From: John Best Subject: Poland 39 (ex: Command 11-20) Daniel Thorpe expressed his reaction to the game, and his disappointment extremely cogently: >Poland '39 - After being defeated by Case White with its enormous number of >sub-divisional unit counters, enormous number of unnecessary air rules (for >this one sided battle, anyway), and enormous wasted map space, I was really >looking forward to Poland '39. At last - a playable div-level operational >game on the campaign that started the big show. I punched my copy >mmediately upon arrival. The rules were straightforward and the components >clean and good looking. Half way through the first game, though, ennui >descended, and we found it an effort to keep pushing counters. It just >seemed to lack that little spark - that feeling of specificity - that makes >these things worth the work even the simplest require. As the Germans have >such overwhelming strength I think the situation requires something more >than the generic XTR WWII game system employed here; pehaps even some >Command, HQ, and Supply rules (anathema, anathema!) to show the expert >planning required of them to gain such an "easy" victory. > And Dave Townsend mentioned in his post a similar phenomenon. Just for fun, earlier tonight I got both the XTR game and the old Jagdpanther Poland game that I referred to in my earlier post. In terms of graphic quality, there was no comparison; the XTR effort is nice looking without going overboard with regard to colors on the counters. The nice Simonitch map helps the XTR game too, although by no means is it one of his best efforts in my opinion. However, regarding that "little spark" that Daniel mentioned, the XTR game still had that "tastes like chicken" aspect to it that (I think) invites the descent of ennui in the first place. The old Jagpanther game, on the other hand, while simplistic, was also idiosyncratic in enough respects to at least make a run at convincing the player that he was modeling something. Here's another point: I analyzed the strengths of the units in both games (the OBs are quite similar) and found that, in the JP game, the mean attack strength of the German units was hardly higher than the mean defense strength of the Poles' units. In the XTR game on the other hand, the mean German attack strength was almost double the mean defense strength of the Poles. To get a high odds attack in the JP game, as the German player you had to think at least well enough to make the best use of your superior mobility (ceteris paribus regarding the effects of the CRTs in each game). In the XTR game, I found that I could put the Germans "on auto-pilot", do almost anything with them, and win without breaking a sweat. Once again I agree with Daniel's implied point: In playing the XTR game, my opinion was that the designer tweaked the most obvious parameter to make the game produce the historical outcome, namely, turn up the volume on German attack strength counter values until they overpower the Poles with main force. Sound like Blitzkrieg warfare to you? No, not to me either. Thanks for reading. John Best jlbest@tuscola.net