by Billy Riley, 19 August 2021 ~ #UnboxingDay
I’ve been itching for a modern era air war game. Something that scratches the itch around the 1980s or so and I saw Red Storm.
At first, I was wary – it looks like a lot of game. There are 3 manuals with the game totalling 137 pages. That’s a lot of reading in anyone’s book. But – it did scratch that itch…modern air war around the 1980s – so I took the plunge.
The blurb says
Red Storm is a game of air warfare over a hypothetical mid-1987 battlefield in the central portion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation front in Germany
Here’s the content.
Box Art – The box art shows an Su-24 Fencer – nice pic.
click images to enlarge
Box – Rear
As always the rear of the box gives an overview of the game, sample counter art, game contents, scale and a “game meter”…which shows 8 for Complexity – and that does scare me somewhat.
Solitaire shows as 6. I know that there are only 4 solo scenarios out of 36 scenarios – but I’m not scared to tackle some of the non-solo scenarios…most games I have are not pure solo.
Dice and Baggies – 2d10 come with the game and some baggies
Rules of Play – This is a 54 page beast. Taking out some of the additional items (Solitaire Rules, Campaign Games and Rules index, you have 48 pages of rules.
There are colour illustrations in here – but don’t be fooled – this book is for reading.
Appendices Book – A second book gives Orders of Battle, a list of Airfields, Ground Unit Locations, Examples of Play, Designers Notes and Tactical Hints and a list of Bibliography.
Scenario Book – This is a beast as well coming in at 59 pages but it does hold 36 scenarios!
Player Aid Cards – There are 5 Player Aid Cards suggesting a lot of looking up.
Player Aid Card 1
Player Aid Card 2
Player Aid Card 3
Player Aid Card 4
Player Aid Card 5
Aircraft Info Sheets
These sheets show the details of each of the aircraft in the game. There are several sheets for the different factions (slideshow)
Counter Sheets – There are 5 sheets of counters
Log Sheets
There are 2 thick books for logging…a Flight Log Book and a Sam and AAA Log Book
Map Sheets
The map comes in two sections and looks decent enough. I’ve never played a game like this – so I don’t know if “basic” maps are the thang. There’s literally some hills, mountains, cities and airfields, main roads and rivers.
Something else
Ok – these didn’t come with the game, but a playthrough I watched had these cards. They were an additional purchase from a third party. The guy in the video swore by them. They have all the data needed (afaik) for the combat units (aircraft, SAMS and AAA) in the game.
That’s it. Apart from the Something Else, that’s what you get in the box. I won’t lie, it looks daunting. It takes me a long time to read rules – so 54 pages (and whatever else I have to absorb) is going to be difficult.
But I did manage to learn Fields of Fire and – as with all my games – I look forward to eventually – one day – getting it to the table.
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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