From: John Best Subject: just out of the shrinkwrap: The Schlieffen Plan Dear Consimmers, I bought The Schlieffen Plan (Schroeder Publishing & Wargames) earlier today at Bear Productions in Champaign, Illinois. I thought you might appreciate a quick heads-up as to what's in the box from this heretofore unknown company. The box is only about 1 inch deep; I think you could insert a commercially purchased counter tray in there--but it would be a tight fit, and that's a little bit of a drawback for me. Inside the box: The rules, the standard 22 X 28 map, three cardstock sheets (German supply, Entente supply and rather involved base 6 CRT), two countersheets for a total 560 backprinted counters, a response card, an errata sheet dated Sept 97. You've probably seen the map; it's a little different. The cost of crossing the various hexsides of any given hex apparently varies with the terrain, and that terrain is depicted by up to 6 triangular pie-shaped wedges within each hex. The hexes themselves are oversized (counters are the standard .5 inch). Map scale is 20 kilometers/hex. The result of using the pie-shapes is that there a number of prismatic shapes appearing all over the place. But the overall effect is decent. The map was done by David Schroeder too (he did the design). The Simonitch influences seem clear to me. The counters look very good. They depict divisions mostly, using the NATO symbology. Each counter has two factors--you got it: a Combat factor and a movement allowance. The counters have the historical designations on them, and depict what you would expect in this kind of a game: infantry, cav. arty, siege arty, fortresses, and leaders. I wouldn't exactly describe the counters as having a "riot of color", but the effect is something like that. I have to get into the rules, but it looks like the arty "box" on the counter tends to be filled in with red, the cav "box" tends to be filled in with yellow. The various nationalities' infantry have different colors filling in their infantry boxes--white for the Germans, blue for the French (but some green too--not really sure what's going on). The counters are made out of that fibrous white stuff (not exactly cardboard, like the old days) that a lot of the companies are using these days. They give me the impression that they will "cut out nice" and trim up nice. They are a little on the thin side, but nothing that would make you freak. I'll just mention that the "trench" counters represent an attempt to actually depict the trenches the way they may have actually looked from above--the wavy lines, the supports and sap trenches, shown in a kind of irregular way. The rule book is 20 pages, triple column, not real small type. The rules are laid out in 14 pages, with 6 pages of set-up instructions. The book uses the SPI numbered rule system. It looks to me like the rules include 14 Figures that illustrate aspects of play graphically. It doesn't appear to be a complicated game--it's basically move and shoot (with some niceties about entrenching, replacements, strategic rail movement--you guys know the drill--you do have to expend supply points to do things--these rules read sort of like a more abstract version of an OCS game). Here's something that may draw your attention: Figure 8 is a stacking example. You can stack up to 6 divisions per hex (and most of the counters are divisions remember), but you can add arty units, engineers and other stuff in the hex too. The example shows no fewer than 13 (!) combat units and markers in the hex. Let's hope that's just a teaching example to show what you can do, rather than what is going to routinely occur. It looks like there is only one scenario, namely the Schlieffen plan--none of this What if Germany didn't invade Belgium stuff. Overall, to conclude this out-of-the-shrinkwrap summary, I would say that for the $29.95 I paid for this, it's looking like a decent value on the basis of the physical components anyway. But I confess I have some concerns about this project. I get the idea that one set of maps (a big, big, set of maps) is going to be used as the basis for a series of games on WWI and all of WWII. If so, that will be a radical departure from the usual method, in which each game's map is "purpose-built" for that game. Ok, well I guess there are certainly some exceptions--like the SL maps are all-purpose. Nevertheless, I'm just wondering how that's going to work out.