Enemy Action Ardennes
It comes with 3 games - German Solo, Allied Solo and 2 player. It cost a fair bit but there's a fair bit there (at least 2 games for me...the German and Allied Solo maps and mechanisms)
This is from a favourite designer of mine...John Butterfield. He created RAF:Battle of Britain 1940
It has a unique mechanic (at least I've never come across it) where when combat occurs, you draw a variable number of chits from a cup - and they determine what the outcome will be. It's odd but I'm looking forward to giving it a go.
This game is very difficult. Or at least I'm finding it as such. Unlike the rules he made for
RAF:Battle of Britain 1940, these don't do a great job of pointing you in the right direction. In the RAF game, you could play from the sequence of play because any other rules were referenced. That isn't always true here.
I played a card last night for the Allies which had the
Engineer tactic. It was pretty difficult to make out what I should do...it mentioned something like
...if entitled to an improved position... but it took me some time to track down why a unit should be entitled to have an improved position - all because the rule wasn't referenced.
I'm very much enjoying it and it's very thought provoking...an awful lot of thinking, particularly for the Allied AI (counting hexes, working out communication, places where you
can put something and then working out the best one - but also from the German side in trying to decide which units to activate, when, which command cards to "throw away" (not use as command cards but use as combat tactics). It's very deep.
Anyway - I'm only on Day 17 but progress (both real and game) is slooooooow
