Bill Ramsay - 04:32am Apr 27, 2000 PST (#6655 of 6681) Working on Overlord and Salerno We started a game of Tunisia 43 last evening. I have the Germans, and Scott and Ron have the Allies. Scott and I both have played Piercing the Reich. The map is a bit difficult to read (more difficult than was necessary, in my opinion). The counters are the same clear, easy to read counters as in the previous two games in the series, with one exception. In the other games, the Tank/Anti-Tank ratings were either black on white (for anti-tank) or white on black (for tank). In this game, they are both in white boxes, green for AT and red for Tank. Makes reading them much more difficult from normal viewing distance (you can tell if you look closely, but hard to see at a glance). The player aid cards aren't very easy to use, and two copies should have been provided (far too much flipping around to see which card is what, etc.). Having the three cards in three different colors would have helped, as well. The game system has changed somewhat. The previous games had you track the number of Activations a particular formation had made already, providing fewer Action Points as the Formation was used each turn. In this game, the number of Activations a Formation can use is limited to either three or four (some PtR units could do 7). However, there is no more rolling for Action Points for a particular Activation, instead, you roll for Operation Points, which are used to activate stacks of units, 1 Point per unit (2 if out of command) and the Action Points available are the lowest action point rating on the unit. Typically, tanks have 6, recon 7, infantry 3 Action Points. There's no more Refit Action, instead, when a Formation activates, all units in Command are able to automatically recover from Disruption, while units out of Command roll against their Efficiency Ratings to recover. Combat has been modified somewhat as well. In Piercing the Reich, you had to declare the type of attack (Hasty, Regular or Prepared) prior to the combat. In this game, you always declare a Hasty Attack (paying 1 Ops Point and 1 Action Point), followed by the defender choosing to Refuse Combat. If the defender chooses to stay, you can escalate the combat to either Regular (+1 OP/+1AP) or Prepared (+2/+2). Then you calculate DRMs based on Air Support (which are chits drawn from a cup), Terrain, Artillery Support, and Maneuver Unit Support (units adjacent to the combat can add DRMs). Once that's completed, you pull chits, figure out combat strengths and odds, roll dem bones, and look the result up on the table. The old CRT had disruptions built into it, the new system has both sides rolling for Disruption following the combat, using a modifier that's on the CRT. While I understand Richard Simon's complaint about this, it really is better to a certain extent, in that units that are of higher quality will have a possibility to stay effective, even if they lose, while units of lower quality will most likely not be able to continue operations. Since disruption ends an operation for a unit, it's actually quite effective in showing why you lead with good troops in the attack. In the old game, the units would all be either disrupted or not. If I had any criticism of the game systems, they would be: It's a pain in the butt looking up information on the cards. They could be better laid out, and made easier to read. The Air Support routine is simple, but could have been put on a table just as easily. For example, the German starts the game with 1 Ju88, 1 Stuka, 1 Me110 and four No Air Support markers. He draws 1 for a Hasty Attack/Defense, 2 for a Regular Attack/Defense and 3 for a Prepared Attack/Defense. The numbers printed on the counters are DRMs for the combat. The composition of the air units changes as each turn goes by, but there is no way for the Allies to shoot any down, for example, so it would have been just as easy to create a table to roll on for Air Support DRMs. Just another chit pick, but no need for it, in my opinion. The rules state somewhere near the beginning that they are different from Piercing the Reich. It would have been helpful if they had provided a summary of the differences, to make it easier for experienced players to find the differences. Piercing the Reich used a ten-sided die, while this game uses two six-sided dice. I've mentioned this in the past, but using linear DRMs on a bell-curve dice roll is a bit wacky, in my opinion (especially since the min/max DRM in the game is -10/+10). Am I having a good time playing? Yes. We're going to continue next week. The low density of the situation makes the game pretty easy to do, although we'll see how it works as more units become active. Regards, Bill