by Billy Riley, 18 March 2021 ~ #UnboxingDay
I had never heard of this company and – yet again – the grogs at Armchair Dragoons helpfully pointed their fellow gamers in the direction of the company to help keep their addiction supplied.
I bought 2 games from the company – this is Market Garden. An infamous battle to end the war by Christmas. There are many games on the subject and I have one of the best – Holland ’44 by GMT Games.
So lets see how this stacks up.
Nice enough picture – but it appears to be of a beach landing rather than a push across the flatlands of Holland.
click images to enlarge
It’s an odd box. It’s like a file box with magnets. Nice enough. Decent. Strong.
The rear of the box has a brief description on the back relating to the battle and an image of the battlefield. The description is in Polish, Belgian and French.
Rule Book
The rules are a plain, black and white thin paper manual. It’s 13 pages – so quite light. It’s also written in decent English though there are some strange grammar issues showing its translation from its native Polish.
The Polish manual that comes with the game has a colour cover and is made of thicker paper – but it’s still black and white inside.
The manual seems well laid out – I’ve had a quick read through the first few pages. It seems like standard fair – Zones of Control, combat modifiers, terrain etc.
There’s a nice little thing in there about Zones of Control not being in effect in certain terrain types for certain unit types…like motorised units not being able to influence a ZoC on a swamp hex…I don’t think I’ve seen that before.
There’s also a rather confusing issue regarding combat (section 5.1.5) – you’ll have to read it to believe it…I still haven’t really got my head around it.
Scenario Booklet
The scenario booklet is of the same paper type and cover as the Polish manual. This has specific rules relating to the area of operations. It looks like you have 4 scenarios – Market Garden, Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem.
The back of the book has a whole list of some of the company’s games.
Player Aids
Each of the 3 Player Aid cards have the same content but in Polish on the reverse.
The Player’s Aid shows the Terrain Effects Chart, Air Attack Table, Artillery Fire Table, Attack on Objects Table and examples of terrain tiles.
Oddly it doesn’t include the Combat Results Table (CRT), Disorganisation Table or Bomber Attack Table. These are in the manual, but I think that’s disappointing there isn’t a card for them.
The other two show both the Reinforcement Schedule for the Allies and the Germans
Dice
There were two 6 sided die included but I didn’t take a picture because they were the smallest dice I’d ever seen.
Counter Sheets
Disappointingly the first counter sheet is simply “strong” glossy paper. These counters are for things like entrenchment, disruption etc.
There are two sheets of counters – one for the Allies and one for the Germans – so the game isn’t counter heavy.
They are nice looking – I like the style. They are 15mm in size and clear enough.
Maps
There are two maps – one depicting the western edge of the battlefield and one depicting the eastern side (though the maps are oriented south to north for gameplay reasons. The total map area is 26” x 38”.
I like the maps. They are quirky and detailed and kind of look like real terrain. However, I have some concerns over how the counters will fair with that amount of “background noise”.
In Summary
Ok. The game was £25. It’s budget and so saying that, I do believe there’s value for money here. The additional counter sheet for entrenchments etc being on paper is kind of disappointing – actually, really disappointing – but like I said, it’s a budget game. I can’t help but think it might have been an extra £1 for a game – or less perhaps. I’d have paid that – even more – to have those as proper counters.
The maps are lovely. I really do like them. But like I said, I do wonder how the counters are going to stand out on all that detail.
The price point suggests it’s budget – but I would say that overall, the production value doesn’t suggest that…not overall. I’d be disappointed if I paid anything above £50 for this – but at £25 – it seems like a nice little bargain.
Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed our recon of our recent acquisitions.
You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
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