"Anyone played Squadron Commander: Reheat yet?" Topic

I see it is a free download at Brigade games' website:

link

I've had a skim but haven't playtested them, pending the arrival of some models.

Who has played it – what are your thoughts?

Rules
I am most interested in: How fast does it play, and how many fighters per side can it handle without bogging down?

From my skim of the rules, the movement system seems more complicated than SD, there seems to be a LOT of modifiers for firing etc, you track fighter speed on a card. Instead of a million hit boxes it seems you have a million critical hit locations.

What have your game experiences been like?

Models
Is it just how they photograph, or are the Brigade models a little uninspiring? (I like their aeronef but the space fighters for the game seem a bit bland?)

If you have these models at home, what is your opinion of them,compared to say, a Studio Bergstrom or Silent Death fighter?

Thanks!

Didn't even know the download was up yet – thanks for the heads up.

In four days since it came out? When it came out on a weekend?

Read through it briefly – looks playable, but the pdf is sort of a "beta" version without the scenarios, ship design rules and background fluff. Spotted a couple of things that may be unintentionally missing, emailed Tony with them already. Nothing that would make gameplay impossible, though. Hard to say how fast/slow it plays, but the starter boxes come with 8 fighters per side, so that's a fair indicator of how big a game is expected to be the norm.

On first read, it looks a bit charty at first but not overwhelmingly so. Most of the mods are simple +1/-1 effects and should become reflexive after a few plays. The setup initiative rules are clever, I like the way ships can start the game all over the place as they first make contact. Wish there were some better scenario guidelines for playtesting – right now it's pretty much pick an equal number of fighters and balance your missile expenditures, assuming that all fighters are supposed to be 999 points each.

The minis look okay to me, but I liked the baby versions of them too. Prices are pretty good, and several of them could be turned into full starships with minimal effort, which is always nice. They beat Silent Death at the moment simply on the grounds of actually being available – ICE has SD in limbo for who knows how long.

Just had an email from Tony, he's already modified the pdf to fix a couple of things I spotted. Certainly can't say they aren't being responsive ti questions. :)

Basic SD fighters are available in plastic from eM4…
I'm off to check out these new rules.

Doesn't help much with the metals, though – and who plays starfighter games and doesn't already have a set or two of the SD plastics anyway? Maybe some genre specific guys doing Star Wars or BSG?

I didn't know it came out that recently! I stumbled across them when I was buying some new 'nefs on their site.

As ICE has $70 USD of my money since March '10 and no box set in site, I feel confident in writing them off as a future mini supplier.

BWS – you're right about everyone having SD plastics! – I found a EM4 set of SD ships I got from a local Toyworld store (where it was snuggled in amongst the 1:48 models in a 1990s era crusty old box). I'm off to dig them out….

So has anyone played it since?
Also any thoughts on how it would do for solo play, say in combination with something like Squadron Foreward?