Which Set?

I recommend getting the 1939-1945 Starter, four 1939-1945 boosters, and two Eastern Front boosters, and two North Africa boosters. I found with this game, it’s not terribly fun if you don’t have a variety for pieces for a couple of opposing armies. You’ll broaden your opponent base by having enough stuff to share with an opponent who has no pieces (obviously). The 39-45 stuff is essentially a “greatest hits” collection of pieces from previous sets, so you get some good stuff there. EF has a lot of fun, new, heavy hitting stuff that’s widely unavailable in 39-45. I’d focus on those 2 sets until you have enough stuff to play a good game, where you can diversify armies and not have to pick units over and over because you don’t have enough. If you can’t have 100 points vs 100 points, you won’t be having much fun.

I’ve found that I first started really having fun with this game when I had about 50-60 pieces. Trades rounded out my USA and Germany (the two forces I focused on initially). I’ve got about 1200-1500 pieces now, and in all honesty, nobody needs this many. I got hooked on the collecting aspect of it, and decided “I’ve got all the older pieces, may as well get this whole new set too”… Try and avoid that mentality if you can.

It’s ok. That’s what I voted but in retrospect, I probably should have at least said “I like it.”

With “The European Battle of the SS”, “The battle for Narva” and the Demansk Pocket all strongly repelled by divisions of the Waffen SS, I was really hoping for more infantry that would go deeper into members of the Waffen SS. Even going into specific divisions that did outstanding like Totenkopf, Das Reich, Leibstandarte and even notorious foriegn legions like Wiking.

Just on a side note, I also think the Weihrmacht Oberleutnant is still WAY too many points. I could maybe see 10 but 13 is ridiculous.

They should have an SS Oberleutnant. Also, while the Allies have a number of partisan troops, some of which are really good, they don’t repressent the Anti-partisan units recruited by the SS on the Eastern Front very well. These volunteer units played a very significant role in repelling other partisans and Russians. In addition to that I wish they would have gone deeper into the Russian NKVD units used.

On the other hand, one can’t complain too much. The Germans are excellent in this game. My main complaint is if the Allies (Russia) can use partisans to deploy anywhere on side hexes of the board, with an urban combat bonus then the Germans should be able to symolize the anit-partisan units they raised that successfully repelled a significant part of this activity with that same bonus.

The Base set is the first set, reserves in one of the later sets.

1st release - Base set
2nd release - Set II (sometimes called Eastern Front)
3rd release - Contested Skies
4th release - D-day
5th release - Reserves

Each of the releases has different units, but they all play well together ;)

Actually, DL, you make a good point there.  I just tend to at least hear people out when it comes to “rumor-mill” type news.  I was just trying to see if anyone else had heard the same thing.

Oh, and good job on calling my Big Lebowski reference, dezrtfish.  :wink:

OMG!!  I cant wait for WaS to come out.  I love how the minis look.  It pwns!!

Rangers are strong competitive piece, though unless they get new (non-improved) indirect fire units the Spotter SA is mostly just thematic.

(Edit)Here’s my full review:

As the opening salvo says, “its inevitable that it will be compared to the Axis workhorse, the SS-Panzergrenadiers.” Quite true, though thankfully the Rangers have enough differences to keep them from being just carbon-copies.

The Lead the Way SA is interesting in that it’s once per turn, not per phase (or during movement and/or assault), so be careful when you use it; unless it’s to grab a last minute objective, re-rolling a movement roll isn’t too important, though thematically it’s nice.

Spotter is again nice, if not too useful. The M1 81mm Mortar doesn’t need a spotter, nor do spotters enhance them, and the open back M7 105mm Priest is an easily neutralized unit. I suppose you could save 1 point and use the Russian mortars instead if you really wanted to. Also, lacking the Spotter SA they can’t enhance aircraft.

The Rangers have slightly improved defence and a re-roll over the similar Veteran SMLE Riflemen; the only time the Australian unit is, well when you can’t take Rangers (eg Pre-1942 game). By themselves the Rangers are at the high end of 5 points, but compared to the Garand they perhaps should have been 6; as is they make the Garand fairly useless. Sure the Garands can have the same dice, without a re-roll, but that requires more points for an adjacent commander, and is -1/-1 defence.

A great unit that I’m sure will see a lot of use both in casual and competitive games: 4.5/5

Oh man got one of the best boosters, got the bofors, the zero, the MGC (freakin tight anti-tank-tank), SS Stormtrooper, german stug III, ummm and some other sweet shit like the jap armored truck, the only shitty thing i got was the american observing jeep, lol, it blows. PEACE

Yeah, they even have some new maps that you can download.