World at War : Eisenbach Gap (Scenario 1)

The recent World at War – Eisenbach Gap, by known publisher Lock’n Load Games, is a wargame made mostly for those of us who love the “what if…” scenarios pertaining to the Late XX th – Early XXI st centuries possible conflicts, in this case specifically the NATO vs Warsaw Pact showdown. And, in my humble opinion, it delivers what it promises, and that is a fast, simple (not simplistic) and elegant game system topped by gorgeous counter art and map, but let us go step by step.

PRESENTATION
You get a big gamebox (some would say too big but more on that later on), with a very nice and elegant presentation, although the back should be more informative and visually appealing.

Inside you’ll find some very nice material consisting of: 136 counters (American forces at company strength and Soviet forces at battalion strength, also some informative counters), a very nicely drawn map in strong cardboard, 1 rules and scenarios booklet (6 scenarios), 2 player aids and 4 dice. Overall not much for such a big box but all of it very high quality (the art on the counters is some of the best I’ve seen and an improvement even when compared to the Band of Heroes game and supplements), but why such a big box? Apparently this is just the first module of the series and you get to store the next ones inside this gamebox. The second module – The Death of the 1st Panzer (you guessed it, the Bundeswehr is coming! with some Leopard 1s and 2s, Marders, Guepards and such) is scheduled to be available in January 2008 in ziplock format, and I’ve also heard some French players talking about another one (Paris is burning) but I can’t be sure about that.

So, summing up, it is a very nice product if you fancy the theme and want to collect some/all of its expansions, but is it really worth the effort and money?

THE COUNTERS
In a word FANTASTIC! These are some of the best I’ve seen, and pack all the information you need to play the game, by a clever system of underlined factors and other visual aids (colours, circles, etc) all a unit can or cannot do is clearly shown in each counter, but I won’t spoil you the fun of the discovery, do check them out.

THE GAME ENGINE
Mind you, this review is written after only a light read of the rules and a couple of scenario plays, but I think my opinion is pretty much made up; the game system is simple to learn (which is nice if you want to introduce new players to the genre or if you’re one of those players who doesn’t like to spend a week reading complex rules and then go through gameplay checking and rechecking several stacks of charts and tables), all you need is basically on the counters themselves and this system doesn’t possess any CRTs (for those not of the milieu that’s Combat Results Table) or any suchlike, instead it is a bit like a miniatures game since you get to roll a number of dice equal to the applicable characteristic (AP firepower, HE firepower or assault capability) and score hits if equal or better than the to hit number.
The defender tries to shake off those hits by rolling the number of dice indicated in its armour factor and scoring saves in the same way as above but he also gets to add the save dice afforded by the cover in the terrain hex (this being the only save afforded to soft vehicles and infantry), each save cancels one hit, each hit disrupts or inflicts a loss on a unit.

The game system has a very nice, although far from original, way of dealing with the player turn, at the beginning of the scenarios you are told how many unit activation counters and end turn counters you must put in a opaque mug (or similar), and each turn players take turns drawing counters from the mug and activating the unit belonging to the counter (units may activate more than once a turn if they have more than 1 activation counter), if 2 end of turn counters are drawn before all units have been activated then the turn ends premature and suddenly (which is good for suspense).

There’s also a pretty elegant mechanism regarding Infantry Support Weapons (Dragons, Stingers, Saggers and such) in which you don’t say what squads are equipped with those weapons until you fire them, but each time you lose an infantry counter there’s a growing chance you’ll lose one of the support weapons (simple and effective).

There are also rules for tank overruns and assault firefights (simple but also very effective and realistic – by the way NEVER tank assault a city hex held by enemy infantry if you don’t have yourself some “ground pounder” support unless you’re extremely lucky at the dice).

The command and morale system is also very good, you get some command vehicle counters which confer bonuses to moral or even to assault rolls (boosting up one of your units) but each time a loss is produced in an hex with a command vehicle you roll to see if the command vehicle was lost, in which case you can still try to replace it with another command vehicle, but if you stay out of command range or loose the command vehicle be prepared because your unit will basically be FUBAR.

Besides Infantry, APCs and Armour what else do you get? Well, in a nutshell, choppers (Hinds and Cobras, no sign of Apaches yet), with nice LOS and flight modes (moving, hovering) rules, artillery (both normal, FASCAM, Gas attacks – soviet baddies only!), recon units (very good for indirect fire), mortars, ITVs and TOW equipped Mutts, Soviet Paras, Lions, Tigers, Bears, Oh! My!

BOTTOM LINE
I definitely like this game, it’s all it’s supposed to be: fast, furious, realistic yet simple and fun to learn with a very mild learning curve. Although not exactly a bargain, a definite must have for the fans of the period (although I don’t really know if the fans of the novels by Harold Coyle will like it, I haven’t read any of them).
Enjoy!

What more could anyone ask for? Attractive components, simple yet elegant system, modest footprint, eminently playable.

There are some very nice touches that simply but effectively deal with subjects that other games can get bogged down with, HQs and assigned weapons, side stepping the need for hidden deployment and making the game even more solitaire friendly.

The values on each unit contain the information for its AT, HE, assault, and movement capabilities. Combat is handled with a combination of range, firepower (dice to roll), to-hit numbers (modified by range for HE and AT, but not for ATGMs) and for all but assault there are save rolls (varying number of dice and to-save numbers based on armor for AT fire and terrain for HE). It sounds fiddly but it become second nature very quickly, and there's enough scope for unit differentiation in the values to keep even a grognard happy but without getting bogged down in minutiae.

The real key to the system is that each side isn't just a bunch of platoons, but formations (battalions for the Soviets and company teams for the US) that are activated by a chit pull system. The US quality shows in each formation having two chits to the Soviet's one - but there are game-turn end chits as well so that means nothing is certain.

As each formation activates, it gets to perform operations (move or fire) with its units one by one, with units that are stacked getting getting to move and hence overrun or assault together. A few units are capable of moving fire, and you can always stay put and threaten opportunity fire later on.

It's this combination of larger formations and individual operations that make the Soviets dangerous once they get close to the US units, as even the most powerful US units become vulnerable to repeated waves of assaults within a single Soviet activation - but the butcher's bill can be high, and with the first loss being a disruption (followed by a step loss, then elimination) it can take a while for the Soviets to rally their forces back to state where they can move on as they have at most one activation per turn, lower morale that the US, shorter command radius, and larger formations to rally.

The US needs to use their more frequent activations to use long range firepower and manoeuvre to hold the Soviet hordes at arms length, whilst the Soviets must use covered approaches and artillery to get close enough to the outnumbered US to overwhelm them.

All told, this is a very impressive game. It accomplishes a great deal with very little in the way of rules and no CRTs, and yet there is a richness and depth to the game second to none. This is a game that deserves to be the Panzerblitz for the new millennium. It raises the bar sky high compared to its predecessors, and should be on every grognards bookshelf - and every gamers table!