by Brant Guillory, 15 April 2021 ~ #UnboxingDay
In the same series as Battlefield Europe, Test of Arms was supposed to be another in a series of modern platoon-level wargames from GDW that would handle a wide variety of post-WW2 conflicts.
click images to enlarge
The box cover – there’s a lot of action promised in here
The back gives you a good look at what’s inside the box.
And here it all is
The rulebook is not particularly big. The scenario book is much more sizable.
The rulebook is not lavishly illustrated, but covers all the necessities, including a point-buy system for designing your own scenarios. The graphics aren’t great, and the rule book includes basic, advanced, and optional rules all crammed into about 16 pages, but it’s all there.
Lots of scenarios to work with, but it’s dipping your toes into each conflict, rather than an extended foray into any of them.
Scenarios have the basics, and… not much else.
The campaign map that gives you the full battle map layout for… what, exactly? The scenarios aren’t in the table of contents, above.
The maps are pretty flimsy paper, and 5th-grade-computer-class-ugly. But they’re functional, and compatible with the once in Battlefield: Europe.
Map detail – the city on a hill.
Green counter detail. See those AMX-13s?
Those halftracks are on the back side of them. So clearly some units don’t have multiple steps.
Infantry counters, including the HQs with the RTO alongside.
Red counter detail, with mostly Soviet bloc equipment. Oh, and some M4A3s.
Red infantry, along with trench counters, and others.
Still tempted to send in one of these old cards just to see if it comes back to me. It’s rudimentary market research, but at least they’re trying.
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.
The regiment also occasionally musters on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you, once we’re allowed to hold them again.
Are you going to play it?
I still have my copy, bought in the late 80s.
It and Battlefield Europe were brave attempts, I enjoyed them.
might make copies of the counters and play some. Hate to punch it!