I got to take part in a Tide of Iron demo today at my FLGS. Pretty sweet deal that one of the stores that Fantasy Flight Games picked was right in my neighborhood. Pretty slow day on the demo front, and I was the only person who showed up. I played Guy, the store owner, and we had a good time.
I decided to go ahead and pre-order the game from the store, and look forward to it’s arrival in April. We only played one of the demo scenarios that FFG prepared for this event, but I think I got a pretty good feel for the game. A couple of thoughts:
- Production: The game looks very, very nice. The boards are thick card (with a little bit of warping in the Texas humidity) and have some great detail in th artwork. In addition to the board, you get terrain hexes and a load of counters. All these pieces come in the same nice card stock, and look like they will hold up well. The miniatures, especially the infantry, have some nice detail on them. I would not want to paint them, but I think they could easily be painted to a very nice result. One other thing I will note is that everything seems to fit back in the box very well. In general, I would rate the production value of this game as a 5/5.
- Mechanics: The game is definitely more of a miniatures game played on a board than a board game about war. The way units attack and the way hits are determined seems like something that would be common in a more traditional miniatures game. The mechanics of the game are interesting though, with the attacker rolling both the attack and defense dice in his turn. You take the number of successes (typically 5’s and 6’s) on the attack dice and subtract the number of successes on the defense dice to determine hits. Hit’s on infantry are kills, hits on vehicles use a chart to determine the effect. I thought the game played very smooth, and it is really quite easy to pick up on what dice to roll and when. I would have liked to see a fall back or forced retreat rule, and perhaps it is there but it just didn’t come up in our demo game. I would give the mechanics of the game, as far as I saw, a 4/5.
- Scenarios: They are not balanced to be sure. Still this can be a big part of the challenge. I don’t know the name of the scenario we played, but the American forces needed to get 3 half-tracks off the far edge of the map within 6 turns. I think it would be quite difficult for the Americans to do this with any consistency. The German player has pretty good access to reinforcements, and this can make it hard to punch through. One think I will say about this game is that infantry are going to get shot to pieces if they are caught in the open. Cover is your friend. I did like the scenario for the size though. It was set up to play on only 4 boards, and it appears that most of the “normal” scenarios use 6 or 9. It made for a faster game, and I thought that was enjoyable. Can’t really rate the scenarios yet, but I like that the game is scenario driven.
Overall, I was very pleased with the game. The way initiative works and the way that the cards interact with the game are very nice aspects. I have space on my shelf right under Descent, and I can’t wait to fill it up with my own copy of Tide of Iron.
Tide of Iron links can be found by visiting my Tide of Iron group on Ma.gnolia.
Tags: board, game, war, wwii, tide of iron, fantasy flight games