Recently, I tried Firelock 198X.
It was quite enjoyable. The game itself, a fantasy cold war setting, can be seen here.
My opponent and I played the introductory scenario. I took control of the Army of the Ebon Forest, while he took the Federal States Army. Neither of us had played before, which led to a couple of confused instances. For example, I deployed into obscuring forest terrain using my infiltrators rule, but I had my units in ambush facing out into impassable deep water, which may have been technically illegal. It let my recoilless rifle team core out his transport very early on.
My opponent forgot to deploy his transports with units embarked, which left a lot of his force stranded. I offered to let the units teleport inside of their transports and he accepted, but by then they had missed out on two turns of potential and I was in firm control of the bridge objective.
With time starting to run out we agreed that whoever got the middle objective would win, since both edge objectives were either claimed or about to be and neither's TACOM unit was in danger of destruction. Two of my weapons teams had been picked off by his units, but I launched a smoke round to cover a squad of Chasseurs who then closed into melee against a loaded Grumble APC. What followed was probably a gross misunderstanding of the rules as neither party was able to injure the other for round after round of melee. My chasseurs had two pin tokens and his Grumble one, while the embarked squad just rolled poorly. After what felt like an eternity the machine guns of my Lupes managed to pop his APC, and their machetes made instantaneous work of the remaining Federals. In a lopsided sense, I had won.
From loading up Tabletop Simulator to calling the game at the end of round 4 we spent around three hours. That is an impressive time compared to a lot of board games, although we were taking it fairly seriously and staying light on banter for the most part. There were a few technical hiccups with tabletop simulator, I may want to unbind crtl-z as it affects much more than your most recent movement, but otherwise it worked satisfactorily.
I am hoping to try the game again at some point, as there are two factions as of yet unexplored and many units untouched. Tanks, planes, artillery, and even nuclear bombs exist in the rules to discover and enjoy.
