COUNTERS

Ok, here we go.
All of the air-unit counters are finished. In all aspects. They have all been printed and I am currently mounting them to start playtesting.
Together with a 95% finished map, 90% finished rules this starts to become exciting.

Of course I'll still have to make the ground-unit counters and the navies. For the navies I'm still looking for a good order of battle. I'll probably stick to the orbat included in "High Tide" by COA.

Some counter examples:

And my first box cover:

MAP GRAPHICS

The last weeks have been a frantic drawing and pasting on the map. I have redone the whole road network, the rail network and added all airbases, ports and airports. The Wall has been drawn along the inter-german border. The POMCUS sites are now on the map, as are the oil-fields in the North Sea.
The most work went into the adjusting of the forest and hill terrain.
The task was enormous. ;-)

Map graphics

Adjusted forest and minor rivers terrain features. The Main-Danube Canal is giving me some headaches. It is difficult to find out which parts of the Canal were already in use in 1989. It was only finished in 1992...

OrBat

Analyzing and reformating the OOB's I have of the WP and NATO.
A lot of work has gone into detailing the combat strength of the ground units. The air units were a completely different case. I had more base data at hand but on the other side more different units. Ground troop units don't come in a large number (at the level of this game), but less unit data from previous games. So more work to calculate. I'm pretty happy with this first detailed approach to the ground troops strenghts. Playtestings will give ample opportunity for fine-tuning.

Web

Update of the project web-page:
http://www.rince.lu/wargames/RedStrikeproject.htm

Rules

Today added the Refugees rule. Refugees will be represented by markers on the map which hinder movement of both sides. They'll come in three sizes and are similar to interdiction.
NATO and WP underground armies rule has been added. Sabotage and guerilla warfare, again similar to interdiction.
Both rules add some complexity to the game, so they'll be optional rules.

Map

Still looking for a texture for the city hexes. Everything I've tried so far is not convincing. Another graphic I am still trying to figure out is for airbases. Airbases should be depicted on the map, that's how I wanted it in the first place. But I read that most of the fixed airbases would have been destroyed during the first hours of war and that's why NATO had well laid-out plans of improvised airbases. These airbases, on a certain number of highways (West-german Autobahns), would have been operational in a very short period of time. So it would be more logical to treat airbases with counters. I'll think about it.

This is the starting blog for my wargame project on the cold war getting hot in the 80's.
The game is based on the Gulf and Aegean Strike games.
You can find some infos on the game on my website: www.rince.lu

For more infos, do not hesitate to contact me: yves.rince@gmail.com.