Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 15:24:06 -0800 From: Ed Allen and Avi Rappoport Subject: Over the Reich review Over the Reich J. D. Webster Clash of Arms $36 Air Combat over Western Europe, 1943-1945 240 counters - full color aircraft pictures, two sided, backs of aircraft show a generic silhouette. One erratum is that one panel of German aircraft have the right color on the back but a P51 generic silhouette instead of the ME 109 on back of the other Germans. Nice graphics, but they don't have the silver paint that made the Speed of Heat counters so special. Two sided paper map, one side with scenery for low level and ground attack missions. One side with a blue sky view looking down through clouds beneath you at hazy lines on the ground. I like the low level map better. Two booklets, one of rules, one of charts and aircraft display sheets. You'll have to make a photocopier run to make a batch of aircraft control sheets and the sheets for keeping track of the fire of bomber formations. While you're there, it's a good idea to duplicate the charts and aircraft booklet. I copied mine onto heavy stock, so they have that game-aid feel and will hold up well. There are three levels of play, an operational turn is 10 minutes, a tactical turn is 1 minute and tactical play is entered when aircraft encounter the enemy. Combat scale play is at 4.1 second turns and is played out on the hex map. Operational play is where you take off and fly long distances on an abstract graph that basically makes the ground map linear from airbase to target with a second dimension being altitude. Rules cover weather effects, take-off aborts, forming up with possible failures or delays, flak, interception, random encounters, ditching, landing difficulties from lack of fuel or damamge, etc. It's pretty abstract but it looks like it will get the essetials of a situation done pretty quickly. Tactical play at 1 min per turn takes place on a circular reference grid around the "defender". This will be the bomber formation, or if both sides are fighters, the side that lost the initial spotting roll and got bounced. Basically, the attacker manuevers inward and for an advantageous attack position each turn, is displaced rearward with reference to the defender by the defender's motion, and the defender rolls to spot the attacker. When an attacking formation is close enough and the attacker wants to engage, play moves to the combat scale. If the defender spots the attacker he can try to break off at this level of play or attack and take it to the combat scale himself. Again, this level of play is somewhat abstracted, so that it sets you up for combat with realistic considerations and parameters, without taking too long. Endurance is tracked for each aircraft in minutes aloft, with some actions, like tactical scale moves at higher than optimum fuel economy cruising speed and combat scale moves eating up fuel faster. So if you aren't careful or are unlucky on the critical hits chart and lose fuel you can win a combat and still be forced to ditch later at operational scale when your tanks run dry. Most of the rules are a tactical combat system similar to The Speed of Heat and AIr Superiority. Like those games it uses a twelve sided facing system, and sequential movement. A similar side log is kept for each plane tracking altitude and energy state, fule, ammunition, and damage. The time scale and ground scale are smaller, with one hex = 100 yd, one altitude step at 100 ft, 1 movement point is 50 MPH, and 4.1 seconds per turn. This means a plane moves about as far in hexes or a little farther as in the later period games in the system, but the manuevers are simpler and turns will usually be less tight and it may take an extra turn or two to go through rversal manuevers. The shorter ranges mean that they drop out the spotting phase at the combat scale, you get the drop on somebody in the larger tactical scale It is a finer grained system than the later period games, so maneuvers should unfold in ways that look more like Shaw's book with fewer situations where things get so extremely tight. Banking is more detailed than in TSOH because of the 4 second time scale. Besides the simplification by not having the spotting phase in combat scale play, initiative is handled more simply. It's a die roll for everybody, moved in the order of lowest modified die first, unless a plane is tailing, in which case it will follow the tailed enemy in the movement order; or in all opponents' blind arcs, in which case it will move last. A Wingman in proper formation parameters can choose to use his leader's initiative die. All combat except for some head-ons takes plac ein a combat phase after all movement is resolved. Combat uses an odds system. Guns are rated both for a raw combat factor and a critical number that reflects the fact that heavier rounds are fewer in number but inflict more serious damage if they hit. Basically you get to roll on the crits table every so many damaging hits, with that number determined by the type of gun. There are ground attack rules for the various ways planes attack ground targets, and the corresponding AA fire, which I haven't gotten into yet, but they fold into the odds system more directly than in TSOH, where it was a separate and different system from air to air combat. There's a few typos I've noticed in places, mostly in the historical aircraft descriptions. I am very impressed with the flight model and the playable amount of detail in the system. In my first combat scenario this past weekend, things felt right in the way they worked. It was short, basically manuevers to a single firing pass, and then a break off. Because of poor shooting rolls, our P47's didn't hit anything and we wound up diving below, and so just extended our dive and broke off, as my leader jammed some of his guns in the shooting. With the firepower advantage lost and the position decidedly in the ME109's favor at that point, it was time to use the P47's superiority in a dive and fight again another day. It was a classic energy fighter slashing attack right out of the book. Overall, if you like tactical air games, this one is worth buying. It's definitely the best one ever for WWII, probably the best tactical air game around in a comparison across all periods.