Gary Christiansen - Dec 30, 2006 4:24 pm (#4898 Total: 5295) Belief in God does not require a belief in religion. When is Axis & Allies not Axis & Allies? Answer: When it's the Larry Harris's A&A Battle of the Bulge title. Danny got me this for Xmas and delighted me by getting me a Bulge game. Of course what I expected when it was cracked open was a light weight painfully dice ridden malaise of little plastic bits like the A&A D-day game where all you had to do to win was concentrate your pieces until the dice played out the end result. My assumption was incorrect. Kudos go to Mr Harris for turning out an actual Bulge title from the A&A line theme. Critical elements that make the game worth getting even for hard core grognards like me and Steve: * Hexes. They dropped the silly area movement which just added geometric inconsistent messes to the board. You can actually follow the terrain within the large hexes they made and make sense of the battlefield even if it is a simplified view. * ZOCs. Even though all they are is mildly sticky, the point of zocs applies to controlling movement. You can lay a single infantry unit in the path of massive tank concentrations to prevent them from zipping up the roads.Single sacrifices can stem sudden breakthroughs in frustrating ways that fit the historic events. * Stacking Limits. Omigawd, as if this would matter in A&Am right? Well it does. It can influence thrust of movement in ways that are frustrating for the side attacking. * Hit Point Effects. Yes, a unit gets hit and not destroyed thus forcing it to retreat instead. A&A always destroyed things on single hits. Now an attack has to make multiple hits on a unit to eliminate it. Good gracious, retreats in A&A? what is the world coming to!? * Supply. Everything you move (except trucks & aircraft) uses supply. Attack uses supply. oh, and supply can't move on it's own. It's critical to capture US supply for the Germans. And Air attacks on Supply become devastating to the Germans later on. Supply can be destroyed in combat in addition to used up to conduct combat. Argghhh! * Trucks, the other non-combat unit. Used to move supply around, but also capable of shifting artillery and infantry around as well. Just don't get caught in an enemy ZOC! And heaven help you if a bomber takes out a few of your trucks. You need them to move supply to the critical parts of the combat line. * Victory Points that are spread over the board in a reasonable pattern, higher in the direction of Liege and Antwerp. You can win without capturing Bastogne, but the fight for road network is important to keep the flow of supply going. The game plays well as a game and isn't in trouble because of the diminishing clutches of units in single areas. It's still "history light" at best, and isn't particularly grand as a simulation value title. But it is a good 3-4 hour title for serious gaming if you want to have fun doing the Bulge without spending hours and hours learning the rooooooles. We did discover we played one of the critical rules wrong which would have made a noticeable difference in the outcome on the first play. The initiative roll for combat only determines which player picks the first attack. Then players alternate attacks in the combat round until there are no attacks left to perform (except on turn one when the US is 'surprised' and cannot attack at all). I went over and gave this a 6 rating at BGG because it is way better than I expected. It may merit a 7 even, but I'm stingy with some of the higher values so it may take a few more plays. Definitely worth the purchase price though for a game to use for introducing new players to the wargaming hobby.