Airborne Assault - Highway to the Reich

[Bonegavel]

Picked up this title a little over a week ago and I must say it is a good game. It uses the same little counters as the standard Turn Based Hex game, but is actually an RTS that has a unique command heirarchy that allows you as much or as little control over your forces as desired. Give a command to a high level HQ unit and he will order his subordinates for you. And, at any time, you can jump in and take command of individual units if you have other plans in mind. The game covers Operation: Market Garden.

Anyone else have this title? If so, and you are up to multi-player, drop me a PM.

[Bonegavel]

Oh, for anyone interested in learning more:

Highway to the Reich (http://www.highwaytothereich.com/main.asp)

[WSUCougar]

It's on my list of games to pick-up. IIRC, this one is an improved system from their previous game from Market Garden. Looking forward to it!

Care to give us a brief review?

[Icy]

Looks interesting as other Matrix wargames but i haven't ever buyed any of them as mostly are just short battles while i would like large campaigns. Are other mods developed to add more battles?

[Bonegavel]

Don't want to sell it short WSU, but the premise of the game/engine is really nice. It is all based off of the idea of an organised hierarchial command structure.

Directly form the manual:



Corps have a number of Divisions assigned. Divisions have a number of Brigades or Regiments. Brigades or Regiments have a number of Battalions and Battalions have a number of Companies. There may also be a number of assorted support units (eg. mortar platoons, engineer companies and anti-tank troops) assigned to higher headquarter units.

Except for the most senior unit, each unit has a superior - ie, the unit that it belongs to or is assigned to - its boss. It may also have subordinates that are assigned to it.

blah blah blah

[interesting part to me]
When you give an order to a unit, you effectively tell it to develop a plan for it an all its current subordinates, which include all of its non-detached organic subordinates plus any other attached units. So if you order a battalion to Move to X location, the battalion will move there along with all its companies.


Eg, I click on a battalion that is designated as the HQ for other units and tell it to attack a town. Say the HQ has 3 companies attached and a mortar platoon. It will intelligently move all the units into position to attack the town. The mortar platoon will hang back a bit and the companies will create a front of attack. One click to accomplish that.

And, if you desire, you can click on individual units and order them directly, superceeding their immediate superiors orders. This is what I mean by macro/micro managing to your heart's content.

The amount of information would be overwhelming if it wasn't for the ability to simply click on one unit and tell it to "do" something... there are 12 different orders you can assign to a unit, with a few, Bombard i know for one, is only available to certain units like Arty. Other actions are Attack, Defend, Probe, Secure Crossing, Deny Crossing, and more.

It is hard to determine the difficulty of the game, but to compare it to the normal Turn Based hex games, they are tougher to me because you have to position every unit yourself. In HTTR, you just have to order the HQs around and they will drag their subordinates along. This is nice to ease into the game, because I know I can later micro-manage if I need.

And, if I've forgotten to mention, it is Real Time, but is nothing like the standard click-fest RTS games out there (Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, etc). You order them around and hit the VCR buttons to start and pause the game.

Once I'm more comfortable, I will do a full review on the Games board.