Richard Simon - Feb 22, 2000 7:43 am (#46 Total: 21971) I Still Miss My Ex.....................But My Aim Is Improving! Out of the Wrapper for me yesterday was playing a friend's copy of Brian Train's Arriba Espana. Paradoxically, you get too much game for your money; its reach exceeds it grasp. There are a lot of very clever ideas here. Brian stated that he tried to blend the political and the military and I think, once you have figured out what you;re supposed to be doing, he has succeeded. Unfortunately, I think the DTP format of the game hinders playability enough to be irritating. (That's a back0-handed compliment if I ever heard one). The rules are all too brief. Most of what you need is there but there is no tie-in of one section to another. As a result, you may find yourself exclaiming, "So that's why you do this! Unfortunately, this may be around Turns Three or Four, which can mean that you now have to start over. There are a lot of little niggling things that, by themselves are not awful but, in toto, become irritating. For instance, both players have naval transport capability (and the Rebel has air transport capability)_ but it is never stated whether using these transport methods consumes a unit's movement for the turn or not. Since games tend to treat this differently, it should be explicitly stated. There' a bunch of stuff like this. You end up getting lost in a wealth of PSP's, AP's, EP's, I-pee,s, You-pees, we-all-pees, etc. I found the rules about 33% too short. The game's DTP physical format also doesn;t help. For instance, units can either be in cities, shown by placing the stack atop the city dot, on in the countryside. Since the map portrays the entire Iberian Peninsula in about a quarter of a normal game map, this can get a little tricky. Similarly, unless you are pretty good at assembling counters, the counter stacks, which can reach 5 or 6 high, can get nasty. Eah province (or region) is divided into sections by dotted lines. Since these have minimal (if any) effect on movement (a unit can basically move as far as it wants until it runs into an enemy unit or stack), they serve more as a source of confusion than an aid to play. Control of a province is determined at the end of each turn and we had some initial confusion whether the control was determined per sgement or the entire province. The map would be much more user-friendly if it was twice its existing size. Now this might be really aggravating save for the fact that there is a lot to this game. Each player must decide whether to expend political capital on either raising the intervention level of his allies or decreasing the intervention level of his opponent's. (Query: How did Mexico get in here?) This level determines not only how much politcal capital a player receives in the next turn but how much economic activity he can undertake (trebuilding units, building new units, securing artllery and air assets, etc) There is a good amount of interplay here (which could be explained a bit more) and the system seems to come together, once you get it all figured out. We only got three turns in but were intrigued enough to want to play more. This is a game that would be well worth twice what it costs you, which is only $9. There is a lot of interesting stuff in here; maybe too much since the game is definitely hindered by its format. While some of this can get downright irritating, it is definitely worth the trouble. Maybe someone can pick this game up and give it the treatment it cries out for. Meanwhile, warts and all, this game is definitely worth your time and attention.