropriate column on the combat table based on the number of attack factors involved, modifies the die roll in accordance with the terrain, and sees if he did any good. The Afghan player is provided with weapons counters to aid him during an attack. Weapons counters that are lost due to combat may re-enter the game by infiltration. The Soviet player can hinder the infiltration with his air units (I suggest that the Soviet player max out on the air units he commits against infiltration). Another wrinkle is that the Soviet player starts with an allotment of ammunition points. Firing weapons and flying aircraft burn up ammunition. When the points are used up, well, you can still move. The Soviet player can use gas during an attack. The gas negates terrain benefits, but each use of gas costs a big, fat, 20 ammunition points. Other tid-bits: The Soviet player also has three air assault units that may fly in on helicopter, drop to the ground, and conduct a ground attack. The Afghan player can lay land mines. As I said earlier, it is imperative that the Soviet player avoid losing units. Soviet units take step reduction (Afghan units have only one step). If a unit is getting near bottom, move him to a place where the Afghans can+t get him (unfortunately, they can+t be moved off the board). The Afghans can shoot surface to air missiles at the helicopters and jets. They can+t destroy the jets, only force them to abort. But whatever you do, don+t move a helicopter within range of a missile unit! You can+t take the chance of losing it. Basically, I would recommend it. It does a good job simulating the situations the Soviets and Afghans faced. My only quibble about the game is the rules. There are some glitches, and I had to get clarification from Perry on a few matters. Some parts could use more explanation, and an example or two wouldn+t hurt. Also, whoever typed up the rules really messed up numbering the headings, but we can live with that. In case you didn+t know, Perry designed a similar game simply called Afghanistan. It+s available from Boulder Games. He also has a brand new one out called Vital Ground. It+s about the German counterattack on 7 June 1944. For more info, his web site is www.jps.net/perrya/