Ok. Having had a few hours with the game, I have some thoughts. Please bear in mind some of these will be personal issues with me and I fully understand if they appear trivial to others.
- Already mentioned - not enough Move/Fire counters. I've also read someone mentioning Shaken and Broken - though not having a single unit shaken or broken as yet, I can't confirm that
- Map - these huge maps, not a huge fan. I had to flip this map upside down to play the small first scenario because it used a small portion at the top of the map. The alternative was to reach over the map. Had the map been broken up into sections rather than folded, it would be much more manageable
- Manual. It's clearly written in that particular game mechanics are well explained, but the sections don't always reference other sections in the manual. For example, Combat Results mentions Gut Check...but it doesn't tell you where Gut Check is in the manual
- That brings me onto my next gripe - index. The index is no use. It's not in alphabetical order. It's written in the order of the sections in the manual. How is that helpful? If I want to see where Gut Check is, I can't look under G in the index - because it's not in that order...so I have to scan the entire index to look for Gut Check to see what page it's on
- Staying with the manual - it looks like the counter issue wasn't the only thing used to save money. It does look like the manual has been squeezed onto the least amount of pages...this is mainly apparent on the back page where a Turn Sequence is laid out in more detail...it just seems to be squeezed onto the last page. A detailed Turn Sequences should've been a Player Aid card. It's also apparent on every page where the text on each page starts right at the top...no margin
Someone has very nicely created a proper index for the manual which will help when looking for a section.
On the plus side, the game components are very nice (I know some people have issues with font
) but I think they're nice. The map is beautiful - if too big imo. Obviously big maps are cool for big games (The US Civil War - it doesn't make sense to break that map up) but where you have smaller scenarios, I prefer the smaller geomorphic maps.
Also game play is nice and really quite simple and it did not take long for me to get it setup and running. Not a huge amount of modifiers.
I am really pissed about the counters though. Not just about there not being enough - but the fact they knew this and couldn't be bothered including any in any of their addition modules (ok...I only checked Ghost Front - but I'd be surprised if there are any in Airborne).
I'm going under my desk today to grab the other one (V3) and I'll take all the administration counters that are applicable across both and put them in a tray - labelled OST - so it doesn't bug me anymore.