Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 10:32:00 EST From: Dave_Wetzel@VOS.STRATUS.COM Subject: Review Here's a reivew of AH's Red Baracades I posted several moons ago: What we've been playing mostly is Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader (yeah, we coughed up tons of dough for it). In particular we've been doing a campaign of Red Barricades. It's terrific! It's a campaign system where you play out a series of senarios in the factories of Stalingrad, doing both tactical and (somewhat) strategic planning. You've got to plan out what companies (Infantry companies generally have 12 squads if you have the luck of getting them full-strength; 9 squads if they're depleated) of reinforcements you'll need for the next day. You can buy AFV's, Off-Board Artillery, on-board Artillery and Anti-Tank guns, Infantry, Assault Engineers, Conscripts (Russian only), fortifications, and the right to recon your opponent. Then decide on wheither you want to attack. If both sides choose to be idle, you buy more stuff. When one (or both) choose attack, you play out a senario. At the end of the senario, you draw out (on a copy of the map) a perimeter line for the next day's action. The perimeter may create pockets of issolated units which will be around (though with ammo shortage) next time. Another thing I like about RB is that the map (though unmounted: boo hiss) has larger hexes than regular ASL maps. This is great when half a stack is broken and you want to remember to rout out only those guys; or when you've got people on two levels; or when you're split-firing; or when you plan to move half the stack out of the hex; or .... The only negative I can come up with (ignoring cost) is that it takes so long to play out a senario. That's mostly because of the size of the map you have to defend/take and the number of units per side. At first (when the german is entering the map) we could do a senario in about 5 hours, now it takes about 10 to 12. I can recommend highly the HASL system (Historical ASL: basically the rules for stringing along a series of senarios to form a campagin). I'm told next will be an HASL game for the Bulge featuring 6 RB-sized maps (the two maps for RB take up my whole dinning room table!) If I had it all to do again, I'ld probably not have bought half the ASL stuff I have, but just the Rules Book, Beyond Valor (to get german and russian counters), and RB. Those three are all you need to play the game by the way; AH must be slipping, you don't need something from every module released so far (although the Chapter E weather rules are important)! Dave Wetzel