From: "Arnaud Bouis" Subject: En pointe toujours - mini review Just played scenario 1 ( Bataille du Rail en Annam) of En Pointe Toujours. The game is well structured. The main flaw of the game is that fire is not deadly enough. You get the impression that it takes forever to kill a unit. In fact, the "Stoppage" result being the equivament of the ASL "pinned", and "Neutralized" being the ASL "rout", you can see clearly that the fire table is much less deadly than ASL's. This could be cured easily: apply an automatic -1 to all fires. But worse, most units have 2 steps, which means that it takes twice longer to kill them. This removes much fun from an otherwise good game, by making decision slow. We didn't see how it was possible for the French to win scenario 1 in 10 turns. He attacks building positions through light cover terrain, it it takes half a dozen turns to move to the objectives even without spending time firing, and the Viet has a deadly 18 mortar points which mock hindrances. We wonder if the scenarios are balanced, the #1 problem of magazine games. There is a lot of "wristage" in the game, really a lot of die rolling. You roll lots of dice every time you try defensive fire. The game keeps the multi-firing (ROF) of ASL. Lastly, the activation system won't work well in situations where one side has many more formations than the other: the side with many formations will be able to activate a lower proportion of its formations, due to the "9" "sudden death" turn ending. The game also has some bugs (despite the indispensable errata) Those we saw are: - close air support rules (14.3) are contradictory and we can't understand what hexes are affected.- - rule 10.8 (mortars) mentions indirect fire modifiers (for mortars) but we did not find them anywhere (any clue ?). - nowhere is it said that neutralized HQ's cannot command normally. Sounds odd to us. Two other things worth a small rule change: - Mortars can be dismantled AND moved (half MP) in the same turn, or reassembled AND fired. This seems too easy. I'd recommend altering the rule so that dismantling/reassembling takes the whole turn, like in ASL. - Entrenchments should be forbidden in rizieres terrain Otherwise, the game achieves the feat of providing an "ASL clone" in 6 pages, with command rules; good for all those who were deterred by ASL's rules. Let's hope the flaws will soon be corrected, especially the low lethality, before the extensions are published. Arnaud Bouis