The Siege of Tsingtau

by

Charles Stephenson

First things first, the campaigns of WWI are not very familiar to me. This book covers, what I originally thought, a very obscure battle of the Japanese attack on German Tsingtau in the Pacific (current day Qingdao). Although the name 'World War One' implies a global conflict my naive understanding is limited to the Somme, Verdun, Gallipoli et al. It should be no surprise that the colonial subjects across the Pacific were drawn into the war just as their primary state decreed.

The book starts with several chapters that detail the geo-political environment of all the main belligerents. In these formative chapters there is a large reliance on direct quotes from source material. This leads to some dense sentence construction, of which the author excels throughout the rest of the book, even when source material is not being referenced. 

In the introduction to the book, the author himself states that if you want to get to the actual fighting, i.e. to skip the politics, then skip the first couple of chapters. I might be doing the book an injustice, there are a few skirmishes in the previous chapters, but the actual battle, from my understanding started in Chapter 7, the penultimate chapter of the book.

Again in the introduction, the author states that the book is not aimed at the academic audience. I think he is doing himself a disservice as the book is, to my mind, thoroughly researched and includes 66 pages of notes and bibliography to the 8 chapters, that comprise nearly 40% of the book. Any student of the theatre, at any level, would do well to pick up this book and read this narrative history of the battle.

All that being said, I was continually surprised by this account of an 'obscure' battle. I wasn't aware of the extent of German colonisation in the Pacific, nor the different military's nascent air power capabilities. However what initially piqued my interest with this book was the fact that two infamous WWII allies were, adversaries just 25 years earlier. I personally would have liked to see more analysis of how that came to be, but that is unfair to the author and his work, as that would warrant an entirely different book outside this scope.

The book includes the standard middle glossy insert of photo pages. The scale and size of the equipment shown in these photos somehow seemed incongruous to the text I was reading. This is no criticism of the text rather a new-found admiration and awe of the bravery of soldiers from both sides, with the most rudimentary of equipment, going against massive siege artillery.

I particularly enjoyed the account of SMS Emden's (a German light crusier) exploits in the Indian Ocean against the Entente Powers' shipping. A nugget I will take away from that account is the importance of logistics and command and control (C2) support; often decried as boring and glossed over in many historical war-games, yet it is essential. The German East Asian (naval) Squadron was bereft of a re-supply base and had to split into both the Indian Ocean and round Cape Horn into the Southern Atlantic to find fuel and repairs.

As a precursor to the battle the British and Japanese forces destroyed the radio masts of the German occupiers. This, I imagine, is still employed today as a viable military tactic i.e. denying the enemy C2 channels, but in 1914 the German colony was left with no communication ability to the outside world. From a modern perspective that seems scary and almost impossible to achieve today.

The other aspect, which I found noteworthy, was the effect and experience of aeroplanes in this battle. The author, at some length, explains a few of the aviation firsts that occurred during and in the events preceding this battle. I was very grateful for the detail he included and I would have liked another chapter or so dedicated to the air environment. 

The author loosely follows the exploits of a couple of pilots from both sides as they built, and fixed their aircraft to fly reconnaissance or strike missions. Yes you read that right - 'strike' missions. I was particularly intrigued with a pilot who was given his license, his 'wings' if you will, after 2 days training and how his propeller would disintegrate during flight as the right type of glue wasn't available! I can't imagine flying in a self-destructing aircraft.

Overall this book opened my eyes to the global scale and scope of WWI and I am grateful to have read it. My personal experience and interests include military aviation and the pacific theatre from WWII to today and so this book was interesting to me. I couldn't recommend it to the casual reader unless they have, at the very least, a peripheral interest in the topic. However, if you are in the latter camp then pick it up and you may be as surprised as I was.

The Siege of Tsintau is available from Pen & Sword Books for £20.

TERRAFORMING MARS

Well from modern urban warfare to the future.  Quite a journey and, in this case, not a military one.  Here we're solidly into Eurogaming mode - my other major gaming preoccupation. 

Quite some time ago, when invited to take part in my first game of Terraforming Mars, I was willing, but less than enthusiastic.  For someone who thoroughly delights in establishing cotton mills and iron works in Lancashire [Martin Wallace's Brass - currently reissued as Brass: Lancashire, along with its sequel Brass: Birmingham], undertaking the task of transforming an alien world should surely have had more appeal.  It didn't.  Thankfully, being willing to try anything once paid off! 

It's my most played game in the last six months and since first being introduced to the game I've played it with the whole range from 2-5 players.  Most recently a 3 player game a few days ago.   I can strongly recommend all number of players [5 perhaps not so wholeheartedly.]  But, I didn't have my own copy.  Sold out!  Yes, for an eye-watering sum  a second-hand copy might have been possible.  Just as reprints were starting to be advertised as available soon, I was given the opportunity to receive my own mint copy to review.  Bliss!  Seventh heaven! Pigs in muck!

So, you can tell ... I like this game.  I hope I can infect you [no, there are no alien parasites or chest-bursters in this game] with my enthusiasm.  You are the head of a gigantic corporation undertaking projects [no, you can't undertake a project to acquire and research an alien creature and turn it into a biological weapon/soldier], mine resources, construct oceans and cities, undertake a sort of afforestation to increase oxygen levels and develop plant life and produce energy and heat to raise temperature levels.  Oh , and by the way produce lots of money which can be ploughed back into all these activities and make more money and fund awards and pass milestones and emerge as the most influential force behind [fanfare of trumpets] the terraforming of Mars  ... and win the game.

Having read a very wide range of views and reviews of the game, it does seem personal taste may play more of a part in your reaction to some aspects than with many games.  Take the playing board, not surprisingly a schematic of the planet, Mars.

As you can see, it's surrounded by a track on which you record your Terraform rating [which indicates both your base income for each turn and VP score].  The curved track above the planet charts the increase in oxygen, the temperature gauge to the right records ... well, the temperature.  Beneath the planet, are two sets of VP awarding objectives that you can achieve - even the potential to achieve them will cost you money.  To the lower left is a table of basic actions and their costs that you will probably be in dire straights if you need to utilise them.

Mars itself is covered in those good old hexes where you will place lovely thick cardboard tiles as you acquire cities, oceans and what, for want of a better word than that used in the game, are called greenery tiles.

Loads and loads of ...err ...greenery tiles!

Well, you are transforming Mars by your actions into a green and pleasant land fit for humans to inhabit without the sealed domes beloved of SF.  Currently, it is a bare landscape, with some hexes outlined in grey/blue where you can place ocean tiles and a scattering of symbols that indicate bonuses when you place a tile there.  Mars is a sort of pinkish ochre in colour - definitely not a strongly Red Planet!

For me it works well.  All's clear and, I would say, a good sized board, appropriate and very functional, which my very average camera skills don't do full justice to.  In come other views and questions that I've seen.  My favourite was why was the board when folded down for storage made smaller than the box it comes in. As if the questioner had been cheated because there is room for the board to be bigger!  It serves its purpose perfectly.  I've never heard anyone I've gamed with complain that it is too small or there's not enough room and so on.

Here it is set up for three players, never mind five.  As the game progresses, the whole layout takes up quite a bit of my gaming table even despite my OCD as you can see for producing neat piles and containers for resources.

Next comes your player mat.  Attractive, colourful and well organised, but lacking the two key words that, if you read my reviews, feature repeatedly: sturdy and strong.  

They are thin and I would agree would benefit from being larger.  The reason you will see below.

You place nice little plastic cubes in your player colour on each track to show your current number of each resource available to be produced and collected at the end of each turn.  The display above shows 1 resource of each type at the set up of the game.  This is one of the main complaints, as it's all too easy for a marker cube to get accidentally misplaced... a trailing sleeve, a heavy sneeze and curses on the one who jolts your table!  As for anyone who you have the slightest suspicion might stoop to underhand practices - just don't let them near this game.  Oh for the lovely thick, strong, sturdy [there I go], recessed player mats of Scythe!

And so you shall have it! Or something very like it.  A special set of overlays for your player mats, along with a whole lot more to organise the game.  Not essential, rather pricey, but when available that's what I've ordered.

On to the major gripe from players, the resource cubes, also done in neat plastic cubes, but coated in bronze, silver and gold for denominations of respectively 1/5/10.

Complaints have come in of some of the cubes' coatings already being chipped at the corners when the game arrives.  Got to say that mine were all fine, but I've already started to see the problem starting to appear with friends' copies of the game and I know that at some point it will start to happen with mine.  If the state of my cubes gets so bad that I can't stand it any longer, I know that I'll simply substitute small wooden cubes in three different colours that I possess in abundance.  I agree that the quality should really be better than this, but the way this game sells like hotcakes indicates that it's not a killer problem.  Oh, and nearly forgot, there are3 slightly larger white cubes for use on the Oxygen, Temperature and MC tracks.

Apart from the rulebook, the other major component are the cards which are the heart of the game and drive the whole process.  There are lots and lots and lots of them: 208 to be precise.  So many that shuffling is a skill in itself and considering the amount of use they are going to get if you like this game, then sleeving them produces a real Eiffel tower's worth that needs to be piled in at least three stacks.  In the picture I have not yet sleeved them, because I don't have enough sleeves left to cope with all them!

Good quality, plenty of colour and a range of art work.  I'll say more about the meaning of the symbols, when I discuss game play later.

There are also 2 sets of 4 references cards, which after your first game should largely be redundant.  For a seemingly complex game, once you've experienced a single game, I doubt you'll need these at all and finally there are 17 corporation cards.

There are 5 identical copies of the top Corporation card, which as the heading suggests are designed mainly for if you are very new to the game.  It means that you start the game with 42 "money" or, in game-speak MC [MegaCredits] and 10 Project cards that you don't have to pay for at the start of the game. 

Once you're familiar with the game or, if you prefer even on your first game, you will be randomly dealt two of the individual Corporation cards [PHOBLOG being one such example].  You choose one of them as your Corporation card for the game, receive the appropriate amount of MCs and a specific number of resources, in this case 10 titanium and a bonus ability framed in the oblong box.  Also you receive 10 Project cards, but now you only get to keep as many of them as you are willing to pay 3 MCs for each card chosen.

The rulebook is a slim 16 pages of fairly thin glossy paper.  Again not the most durable item; mine had a slight tear in the back page when I unboxed the game and I shall have to handle it with care.  But the rules themselves are abundantly clear and thorough.  I found no ambiguities nor uncertainties at all.

So, regarding total components, I'd rate them in the main as good quality with the key question mark for some people hanging over the resource cubes.  For a typical price of at least £49.99, perhaps you might expect better, but again no one I know has been put off buying or has been disappointed with the game.

For me, the compulsive element of the game is its mechanics of play.  Like many games of this type, it is a question of building a smoothly working games engine, increasing as many of the different types of resource as possible, increasing your terraform rating, acquiring cards with VPs on them, achieving bonus VPs ...

The game ends when three goals have been achieved: all the ocean tiles have been placed on the board,  the Temperature track is at maximum and the Oxygen track is at maximum.  At this point players conduct one last Production Phase and place any greenery tiles that their supply of plants allows them to.  Then work out your scores.   

Game play is in essence very straightforward.  First player moves clockwise at the start of each Round.  Next is the Research Phase, where players are dealt four project cards and simply to add them to your hand costs 3 MCs per card retained.  A variant is offered where you first draft the four cards you have drawn.  According to the rules this is for greater interaction, but personally I feel that the main reason for using this variant [which I strongly recommend] is more to reduce the luck element.  

My most recent game illustrates perfectly what I mean.  When gaming with a group who favour not drafting, I drew only four cards in the whole game that directly improved the levels of some of my resources, while the others drew more than double the number of such cards.  I've found this one area of drafting/not drafting to be the main one that players disagree over.  It adds only slightly to game play time, unless you have players who suffer from analysis paralysis and as I've said I strongly recommend trying.

Nor do I think it adds much to aiming to thwart other players from obtaining a card they need, as some have claimed.  Each player will build up so many cards that are upside down from where you are sitting, so if you can see what they might especially need you must have special inverted x-ray vision.

Once you've paid for the cards you are keeping, you take them into your hand and then the main Phase of the game begins which is taking Actions in turn order.  On your turn, you can take one or two actions and this opportunity continues until you pass.  At this point, you can no longer take any further Actions and the Phase continues until every player has passed.  Occasionally this may lead to an individual player having a little downtime, but I've never felt that it has occasioned anyone major delays.

Most Actions will probably involve you paying to play a card down in your play area of the table.  At this stage, it starts to become very important to know the meaning of the symbols on the cards.  When you explain this can be critical.  I've experienced those who like to try and explain every symbol to newcomers before play starts and I think for some beginners this can be a significant deterrent to them enjoying and coping. 

Two of the three types of cards that can be played.

Personally, I tend to point out that there are three types of card; with either a red/orange band, a green band or a blue band across the top.  The first are Events that are one-off happenings that are then turned face down; the second again have an immediate effect, but need to be kept face up in a pile so that the symbols at the top of the card are visible and the third type also need to be kept face up because they either have an effect that can recur or that you can activate as one of your Actions once per Round.

The reason why you need to be able to see the symbols is twofold.  Some cards have instructions on them that they can only be played, if you already have a specific number of the appropriate symbols in front of you.  Some cards can be paid for using not just MCs, but in resources too.  For example, a card that has a brown circle with a building inside the circle can be paid for in steel resources and/or MCs.  Or a card with a black circle with a golden star inside can be paid for with titanium resources.  So, the card above on the right that costs 11 MCs could be paid for using MCs and/or steel resources and the card below on the right costing 12 MCs can be paid for using MCs and/or titanium resources.

Apart from paying to place a card in front of you, there may be other requirements.  Again a typical example is on the left-hand card above.  The requirement is given both symbolically and also in words - the oxygen level must have reached 11% on the Oxygen track to allow you to play the card.  So, good news, all these types of symbols don't need to be known or remembered!  Just read the words!

Other Actions you can take are the basic ones, that I mentioned early in my review, for which there is a table to explain them on the game board.  These allow you to do things like pay to place a city or a greenery tile, but they are the most expensive way to accomplish anything in this game.  So, try to achieve them by playing cards rather than purely spending MCs.

As the game progresses, you and the other players will slowly at first, but with rapidly accelerating progress towards the end be filling the map board with cities and oceans and greenery, until ultimately Mars will have been appropriately terraformed.  In the process, you will pick up a lot of information about that process and every aspect of the game from actions to cards to game board reinforce the theme.

For you, that may play a part in the enjoyment of playing Terraforming Mars, but for me that is wholly peripheral and that is not a complaint or criticism.  I am wholly immersed and taken up with the sheer delight I get from trying to make the most of my every card and action, trying to create a smoothly effective process, to build up my terraforming rating and to acquire VPs in as many ways possible.

Rarely has the winner been clear until the very last totting up of all the different ways to score VPs.  And if you're really desperate for a game, it can even be played solo and just as all the other numbers of players provide a fantastic game, so does the solo experience.

RRP – £64.99
Online Retailer – 365games.co.uk

Store Locator - http://www.findyourgamestore.co.uk/

If you would like to see the game in action and hear my running commentary, check out this video. If you just want to read my thoughts in written form keep scrolling. The written version is far more coherent, since I wasn't being shot at the whole time!

Foxhole is a new game just released to Steam early access that allows you to jump into a persistent online battlefield with up to 119 other players and duke it out in a large scale war in a WW1/WW2 setting. This game has more to it than just that, however. Players spawn into the game with only a pistol, 16 rounds of ammo, and a hammer. You may be thinking, what good is a hammer in shootout? Well, in this game, it's one of the most important items on the battlefield. If you want to get your hands on anything other than that pistol, you or someone on your team will need to get to work gathering resources and turning them into weapons of war.

The map is littered with villages and resource nodes for the two teams to fight over. Once a team secures a resource node, players can begin "mining" those resource points to gather raw materials. Those materials are then taken to a refinery to be refined, and then those refined materials can be used at a weapons factory to produce rifles, machine guns, and so on, as well as the various types of ammunition for them. Binoculars, trucks, grenades, and everything else must be produced in this way. Defensive structures like barbed wire, sandbags, and foxholes can also be constructed using these resources. Finally, that equipment must be picked up by other players or hauled to those at the front. Trucks can be built to transport finished goods to the combat troops, or used to speed up the transport of raw and refined materials back home. This means that in order for a team to really succeed, they will need at least a few players dedicated to this process. I'm not entirely sure that I would enjoy playing this part of the game for more than short sessions at a time, but it is fun to know you are helping equip your fellow players with good weapons and ammo. Your efforts have a real tangible effect on the game, which is more than the crafting in most games can say.

Communication is another key to success in this game. Looking at the map, you can only see which towns are controlled by which team, and your current location. You cannot see friendly or enemy players at all. The only way to know what is going on is to communicate with your team. The chat box will usually be a constant stream of requests for supplies and reinforcements at critical points in the field. You can also use voice chat to talk to other players near you. While this can be off-putting right at first, since you can feel very lost and alone, it quickly became one of my favorite things about the game. I often hear it said that the average soldier on a battlefield only knows what is happening in his immediate area. He has no way of knowing what is going on elsewhere or even who is winning the battle. That is very much the case here, since you can only see a short distance around you. Enemy and even friendly players are only visible if you have direct line of sight to them. At night this viewing distance shrinks even more. Strong communication from your team is needed for everyone to get a clearer picture of the overall battle.

The actual combat is tense and chaotic. The mechanics of shooting are simple enough, just aim at the enemy and shoot, but it's complicated by a few things. First, as discussed, strong manufacturing efforts back at HQ make a huge difference here, since the basic pistol or even rifle will leave you hopelessly outmatched if the enemy has machine guns and SMG's. Not to mention how the amount of ammunition available to you changes how willing you are to use suppressing fire freely or be stuck conserving rounds. Second, visibility is limited to what you can actually see. Often the firefights turn into blind shootouts with each side returning fire at where they think the enemy just shot from. Fire too soon and you give away your position. Fire too late and you may find yourself overrun. The latest Dev Blog shows off some bayonet action, which looks to be very effective if you can catch the enemy off-guard.

Taking all of this together, Foxhole is a game which many players may bounce off of at first, but it looks to have a very rewarding gameplay loop for those with the patience to learn how to the game world works and begin to manipulate it.  Materials must be gathered, supplies must be brought to the front. Trucks carrying those supplies must stick to the roads. So, let's say your team is trying to capture a village but the enemy won't budge. Instead of hammering away endlessly, you might gather up an organized squad and slip past the enemy to cut off their supply lines. Just as in real life, setting up a roadblock at a key crossroads could starve the enemy at the front of ammunition and the resource needed to even respawn there, allowing your fellow troops to overrun their position. The game offers a lot of these opportunities to use real tactics to defeat the enemy. Patrols and reconnaissance are needed to gauge the enemy presence in an area. An armored offensive is possible, but a concentration of effort and resources is needed to build and fuel such vehicles.  Not to mention organizing a unit of infantry to support them, and hold any ground taken.

Currently the game lets 120 people play on each server. There are several different maps that make up the overall game world. The hope of the developer is to eventually link all of these maps and servers together, so that hundreds or perhaps thousands of players are on one seamless battlefield simultaneously. This is an ambitious goal, but I am eager to see them reach it. Such a scale would really open the game up to strategic and operational levels of play. Organized groups of players and clans could coordinate large scale offensives and fight battles that last days or weeks. 

This is still the alpha version of the game, so there is much work yet to be done in all areas. That said, the game runs perfectly fine already. I've only played a few hours, but did not run into any bugs or crashes.

Foxhole is available on Steam early access, and you can find the official website right here: http://www.foxholegame.com/

- Joe Beard

The Armored Campaign In Normandy June-August 1944

by

Stephen Napier 

 For this book, if I had to chose one word to describe it that word would be 'painstaking'. The book has been deeply researched by the author to give us all of the pertinent and newest information about this campaign. It has plenty of maps and some handy charts so that the reader can follow along with ease. The author's findings are eye-opening at times, from the morale of the 7th Armored Division, and the fact that the Allies lost so many tanks that the replacement rate could not keep up. 

 While the book at times does take aim at Montgomery, it does state that his constant offensives kept the Germans off balance and unable to stage any large attacks of their own.

 On page eighty-two there is a chart comparing the six most used tanks in the Normandy campaign, although it does not list the actual versions. The chart, to say the least, is interesting. It shows the different tanks' road and cross country speeds. The odd thing is that it lists the Tiger as being one mile per hour faster than the Sherman in both cases. While this is contrary to many other written reports, it might well be true. I have seen countless videos of refurbished World War II tanks and I am always impressed by the Tiger. Its turning ability, acceleration, and speed seem to be better than most of the other tanks that are shown at Bovington, etc. So the numbers listed in this book could be correct.

 As any history of the Normandy campaign would, this book has a part on the attack of Michael Wittmann at Villers Bocage. The author not only shows Wittmann's real tally, he also shows that his charge into the town was not a very smart move. The author continues with the tale of the equally foolish and unsuccessful German panzer attack later.

 The book is just as good when dealing with the sweeping large picture, or coming down to the day to day details of each operation. This is somewhat rare in a book like this. Usually an author is able to either do one well, but not the other. This is not the case here. The small details that the author shows us are in a lot of cases only found in this book. For instance, the author tells a story about a German officer of some 88mm anti-aircraft guns being forced at gunpoint by a fellow German to help stop a British advance with his guns in the anti-tank role.

 The author also goes into the 'tank scandal' issue. The 'tank scandal' was played out in the British Parliament. The issue started because of British tankers writing home about what they perceived as their own tanks being inferior to the German ones. This issue was debated heavily in Parliament for a good bit of time. 

 The book is 400+ pages long. It takes the reader from the invasion on D-Day to the end of the fighting at the Falaise Gap. I highly recommend this book as the best and most encyclopedic tome on armored warfare in Normandy.


 Robert


Book: The Armored Campaign In Normandy June-August 1944
Author: Stephen Napier
Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns

by 

Slitherine Games 

Shenandoah Studios

 This is the first time I wrote a review and had to chuck it all and start over again. In the beginning I didn't like this game. As a matter of a fact, I was looking to get out of writing the review. Some of it might have been snobbishness. After all, this is a game that started out as an IPAD game. I have never liked any IPAD/Android game that I have tried. They all seemed to be missing something. So when I started to play GTTT, I was looking at it through less than rose colored glasses. Even parts of it that should have felt good to me I disliked. Chit pulling for a game has been used for a long time to represent the vagaries and 'friction' of war. You have all these troops, but cannot use any of them this turn due to luck, and sometimes useless commanders. At first, when playing this game, it seemed maddening. I couldn't come up with a coherent plan, or at times save some of my forces from certain destruction. I was just about to give up on it when I started it up for one more try. I had just had a very good day at an Air museum and was in a unusually good mood. So I thought, what the heck let's give it one more try. I think I have mentioned before that sometimes it takes a while for a game to 'click' with me. I will go through the motions, but never really get absorbed in it, and just daydream between, and sometimes during, turns. So now I am happy to report that GTTT does have a method to its madness. It just took a much longer time than I am used to for me to 'get' this game.

 These are the main good to great points about the game:

The Map

Plenty of Fog Of War

AI

 As you can see the game comes with five scenarios, and a campaign game that can be played from either side North or South.

 The game does not actually have Fog Of War implemented as we are used to. You can see all of your opponents forces just like with a boardgame. In this case I am using the term Fog Of War to represent the fact that due to the chit pulling you have absolutely no say in what your forces can or cannot do for this turn. At times this a bit nerve racking and destroys all of your well made plans you made last turn. Because of this mechanic it is almost like every turn is a completely new game, and in some ways it is. 

 The map has to be one of the best looking Gettysburg maps I have ever seen on a computer. The terrain is well marked, and that helps immensely with planning your moves. With the chit draw process the game uses you will never know what, if anything, you can do on your next turn. So, as far as Fog Of War there is plenty to go around. The AI is brutal, simply brutal. It will attack and find your weaknesses. It might be too offensively minded for someone who is used to a Union computer side that plays like Meade.
 

 Some games' AIs are programmed to do one thing every game, or at least if the opponent does 'X', the AI does 'Y'. This is not the case with GTTT. The AI seems to react well to your different moves and strategies.

 The game has three different levels of difficulty. From reading on the forum from the developers the higher the level of difficulty just means how strong your opponents forces will be.

 GTTT comes across as a very simple game on a battle that has been gamed to death. However, under the hood there is a lot going on. To show you some of the rules that make this game better than your average one, let's take a look at the manual:

"11.2. Healing demoralized SPS
If a Unit spends a turn stationary and not engaged with the enemy,
then it will Heal a single demoralised SP at the end of the turn.
11.3. Rallying Units
During the full campaign game, there are a number of Night Turns.
During these turns, when a Formation is activated, any shattered
units with 2 or more demoralised SP make a test against their
Quality rating.
If the unit passes this test, then it will return to the map under the
player’s control with a number of SP’s healed. A higher Quality unit
is more likely to return from being Shattered and will also return
with more SP healed.
This is to simulate units fleeing the battle but being Rallied by their
commanders during the night hours."

 These rules, among others, along with the amount of scenarios, and the low price ($9.99) make it a easy for me to endorse the game now. Just take my advice, and before you hit the uninstall or refund button, give this game one more play through. I think you will be glad you did.

 

Robert

New England Air Museum Pictures

 This is just a bunch of photos I took today including a pic of yours truly.

 I actually got to sit in the P-47s cockpit.

 They also have a large beautifully worked collection of models.

In the rear is a Japanese gunnery training device

Gnome Engine

The star of the museum a fully restored B-29

 The cockpit of the P-47 was as roomy as I have read, but my head was sticking out and the canopy would never have closed even if the seat was as low as it could go.