This is a popular series from GMT by designer Carl Paradis, with 4 games already published and one more inP500, these being as follows;
The Russian From - now in its 3rd printing, apparently.
The North African Front.
The Italian Front.
The French and Polish fronts.
The Western front 1944-45 (P500 'made the cut').
I have only played the 'North Africa' game, since I have always had an interest in the campaign, and it comes with a smaller 'bonus' Crete mini-game. I will admit to being a bit tempted by the Italian Campaign since there are not that many games around that deal with the full campaign. This also included a Sicily min-game.
Without doubt, the standard of the components are, as you would expect, first class, with nice chunky counters and mounted maps and good supporting material.
However, what let it down for me personally is the disjointed way the game works by moving from one map section to another. Now, in theory, this is a great idea since any game on the subject has to include a long map if it is to show all the relevant bits - most inconvenient from a wargaming point of view! Whilst this works, I found it to be a bit off-putting by not being able to look at all the map at once. One of the attractions for me is seeing all the well known locations and taking in the distances that have to be covered.
The other point is that somehow, the campaign at Divisional level just seems too...grainy....for want of a better description. I like to see all those familiar sub-units that you find with other games on the subject.
And, last of all, I felt that the system is too card-driven for my personal taste and somewhat slowed the flow of the game down, especially for solo play.
But, there are some quite nice mechanics in the game, so I accept that some of the above negative aspects are not really failure of the games, but are just at odds with my own preferences. It is. as always a very subjective thing.
So, who plays any of these games, and what are you views?
Topic: FOCUS ON..........No Retreat (GMT) (Read 3478 times)