Night Fight: Solitaire East Front Tactics

Acquired 5/1/17. Haven't played a tactical game in a long time but this looks good (and not overly complicated) plus it is Eastern Front so I'll give it a chance :)

The system is very good and my rating is based on that as playing this game just reaffirmed the fact that I really don't like tactical games.

As my collection will attest, I have a soft spot for the magazine-with-game-single-map-and-200-counters format, especially when they take on quirky topics off the beaten track. This takes as its premise (and one of the scenarios) the Ghost Column of Rzhavets from the battle of Kursk, when a German unit famously did a sneaky-beaky run on the Russians. This solo World at War game has serviceable graphics and a fairly simple engine, which sees your units try to traverse a town and bridges while dodging static and mobile Russian units in varying levels of light and cover. You can choose your units and there are some special options (flares, Panzerfaust) and random events to spice up the action. The movement of the Soviet columns is simple to the point of dumb, but it works thematically and as a game mechanism. The rest of the rules are pretty straightforward, although there are some loose areas which of course are not a problem for the solo gamer. I was not convinced of the scenario design of the Rzhavets scenario (which seems to require the Germans to move less like a Ghost Column and more like Wacky Races if they are to reach their goal), and there is a nagging feel that this could probably be better played with Squad Leader. However, ignoring the scenario conditions and just playing for fun, I had a blast, with some real tense moments as the various forces blindly thrashed around. It is not a game with a lot of 'clever' mechanisms but it hits the spot in terms of what it is trying to do. It is just a shame that the price of these little gems is increasingly making it difficult to justify buying quirky games like this for a single play.

Truly a tremendously enjoyable solitaire game for tacticalophiles like myself.