Now you'll have to take that collective farm without vehicular support. Threw away half your halftracks in a reckless push across an open hillside last turn? You muppet. Where most wargames blindfold you, bundle you into the back of truck and drive you miles to a new unfamiliar battlefield, after every victory or defeat, this one forces you to push on, and confront the sometimes-grim consequences of previous actions. The game captures that unkemptness perfectly.Ĭouldn't be arsed to read my recent 1000-word rant about wargame and sim campaigns? No problem, here's the short version: “Why can't more games have campaign systems like Achtung Panzer Operation Star?”. I've (thankfully) never had any direct experience of war, but I've read enough about it to know that' it's an unpredictable and untidy business. On other occasions your men are tramping through a godforsaken tract of frozen pines and birch en-route to some faraway forming-up point when they blunder into a trudging column of foes doing exactly the same thing. At times you roll into a major victory location and find it completely deserted. There's none of that 'If I was the scenario designer I'd position a nasty Pak 40 over there on that forest edge and liven up the final phase of the scrap by injecting some Panther tank reinforcements at around the forty-minute mark'.īecause there's no scenario designers behind the frosty firefights - well, no human ones anyway - there's none of that predictability and eagerness to entertain and test that often comes with hand-crafted missions. There's none of that 'I'm attacking, he's defending', 'I'm in the south, he's in the north' certainty you get with most grog fodder. Thanks to massive venues, and battle shapes dictated by an inspired turn-based strat layer, a lot of the time you have no real idea where the enemy is, what his strength is, or what he's up to. Most of those challenges involve the game's secret weapon - the Panzer XII 'SnowTiger' Mech Uncertainty. I yearn to spend my evenings in blizzard-blasted hamlets and eerily quiet - too quiet - pine plantations because this wargame offers me challenges and experiences none of those other 99, 92 or 134 wargames offer. Impressively, it does just that.īut mastery of WW2 skirmish basics isn't the main reason APOPSTAR (As I insist it's known for short) will be sitting very high on my Games of the Year list this year. To be hailed as a hero this real-time company-level tactical simulation has to match the likes of Close Combat in close combat, and puncture Panzers as plausibly as Combat Mission. Or 135th - the exact number isn't really important. All I can say for sure, is that it was lucky to lead the charge.īy the time your 100th wargame comes along, the barbed wire entanglement of experience can be so thick, the MG nests of knowledge-based negativity so numerous and fiendishly sited, the unlucky assaulter is fortunate if it makes it off its start-line.Īchtung Panzer: Operation Star is my 100th wargame.
Was Arnhem really 'skill' or whatever praise-phrase MasterTimothy Stone Esq used back in the 80s? Search me. Back then your young mind hadn't had time to dig those dugouts of discernment, and sow those Schu-minefields of cynicism.
Stick a scarf round your throat and a vodka down your neck (or vice versa) and you'll be ready to hear Wot I Think of Graviteam's latest Eastern Front wargame. Why is it so fffffffffflippin (it also works with 'f's) cold? I blame greedy British energy companies and the bitter Siberian wind that has been gusting from my monitor all week. Did you know that by counting the number of 'R's in a cold person's 'BRRRRRRRRRR!' you can tell the temperature of their surroundings? My 'BRRRRRRRRRR!' for instance, indicates my room is currently -10C.