First Play: Iron Cross

I picked up a copy of Great Escape Games' new WW2 rules Iron Cross a number of months ago.  I knew they were fast play and so I was hoping I might be able to use them for larger games than some of my current favourite rules allowed.  I did have a few reservations after a read through and also when I heard that they often play the game using 28mm but, as so often happens, a game is quite different on the tabletop than a simple read through would indicate.

So when Lenin came over for our annual pilgrimage to Salute (I did warn you I had a backlog of posts!), I put together a game using my 15mm WW2 figures.  As usual I took the role of the dastardly Hun and Lenin was the plucky Brits trying to stop me from advancing on Dunkirk.

This was a simple attack and defence scenario with the Germans having to push through a village.

I had a company of troops with tank support to assault the village and I started with a bold advance down the table:

It was quite clear early on that, whilst simple, the mechanics started to bog down a little with a large amount of troops on the table. I assume that this may well reduce with frequent play but it did all present as being a little fiddly.

Things soon got messy when the Brits decided to open up with one of my Panzers being brewed up on the road.

I managed to push the Brits' advanced positions back but those dug in in the village were a bit more difficult to winkle out. In the end I did enough damage to make them withdraw but they had done enough to me to delay our overall advance.

As to the rules, I may have mentioned this in a previous post but I think games fall on a spectrum running between pure game at one end and simulation at the other. Recognising that no game is a real simulation of warfare unless the other side can actually kill you! I have games which fall right across the spectrum and enjoy them but when it comes to historical tabletop gaming I want something that's in the simulation half. In this case the simple approach to the tokens as the only command and control mechanism really meant these rules aren't a good fit for me for this size of game and, for lower level games, I have rules which play almost as fast and are much richer experiences.

I'm not saying these are bad rules and I do think there is a place for this type of game but they're not the rules I'm looking for...