These rules cover the period since the introduction of AFV range finders, accurate
APDS and ATGM. They replace our previous sets covering the same period, which have
been extensively used for the period by wargamers and convention organisers world-wide.
This new set benefits from a huge amount of playing experience with previous editions,
including the two special military training versions produced by the United States
and Canadian armies. The general form will be familiar to existing players, but the
emphasis will not. In these rules, we provide a new format which emphasises tactics and terrain, command and control. This does not mean that the technical content is "inaccurate", merely that differences in performance that cannot be substantiated by careful research and that are insignificant compared with random factors receive only the attention they deserve. This technical content is as correct as it can be made at the time of publication (1993). The ending of the cold war is providing much new information on Soviet systems and has made virtually all current standard reference books and rule sets obsolete. We pay much increased attention to troop psychology, to what is possible to and with the man who control the weapons, and how these men can be efficiently commanded. Modern gamers can now benefit from the increased attention to orders, boundaries, axis and communication that has revolutionised the realism of WW2 games over the past 4 years.
One result of the changes in this set is that infantry are essential and their tactics more varied. A good game can indeed be had with then alone. Most armies' artillery is less flexible and responsive than in rival sets, but a provision for intense or lengthy preparation makes it potentially more deadly. Tanks are less safe than formerly if implaced in fixed positions behind ridges, but more capable of manoeuvring under fire if thought is given to going, cover and the need to observe. Specialist recce elements are so useful you will wonder how you did without them before.
We can also offer much more variety to challenge your skills. Those who insist on real wars and are tired of terminally unlikely NATO versus WARPACT battles and the latest Arab-Israeli confrontations can try their skills in Korea, in the paddy fields of Vietnam, scaling the heights of the Radian, in the Indian-Pakhistan border deserts, among the irrigation canals of Bangladesh, on the desolate moors of the Falklands or the mountains of Afghanistan, on the borders of Iraq and Iran, the night battles of the Gulf, or the Yugoslav civil wars. Others may prefer to construct imaginary armies for wars no more fictional than those set in Germany that have been the life blood of modern wargames for the last 20 years.