DFrom: Dave Kohr <davekohr@best.com> Subject: comments on WEG Air & Armor My original question, posed on CONSIM-L, the Contemporary folder on Consimworld, and USENET (rec.games.board and alt.games.wargames) : Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 15:49:05 -0800 (PST) From: Dave Kohr <davekohr@best.com> Subject: West End hypothetical games In a fit of wargame collecting madness 3 years back, I snagged 3 West End hypothetical NATO/Warsaw Pact games: Air Cav, Air & Armor, and Fireteam, when they were being dumped by WEG for the firesale price of $5 each. Naturally they've been sitting in the closet since, still in shrinkwrap.... I have since seen Air & Armor played, and heard multiple positive comments about it, so this one sounds like a keeper. I've heard mixed comments about Air Cav (e.g. interesting system, but it has ugly, generic counters and maps that require you to look up stats for everything based on the scenario). And I haven't heard anything about Fireteam except that it's kind of complicated. So does anybody have any more opinions about these games? Thanks, Dave Kohr <davekohr@bestSPAMFOILER.com> Be sure to remove the SPAMFOILER! ---------------------------------------- from CONSIM-L : Markus Stumptner <mst@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> wrote on CONSIM-L on Fri, 1 Dec 2000 20:57:16 +0100 (MET): > What are your favorite new games of the last year? [big snip] And the winner is... Air & Armor by West End Games. Had this on the shelf for seven years, finally started playing it (ironically because someone on consimworld claimed the rules didn't work and I started reading them to check, then thought, hey this looks good). What I discovered was one of the best games I've ever played, all the tension and dynamics of the Gamers' OCS in a game with a quarter the playing game of the typical OCS game. Unfortunately this is one of those games which would be ok to play solo but once you've experienced the heightened atmosphere of ftf play you will not really go back. Markus ----- Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 10:03:17 -0000 From: "Karl Bown" <karlbown@hotmail.com> A friend of mine rang up last night and he mentioned that he had been looking at Air & Armor and thought it looked good, so I got out my copy last night and started reading the rules. It aims to show the different efficiencies of the WP and NATO troops through systems, rather than just giving NATO troops bigger numbers. WP regiments have to plot what they will do in each turn in advance ie Move, Assault, Hasty Assault, Reserve or Nothing. NATO regiments can decided on the fly and the game has an alternating activation system. Hopefully we will get the chance to play it next week. Karl ---------------------------------------- from Consimworld: Costello - 03:14pm Dec 3, 2000 PST (#3612 of 3677) Air and Armor's an interesting game. It simulates combat at a sort of operational/tactical level, with units down to company size and higher organization to division and corps/army. It uses an Operational Point type system to activate formations, with lots of chrome like chemical and ew warfare. It's been quite awhile since I played it, but as I recall it has an air system somewhat abstracted when compared to Tac Air, but which seems pretty accurate. There are several scenarios representing different possibilities of a NATO-Pact conflict in the Wurzburg, W. Germany area. One I recall involves an Operational Maneuver Group of the GSFG attempting to quickly penetrate NATO defenses. All the scenarios seemed clever. I've heard favorable comments about it in the past. The designer, Bruce Maxwell, also designed Victory Games "Nato-the Next War", a game somewhat simpler than Air and Armor but which I rather like a lot. -Bruce ----- From: lord_mollari@my-deja.com Subject: Re: Any opinions on "Air Cav", "Air & Armor" or "Desert Steel"? Date: 10 Nov 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <80bbev$f11$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Newsgroups: rec.games.board [....] Air and Armor is more a strategy game with tactical elements. A much larger scale than AC, eack counter represents 10 vehicles. A nice design feature is that each unit has a counter underneath representing 0-9 X the number of units! This makes for bluff and ambush situations. The attack phase is differnt from most combats in games in that it is attrition rather than kill/no kill. A unique game well designed comes with 10 scenarions, seems to represent the modern move/fire/move and adds C3 stuff. Good game.