Baltic Offensive (Decision Games)

[mikeh]

A new game for me! From World at War Magazine, Baltic Offensive, Fall 1944.




This is a game on the Russian Offensive in the fall of 1944 against Germany's Army Group North.

[mikeh]

I have been having troubles getting pics to post and have even had one drop but let's keep trying.

Great looking cover and magazine.





16 pages of rules, looks pretty straight forward with many examples of play.
application screenshot

Pic of a part of the map showing Estonia.

[mikeh]

Counters front. The majority of the German counters are one step.

[Whiterook]

NICE!!! I like Munoz’s games so I believe this will be a pip! Beautiful components. I love the map, and I love 1944 battles. I’ll be waiting for AARs on this one. I got World at War magazine for a few years and I liked reading them more than Stategies & Tactics simply because of the ear; saying that, I like their Modern War magazine, too.

Oh, on the pics… I had the same issue yesterday… PostImages had some server issues but things seem back on the steady again.

[mikeh]

Getting acquainted with the map and counters. Counters are 5/8 inch and nice quality.

[Whiterook]

Feb 3, 2024 23:27:25 GMT -5 mikeh said:

Getting acquainted with the map and counters. Counters are 5/8 inch and nice quality.

The colors on this picture look fantastic! The p[ost before was OK, but I like the deeper gray for the Germans and darker red for the Soviets…. How much darker are the Soviet Guards in relation to the regular units you pictured here? 

…this is a constant battle I personally have with picture posting these days is, I use my camera or ipad and with both, I can see dramatic discrepancies in hues and shades; my Huey’s were maddeningly crazy. For me, to be honest… I’m just too lazy to dig out my old digital camera that didn’t seem to have that issue, but then again, it’s may be a PostImages issue…no idea. Not Earth shattering, but it’s a thing.

…anyway…sorry for diverging there   The thing I adore about these counters is, it’s simple! …he used red and gray for the combatants, and a third color for admin…simple! Perhaps you saw a couple posts I made on some designers’ game on facebook, but he has a color pallet that looks like Disney threw uo on his counter sheets! …I couldn’t make out the difference between most of his counters. There seems to be a propensity towards using tons of colors in either counter backgrounds and/or numerical factors.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the tank silhouettes! Perhaps ‘casue I’m an Old Fart Grognard, but I love the simple Panzer Blitz/Leader style silhouettes on armor!!!

[mikeh]

I saw those ones on Facebook you are talking about and.you response. I agree with you, to my eyes the worst were the greens, all 3 pretty much looked the same shade to me.

The red guards counters, well all the counters are a bit brighter then you see. Between the lightning in the room and my lousy phone camera nothing comes out looking like they do in person.

I am impressed by the counters though, as stated they are 5/8 inch, easy to read and pretty much just fell out of the frame and individually came right apart. No need for exacto knife and minimal nubs on the corners, cleanest counters I have had in a long time.

And all this from a DG magazine game.

As for the rules I'm all set to start playing, they are pretty much straight forward with no major head scratching on my part, unlike some DG games.

As for the map I like it for it's looks, what I don't like is I either have to look at the map sideways or the charts sideways, I took the charts sideways but the map is longways across the table which means I have a pretty good stretch for the top of the map in the Narva area. A separate players aid card with CRT, TEC etc would have been welcome.

[Whiterook]

Feb 7, 2024 14:13:43 GMT -5 mikeh said:

I saw those ones on Facebook you are talking about and.you response. I agree with you, to my eyes the worst were the greens, all 3 pretty much looked the same shade to me.

The red guards counters, well all the counters are a bit brighter then you see. Between the lightning in the room and my lousy phone camera nothing comes out looking like they do in person.

I am impressed by the counters though, as stated they are 5/8 inch, easy to read and pretty much just fell out of the frame and individually came right apart. No need for exacto knife and minimal nubs on the corners, cleanest counters I have had in a long time.

And all this from a DG magazine game.

As for the rules I'm all set to start playing, they are pretty much straight forward with no major head scratching on my part, unlike some DG games.

As for the map I like it for it's looks, what I don't like is I either have to look at the map sideways or the charts sideways, I took the charts sideways but the map is longways across the table which means I have a pretty good stretch for the top of the map in the Narva area. A separate players aid card with CRT, TEC etc would have been welcome.

A lot of folks have the same issues with lighting and equipment… I am always amazed at hobbies that get light booths to photograph their stuff and I have thought more than once of getting a portable one.

I have noted a lot of magazine games seem to have that particular problem of map vs onboard charts… I too hate looking at a m,ap sideways, which just feels wrong to me. I have also noticed that since magazines have such little allowance in pages, separate charts and player aids are just not happening. For the ones I have, I generally make my own.