Anothe Review from the Lead Adventures Forum. This one is by Winterborn:
Okay, i'll have a crack at talking about AE-WWII.
First off, the background. The differences in the Core Rulebook and the Real World spring from three incidents. Firstly, the Tunguska event in Siberia has led to usable psychic powers developing in the Soviet Union. Secondly, Nikola Tesla was recruited by the US Govt to come up with tech for them, and Thirdly, an alien spaceship crashed in Poland, and that is one reason why Germany invaded, to recover it.
These differences have led to a series of different events in AE-WWII, i.e. Normandy failing, Turkey joining the Axis and invading British Palestine, Iraq and Persia, etc… All are believable when taken in context, nothing stretches credibility beyond the basic premise, for which we have all taken our pills of suspension of disbelief.
Each of the listed factions have special troops based on the Incident referred to above. The Soviet Union has a number of psi-active units and weapons, including the cool chimp-human hybrids Chumans. The psi-units are truly deadly when used correctly, they can effectively ignore armour or cover, providing an invaluable weapon.
The US units are based off the high tech weapons and ideas developed by Nikola Tesla. They have things like death-rays, robots, powered armour, and jet packs. Very cool. (My faction of choice)
The Germans have hideous abominations developed from the genetic information and techniques they extracted from the ships wreckage. Cloned mecha-apes on combat drugs, giant uber-soldats with a panzerfaust in each hand, fire-spewing pyromaniacs and others. Awesome stuff and dangerous as hell, though primarily in close combat.
Each faction also has its own regular units, like Airborne and GIs for the US, Wehrmacht and Volksturm for the Germans, and Red Guard and Conscripts for the Soviets. Units are available to create complete platoons, though that would get a bit complicated to actually play, see later.
The miniatures are 'true' 28mm, and so will look somewhat smaller and skinnier than many other ranges, but they are some of the best sculpted and detailed minis i have ever owned in my 17 years as a wargamer. (oh god, 17 years. I cannot recommend the minis high enough, the only issue is that some of the minis are very fiddly, and require a reasonable degree of modeling skill. Not all miniatures are available for every unit yet, but they are coming.
The rules are simple without being simplistic, while being quite fun. They also require you to think about everything. The higher your experience level the more actions you get, and you need to keep in mind what your less-experienced troops will be doing down the track, or you risk having your forces out-maneuvered. Leadership, or Drive in AE terms, is key to a successful battle. Drive is lost due to casualties and other actions, and once it drops to zero, that unit is broken and fleeing. Losing other units can cause a drop in Drive, so dont throw anyone away, there are no cannon fodder in AE. Weapon ranges are very short, perhaps too short, but anyone used to Evil Empire ranges wont notice anything, and it just ensures that you must maneuver and engage the enemy, no just sitting at the back and dakka-dakka'ing the enemy.
Playing more than two detachments, up to twenty odd minis a side, would get rather complicated, but the Darkson guys are looking into that. Check out Over the Wire, their magazine.
Army selection is pointless, in a good way. There are no points, you simply select units to fill the slots in a detachment. There are restrictions of course, but there are many, many options, and i am having great fun figuring out what detachments to field.
Basically, AE-WWII is a great game, with simple but fun and engaging rules that make you think and plan. The minis and fluff are excellent, and the guys at Darkson answer questions on the forum quickly. My first question is already in the official errate, (yay im finally published )
One of the coolest things, is that it is highly customizable, and I for one have already posted some rules for other units to the forum. With the number of possible hero units and hero templates, there are a huge number of possible combinations. And with your opponents permission, use some of the other factions hero templates, and OSS Agent with Assassin, or Politruk with Movie Star would be cool.
Go out and buy it, or at least try out the Quick Start rules on the website.
Website: darksondesigns.com
Forums: darksondesigns.proboards21.com
Quick Start Rules: PDF link
Over the Wire: PDF link
