How are you finding Fulda Gap and the CSS system? I believe CSS is based on the Gamers GTS system:
It is, sort of. Same designer. I love the GTS system, the CSS, well…
the maps and counters are first class, very attractive. Full colour rule books and scenario booklet. Production values up there with the best. Now the not so good. The QA has been pretty poor, printing errors all over the place, really simple stuff like listing the components of the previous game in the following game Rulebook, hero decriptions omitted or from previous games, counters missed from the scenario set ups Etc.
LOS rules section is a bit of a quagmire, there hasn’t been a game in the series that hasn’t had errors in the examples or the rules. I’ve been working with another player to clarify and simplify the LOS rules, the designer still has to sign off on the document. There are also some anomalies on the map where the terrain depiction leads to confusion when you go uphill to a lower elevation, there aren’t many like that and the application of common sense will resolve it.
There are some mechanics that seem a little odd when first encountered, the use of support weapons and the routing rules, for example
All infantry are mounted in APCs but when they deploy they can’t move, seems odd to me, plus they lose the AP FP and ATGM of their APCs when they do. Ok, the hexes are 500m across and one could argue that they’d be unlikely to move further than 500m form their BMPs etc. But there should, I feel, still be some form of support provided by the the BMPs when the troops are dismounted.
it’s not an overly complex game, but when reading reading the rules you have to try to imagine what the designer was thinking when he wrote the rules.
Fulda does suffer from what appears to be gaps in technical research by the designer with respect to river crossing capabilities of the units involved, thermal imaging, and wire guided ATGMs firing over rivers. To be fair he has taken note of the comments from people who served during the period that the game takes place and the rules have been amended accordingly.
The system isn’t perfect, some questionable/different mechanics but I keep going back to it. There are numerous occasions where you have to subtract a negative modifier to resolve a combat or morale check, surely there must be a better more intuitive way…
If you do decide to get get into the system the rule book for Saipan was a dogs breakfast, you’ll need the rulebook for Tinian to play Saipan. The table space required is pretty big, especially for the 4 mappers. Guam is enormous.
Not perfect, too many silly errors in the rulebooks, some novel mechanics that take a bit to get used to, very good support on the forums from the designer. But, if you just play the game without continuously challenging some the concepts it can be good fun. Plus there aren’t that many games around where you can fight a Pacific Island war at company level.
The bigger scenarios will take a while to play.
the next game in the series covers Berlin 1985, should interesting. Berlin is a very flat city so based on the current rule set there won’t be any ATGM shots possible over most of the city and most fire will be point blank. There are some early examples of the terrain on consimworld, not sure about the slopes and have already commented on the potential problems.
hope the above helps.
cheers
Paul
. We can't wait for Undaunted North Africa to arrive.
