Introduction
Through the 70s and 80s Platoon level tactical armored combat games were pretty popular topics. The vast majority of titles came from Avalon Hill ( PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader, A rab Israeli War) and SPI ( Kampfpanzer, Red Star White Star, Combat Command, Mech War ’77, Panzer ’44, Mech War 2, and more). Practically all of these games were based on <PERSON> Tactical Game 3, which <PERSON> sold to Avalon Hill to become PanzerBlitz. And we’ve come full circle.
AH was pretty happy with the PanzerBlitz family and tinkered with it sparingly, differing with the SPI offerings by ignoring ugly little command and control issues, and anything that smacked of an interactive sequence of play, with the exception of opportunity fire. SPI, in contrast, developed a number of command and control schemes, which were mostly based on randomly selecting units for a random behavior, that was almost anything other than what a commander would want his units to do. SPI also experimented with plotted artillery fire, combat differential as opposed to odds based CRTs, and simultaneous movement. Some experiments worked better than others, but essentially these games were all recognizable as members of the same family.
Enter <PERSON>, and Game Designer’s Workshop. GDW introduced a number of tactical armored combat games, in two major series offerings; Assaultand First Battle, in that order. First Battle I’ve reviewed elsewhere with two series games; Blood and Thunder, and Battlefield Europe. I won’t say that they improved on the earlier Assault series, but they were certainly created to appeal to a wider audience. This review deals with the namesake of the first series, Assault, which took on contemporary warfare in Cold War Europe. SPI’s Red Star White Star, Mech War ’77, and Mech War 2 all looked at this time period, and at many of the same or similar situations, but I believe Assault went them all one better in the Holy Grail-like pursuit of command and control. In Assault, the entire game system is built around simulating the command and control structure of the units involved, and players used to the AH/SPI titles would have to adjust the way they thought about command, and the fact that the fighting part of the game is almost secondary to getting your units in the right place at the right time, and under effective control.
Images used are taken from the BGG game pages.
Thanks: (arnaudel)(Original_CorPse)(dude163)(saab dastard)
The Game
Assault, by GDW, is a Platoon level treatment of modern combined arms combat in Europe ca. 1985. 993
The game was released in 1983, the first in a series of five titles in the series. The game was meant to be a simulation of the new organization and doctrine that was in the process of being adopted by the US Army at the time. The rules are detailed – this is definitely a game for experienced players – and players would do well to set up small situations on a map to help in learning the game. That said, the rules are clear and the game situations are described in some depth. In many ways, the game reminded me of SPI's , but at a much smaller scale and scope. Ultimately the game puts the players in the shoes of battalion, regimental, or brigade commander standing up to NATO, or stemming the Soviet tide over the Continent.
First impressions
The bits and pieces are pretty good by early 80s standards, although they show their age up against contemporary titles. There are about 500 unit counters and markers, a pair of matte finished card stock maps, a couple of intimidating looking log sheets, scenario booklets and unit Fire data charts (one for each side), rules, and historical background booklets. There isn't a lot of color – the charts and booklets look like what you could get off of your own computer's word processor, again not too impressive to today's gamers. You might be a little disappointed if you picked this game up in an auction or a used game sale, maybe enough to just put it back in the box and pass it on. But then you would have made a mistake, read on.
The Maps – You get just two 17” x 22” geomorphic maps; the hexes represent 250 meters, and depict typical Central European terrain. You get a lot of urban areas to fight over and around, some fairly rugged mountains and rolling hills, plenty of woods to hide in and some troublesome streams to channel your actions. There's a lot of cover, and you'll need it. The maps are mostly shades of green and brown, a little blue, red for main roads and everything else is picked out in black. The look is classic 80s, non-Avalon Hill style.
Though they are geomorphic, there are only two, and they are relatively large for this sort of map. 993