Norman Smith - Mar 10, 2010 9:40 am (3840.) "Nothing save for a battle lost is so terrible as a battle won" - Wellington on the field of Waterloo. Out of the Wrapper .... Korsun I am just setting up to play, so thought I would do an 'out of the wrapper' blurb. Well this game travelled right around the globe to reach me. It did so promptly and on arrival, it was in very good condition, mainly thanks to Chris adding a thick piece of carton card inside the package to keep it rigid. I love getting DTP products as I am always fascinated how the publisher has gone about jumping the various hurdles of getting a design printed to get the best physical outcome they can. The game is ziplocked and the cover is a Black & White title sheet with a couple of period photo's on the front. On the rear are the designers notes, which are an iteresting read. There is a double sided setup sheet (pastel coloured light card) with setup notes on one side and the reinforcement schedule on the other. The game charts come on a single sheet of light card, at the top is the turn track record (13 turns), which is designed to be cut off and used independently. The remainder of the card has the CRT and the terrain charts. This is effectively a black & white card, but the terrain types are shown in full colour in a narrow strip down the side of the terrain table and this gives a really nice effect, good use of a colour splash. The counters come ready mounted but not die cut. This is a good step forward for a DTP product as so many people are adverse to the potentially messy task of gluing up counters. I cut mine with a blade and steel rule into strips and then used good scissors to snip each counter off. the scissor action can leave a small kink in each counter, which can be flattened out between the fingers. The card is lighter than the standard thick game counters that come with commercial games but this is a good move as it strikes the right balance between being fine for play and still relatively easy to cut by hand. I have corner clipped the counters and that really does enhance things. the unit counters are single sided but the strength markers are double sided. I really like the way that on the strength markers, cutting guidelines are on one side only, so there is NO chance of guidelines showing on the other side of the counter after being cut - in anycase, registration looks perfect as all the strength markers have their information placed dead centre on the counter on both sides. The card used for mounting is faced, so the counters have been adhered to a perfectly smooth surface, obviously some care and attention has been given by Chris in producing good counters. Thoughtfully, Chris has included 3 x ziplock bags for the counters. The rule book is just 4 pages (the actual rules are more like 3 pages really) long (A3 folded down to A4 i.e. standard sized rule set) in 2 columns. I have not read the system yet, so cannot comment at this time, but I find it impressive that a game of this size can do that - this will be very popular for those who want fast access to play. The map comes in 4 x A3 sheets, which have to be put together to make roughly an A1 sized map (i.e. the standard large map that we see in most games). Some nice textures have been used on the map to create a winter effect. as you gaze over the map, it is physically a very pleasing battleground to fight over. I used the invisible cellotape stuff to fix my maps into a single 1 piece map and I must say, I am VERY impressed at the 100% accurate way that the maps line up. There is a good weight and finish to the paper. Of note is the fact that though each map comes folded once (i.e. A3 down to A4), the creases are not heavy. i assume that Chris has gently folded by hand rather than having the printers do it - as their creases can look almost ironed in, the effect is that overall, the creases look less impactive than in some commercial games. Since I am very keen on DTP production methods, I have 'unaturally' looked very close at the map and there are some jaggies on the roads and some of the red symbols show signs of bleed (or artifacts). I assume that Chris has used bitmap graphics rather than vector but at normal viewing distances, this is not obvious. Overall - I am very pleased with this package. I am going to play out a few turns in practice for a face to face this Friday evening, so will post further thoughts then. Norman Smith - Mar 11, 2010 9:22 pm (3841.) new BookmarkEmail to FriendReply "Nothing save for a battle lost is so terrible as a battle won" - Wellington on the field of Waterloo. We had to bring our games night forward to tonight. We played for around three and a half hours and got to GT 6 (13 turn game). I reckon this is probably a 5 - 6 hour play and I will finish of the game tomorrow. solitaire. We both enjoyed the game. PHYSICAL - The game uses strength markers, placed underneath the counters to reflect losses. The hexes are large enough to ensure that there is plenty of room to make handling easy. The only thing that I would change would be to make the German counters a little more contrasty against the map background - they can tend to blend in. RULES - A lot of system has been packed into these 4 pages of rules. We made an error on GT 1, as I was letting defensive firers target individual infantry units within the stack and not properly appreciating that the entire stack was treated as either armoured or non armoured. But we soon corrected that and essentially we played most of the game without any refering back to the rules. It might be a good idea if the game had a fly sheet that just ran through and extended example of combat and multi-stacks. Overall, very good though. PLAY - The first couple of turns are very soviet orientated but after that, the game opens up, with both sides having the potential to put in some good attacks. There are lots of little localities all over the map, where little battles are being fought out, giving the feel of a spacious map and being entertaining to both players, as you might be getting trounced on one part of the map, but in one or more another parts you may be getting the upper hand. I think these little nuances will keep the game fresh over several playings. The defender gets to fire a defensive fire before the attack goes in, which is an unusual design feature and here, it works really well, as it can disrupt the attack. The casualty chart causes both players to choose between taking step losses and retreating and since VP's are based around step losees, this decision making keeps the game interesting throughout. OVERALL - Jim Zoldak has done a nice job on this design. there is plenty going on each turn and replay value looks good. I'm glad that I bought it. Norman Smith - Mar 12, 2010 4:18 am (3842.) new BookmarkEmail to FriendReply "Nothing save for a battle lost is so terrible as a battle won" - Wellington on the field of Waterloo. Adding to the above, it is now morning and I wrote the above around 1 AM when zonked! so forgive spellings and wanderings! An important aspect of the rules is the composition of the stack - if it has at least one armoured unit in it, it counts as armoured and therefore the stack gets a doubling in firepower. So at the start of the game, there are several soviet tank Corps to punch through German positions and to make great strides. For their part, the Germans just have to manage this, they have a small armour capacity but are spread thinly and it is enough of a task just to keep gaps and potential gaps covered. Once the German armour starts to arrive, then things change and the soviets start to get a taste of their own medicine - and it is interesting to see that this has a real pulling up effect on the soviet player, who has had it his own way for a few turns. It's at this point that things can break down into localised battles and your eyes have to be everywhere to spot the next potential crisis area (to either create or respond to). Within these 'armoured' stacks, losses are taken from the tank units first, so over time, aggresive tactics starts to wear down the tank formations, making them quite fragile and so there is much decision making whether to take the loss or retreat. (there are also some compulsive losses built into the CRT) It strikes me that the designer has got a lot of 'effect' out of a small ruleset, which reminds me of how John Hill and Paul Rohrbaugh go about their design style. There are plenty of terrain features on the map to keep things interesting at the local level (I was surprised to see that woods does not give a defensive benefit) and the fact that two very different things can be going on to the eastern and western sides of the pocket becomes very engaging. The victory conditions are simple but very effective (as can be said for much of the system) as everything hinges on escaping of the map AND inflicting casualties, so managing the pocket collapse / rescue / breakout makes for a very interesting puzzle. Anyway, overall, I am enjoying Korsun, I am going to treat the first game as a learning exercise, as I now better understand what the Russians need to do (and quickly). I would recommend the game, it has been well thought out and keeps the brain working throughout play.