Well this mighyt tome has finally arrived at Chez Baumber. I had to though, first present myself at the Royal Mail to pay a customs charge on it. So even more hard earned money gone.
When I opened the box I was distinctly underwhelmed. The counters are way too thick and can not be used with other counters in the system. The maps are too dark making the fields very hard to see. Why on earth could not the same colours as Fall of France be used ? As to the hills we now have a line of craters to indicate slope lines as well as the contour line. This is Normandy, France not Mars.
Winging over. The scenarios look OK with a good mix of size's and situations, I just wish APL would settle on a single map style and countersize.
The colour changes of the maps in PG is one of the biggest downers of the series. Given that this has been bemoaned sice I joined the PG system (4-5 years), it is unfathomable why a map style and colour scheme has not been settled on.
Elsenborn Ridge, Fall of France and Liberation 44 should ALL be of the same hue and style. That would mean only BoB and poss Airborne map 13 would have been had to have been brought into line. Now, we have four different sets of colour. Its an opportunity inexplicably missed ?
I wonder whether with the constantly changing graphics programs and changes of printer, if Avalanche is even capable of keeping a uniform color palatte. The variability of style and color has been a rich area of growsing since Airborne came out.
My boxes were half crushed for liberation and sword of Israel. I did not realise Australia was at the frontiers of mail civilization.
But yeh counters are too thick. British sheet is slightly blurry on the back along with the main Israeli sheet in sword. Also in sword the counter sheets were not cut properly so for me to get the counters out of it took about four hours of, well surgery would be the word, and after all was done I had to use sticky tape and glue to repair about a dozen of the counters.
Honestly not that impressed with ap at the moment. They should have done better for $200 worth of stuff (including edelweiss iv)
Oh and edelweiss..... The counters are slightly misaligned, the French made h35s and s35s have their full strength on both sides and all of the ss gebirgsjager units are just plain green on the back not camo... Oh and scorch marks bloody galore.
End of rant.
I have to comment that the counters for Liberation came scorch free and I really like the thick counters. Attribute this to the old Battleline company counters from my perspective. I can only hope that AP will print the older game counters in this format to keep standardization from here forward.
Hey Tanzer the "phoenix" edition counters all require very careful handling removing from sprue, as I think has been posted here before. At about 3 times the thickness of previous counters, they don't lend themselves to integration with other games. Hence the emphasis on each boxed game being complete in each box. If Perryman ever does a scenario book on 30th corps drive on Arnhem, it should be interesting combining Beyond Normandy and Liberation counters for the scenarios.
I guess I wasn't careful enough.
I'm still happy to integrate with the other games. Someone mentioned fog of war in solitaire games.
When I received Russo-Japanese War and first saw the countersheet, I thought they had forgotten to cut it. The counters are held in to the frame by extremely tiny nubs, but these nubs are about a quarter of an inch thick! Spraying on the background color and data after laser cutting can mean a latex-like sheet of paint runs continuously from one counter to the next. Hence the need for careful separation.