From: Markus Stumptner Subject: [Consim-l] Six Angles Collection/Zaporozhye 1943 I had long wondered about the Six Angles Collection (sold by Omega Games in the US), mostly because Charles Vasey gave the Gettysburg game good marks, and because one of them covers a 16th century Japanese battle (Okehazama, a surprise attack by Oda Nobunaga against another guy, Imagawa Yoshimoto). The WW2 games are afflicted with versions of the old SPI push-and-shove CRTs, must-attack-adjacent-units, and elimination-by-retreating-into-enemy-ZOC (I think I'll start referring to these as OSPASC, MAAU, and EBRIEZ whenever I encounter them), although usually combined with strict stacking limits the OSPASC can still get reasonably bloody. Nonetheless all these games are achingly beautiful - nicely textured and tastefully coloured 11x17" maps, clear, colourful counters, and all have at most six A5 pages of rules. As a result I decided all of them would be given a try, and in a tribute to their simplicity that has happened within a space of a mere two weeks. This is not a review, more a first impression. Since John Nebauer expressed interest in playing Gettysburg, I postponed that and decided to start with Zaporozhye 1943. This shows the Germans defending fortified lines protecting a city east of the Dniepr River at two turns a day (and 2km per hex). The usual Russian steamroller attack pushes against these lines all across the board and pushes the Germans back towards the city. There is a second line of fortifications near the city, but eventually the Germans have the choice of retreating their units back across the river and trying to blow the bridges and the great hydroelectric dam next to the city (which will make the swampy areas downstream of the city impassable, but their impact on play will be minimal by then). The system is move-combat with a German mechanised reaction phase to reinforce selected defending hexes. Stacking limits are generally one unit (division/regiment) per side except for the German mechanised battalions. The main other piece of chrome is the Soviet supply rules that require units to be within a certain range of their HQs (there are three Soviet corps on the map initially and two exploitation forces enter in the second half of the game, but it's not known exactly when) I was really pleased with the short rules reading time (15 minutes and you've got them down) and the short setup time (10 minutes). The English rules are fine with the occasional odd turn of phrase. Despite the dusty CRT (most results are numeric but can be taken either as retreats or step losses) this is a clever little game, with the Germans having to decide when to fall back to avoid encirclement. I tried to rescue a unit in the northern salient caught in the ZOCs on turn one, pushed the Russians back temporarily, and paid for it by having it destroyed together with its two would-be rescuers by turn 3. Nonetheless I found it pretty hard to make headway with the Russians, but that was certainly affected by me erroneously applying the stacking limits too leisurely on retreat for the first three turns (the rules are short, but one needs to read all of them as there are certain twists in there!). Overall, the Germans retreated in an orderly fashion to the second line of defense. This was actually breached fairly quickly in the northwest, but a German counterattack restored the line and by this time it was so late into the game that I didn't even have to think about moving units west of the river. Should be tried again, playing correctly from the start. Given how quickly these games play, that is fairly likely to happen at some point. Markus Last 3 games played: Okehazama 1560, Gettysburg 1863, Harvest of Death --------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ --------------- "Bakayaro! Bakayaro!" ("Stupid Bastards! Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942 _______________________________________________ Consim-l mailing list Consim-l@mailman.halisp.net http://mailman.halisp.net/mailman/listinfo/consim-l