"But sir, it's called the `deluxe' version of the 98% lean burger because it's slathered with mayonnaise. Many people like it that way."
This review is mostly irritable bitching a comparison between the Victory Point Games (VPG) and the GMT editions of No Retreat!, plus some background information for people who aren't familiar with the game at all. For me, the VPG edition is superior, but I hope to explain why well enough to make this useful to people whose tastes differ from mine. You mayonnaise-suckin' freaks.
To begin with: No Retreat! is a great game, and if you haven't played it, you should. Apart from the novelty of gaming the largest military campaign in history with 20 units per side, it's fast, fun, tense, and relatively simple, with several innovative systems, and with victory conditions which reward devious & aggressive play. It has cards, but it's not card-driven; the cards just introduce uncertainty about the opponent's capabilities. And any card can be discarded to pay for rail movement, replacements, etc., so there's no such thing as a bad hand: if you draw a bunch of events you can't use, that just means you've got other options. Low unit density and low stacking limits also help keep it playable. The designer has done a great job of supporting the game on BGG, too.
However, the VPG version has never been called pretty. It looks like it was printed on a color inkjet printer, and it has a cover only a game designer's mother could love. But that doesn't matter because most wargamers have been trained for decades by wargame publishers, including GMT, to disregard pretty components as the least important aspect of a game.
On the surface, the GMT version seems to take a great game and add great components: a mounted map, oversize counters cut with rounded corners, full-color card backs, Soviet units which are red instead of pink... 993
wow. Never again will people look at the map and stammer, "well, that looks... functional..." But once you wipe away the tears of joy, you see baffling graphic design choices, a rulebook riddled with errors, and quite a few additional rules which (for me) don't improve the game.
Let's start with the change which bugs me the most.
The map
In the VPG version, the Axis player sits on the west edge; the Soviet player sits on the east edge; various holding boxes are on the north edge; and the turn track, VP track, and terrain effects chart are on a separate sheet which you can set above the north edge, or upside down below the south edge--whatever's most convenient. No text is upside-down for either player. (The image at right does not include the expansion map, which is included in the GMT version.)
In the GMT version, the rules still say that's the way you should sit... but if you actually look at the map, the charts are on the east & west edges, and they're upside down to the Soviet player... the combat results tables and rail movement boxes are rotated as if the players are supposed to sit along the north & south edges, but that puts the terrain effects chart upside-down to the Soviet player... it's like the person who laid out the map didn't actually plan to play the game on it! It doesn't make sense, and it's just not as good as the VPG layout, no matter where you sit. I don't understand what they were thinking.
(In addition to Na Berlin!, the GMT map does have a couple more rows of hexes on the eastern edge, which seem like they could be nice--I know in I wasn't impressed with the idea of until I tried it.)
The cards
Each card has an Axis event and a Soviet event, and when a card is played for its event (instead of being discarded for other purposes), the event which is used depends on which player played the card.
One of the ways the game models the changes in the side's capabilities over the course of the war is to make some events playable only during the first half of the game, some playable only during the second half of the game, and the rest always playable. (Again, even if an event is not playable, the card can still be used for other things.) Symbols on the cards indicate which category they fall into, and you use those symbols every turn, all game long.
Some cards also have symbols indicating that they should be added to or removed from the deck if the game continues into 1945. You use these symbols once, in some campaign games.
Guess which set of symbols is more prominently displayed on the GMT cards, and is visible when you fan them out. 993