Just had a quick set up and demo game with 2 platoons of infantry a side, some tanks and tank riders, and a sniper for the Germans. Goal was to show off the rules to some of the local club members. Lots of pinning all around, and several bloodied squads near the center of the table.
I'll just post the pics since there's really not a whole lot to go off of for the AAR. I think the Russians had 15 BR and the Germans 9 BR in morale chits by the time we called it too late to continue playing.
Pics:
Soviet infantry advances towards the middle of the village...
and the cover of the nearby railway embankment.
While the Germans follow suit:
Panzer IVs arrive to knock out a T-34 on the German left flank, causing the tank riders to scatter and be cut down by the nearby MG34 teams.
T-34s push up on the Russian left flank.
Soviet forward headquarters arrives to survey the carnage.
End of game positions. I think we made it through 4 turns in about an hour of play. Was just too late to get any more in.
It's a good bet I'll be setting about making up some templates for QRS, vehicle data cards, and movement measuring sticks to speed things along. The movement trays really helped improve the process of moving all that infantry.
Still thinking about good intro game sized forces, and what rules to really highlight and which to leave out for sake of speed/ease of learning to play. I think for demo games, keeping track of ammo could be dropped to allow people to roll more dice in combat, and I think trimming the morale chits a bit will allow for some less-painful counters being pulled. Still not sure on how much artillery to introduce, maybe just offboard mortars.
I think these are great rules, but for intro games I like to get everyone rolling dice and using orders to get a feel for how the mechanics flow, while hinting that rules exist for the more in-depth things you can do (charging bunkers with demo charges was brought up, as well as medics running about on the beaches during D-Day).
The Germans made particularly good use of Ambush Fire with their sniper, preventing a few Russian squads from shooting back in return. The Russians learned quickly that burning T-34s aren't the best place for their tank riders to hang around. Everyone was picking up on the Area-Fire-then-Aimed-Fire techniques for pinning infantry, then causing wounds and morale checks.
By the end of the night, everyone was fairly familiar with the basics of the rules for moving, shooting, morale, and order management, and I was mostly keeping track of remaining orders and helping measure. Fun times, but I need to get some more terrain done up - notably fences and some more details on my train tracks.
Lots of passers-by commented on liking the 20mm scale.
