Old School Tactical – new arrival, and my first chance to play [Wargame]

Last Thursday, I cam home, and found a wonderful surprise- the new release from Flying Pig Games- Old School Tactical Volume II!  This volume covers the late war western front of World War II, dealing with battles between the Americans and Germans.

This release was particularly exciting, because it came with some Pocket Battle maps- smaller maps that could be re-positioned to create battlefields for us to fight on, that don't require a large table like the normal mounted maps do.

Anyway, I had no experience in this game, despite owning this as well as Volume I (Eastern Front + Stalingrad), so it's lucky that someone reached out to me on Boardgamegeek, to see if I was interested in giving it a shot (heck yes!).

We played this on Saturday, and as it was the first time playing with this gentleman, I didn't take notes, and limited my picture taking, but here is the early part of the game in action.
We used see-through bingo chips instead of the Moved/Fired/Used markers included with the box, just to make it easier for us to figure out who had moved prior to shooting (for the Moving Fire modifier).  We played the first of the Stalingrad scenarios (Rattenkrieg), and called it near the end, as his dice rolling was AWFUL.  Like, awful awful (2d6 rolls of 2,4,3,2,3 in succession, in a game where high rolls are ideal).

Other than his bad luck, I think we had a pretty good time.  The system, once we got used to it, seemed like a lot of fun.  Shooting seems very deadly- moreso than in any other WWII game at this scale I've played before.  I don't view that as a negative thing in general, but it's going to make traditional attack/defense scenarios very nerve-wracking for the attacker, who is going to have to move through open ground at some point.  HOWEVER, in this quite small scenario, there were several clear advantages to the attacker- greater numbers, good positioning to start, and additional impulses (or at least an additional die to generate them).  It felt pretty balanced, even with the pretty deadly rounds of combat.

Plus, the game played quick once we got in the zone. With the impulse system (similar to Conflict of Heroes, but with some changes), you aren't sitting around doing nothing for very long, and both of us felt like we were a part of the action every minute of the game.  And the system seems like it will scale well- playing scenarios on the full map won't become too onerous a task, I hope.

They did a good job- I look forward to playing this again, maybe with some armor next time!