Slitherine

quote:

Frontline D-Day - War Game of the Year?


Dan, as you know I recently came home with your Phantom Leader and Field Commander Alexander and both look like great games. Phantom has its cockpits opened and ready to taxi - but I recently received a thank you gift of Frontline D-Day - and I'm just being blown away in preference to anything else!

The components are fantastic - the multiple decks of cards are a great surprise: 3 Army decks for the US, Germans and Commonwealth, a double-sided Terrain deck, a Solitaire play deck and a huge Action deck. The colors you've chosen for each make their use highly durable - no black edges to accidentally mark. There's absolutely no reason for me to sleeve them and that excites me no end too. The single sheet of counters for equipment and markers etc., continue DVG's trend of the most perfectly centered and die cut chits in war gaming right now. That's 4 DVG games I own now and all have been remarkably consistent in their counter quality.

But then I've now moved to the rules and what I'm reading suggests to me, the most exciting innovation in war game design in decades. The users manual you've supplied is 40 heavily illustrated pages long - the rules only come to 20 of those - and I'm slowly making my way through them but your prolific use of examples all the way through to the design and features of the cards is just astounding me to no end. Is that a hint of programmed instruction I see there too?

Once I'm through with the rules I can't wait to give this game a fuller write-up. However, for now Dan I just wanted to thank you for what could be seen as an innocuous box that promises to deliver a powerful punch of war gaming.

This game is nothing like Up Front - it is much more elegant in thought, more sophisticated in feel and more heavily featured in its elements. And those cards! I was worried about the cartoonish approach but when in hand they are outstanding. Pictures just do not do them justice.

I hope that you can heavily promote this game to give it the wide acceptance it deserves. I might cross post this elsewhere to help that process along!

Happy gaming,

Adam.