Strategic Conquest 2

SC1 was a huge success, a simpler version of Third Reich and a
worthwhile successor of Clash of Steel. Now comes the Battlefront SC2
demo. How is it? See the Wargamer.com site for a preview or the
Battlefront site for a description.

I just finished playing the demo for the second time. The first time,
I played without reading the manual, and I made the mistake of
attacking Benelux and France at the same time as Norway. But I did
manage to capture Paris, although not Norway. My subs did a reasonable
job of convoy attrition in the Atlantic.

Now after reading the manual, I decided to follow the historical path,
that is take Norway. I turned off fog of war so I could see what was
going on, which turned out to be disastrous for German subs. On the
first 3 turns, the British sank all 3 of my sub groups, presumably
because they could see them because of the lack of FOW.

Norway turned out to be very tough to crack: although Trondheim up
North was undefended, Bergen and Osla were defended, and it took until
July to take Oslo with 2 infantry, a paratrooper unit, with 2 cruiser
units and 2 air fleets in support. Getting units to Bergen and
Trondheim was very difficult since the British fleets continually
ganged up on my units. The land unit that went after Bergen lost half
its strength upon landing, and would never have take Bergen had the
Norwegian unit in Bergen vacated it (or was it a British unit that
went home?). My unit that took unocupied Trondheim had only a
strength of 2 left after it had gone through the British fleet
gauntlet.

Fortunately in September, when I finally launched my atttack on
Benelux, on the same move when Norway surrendered, I managed to take
Bussels in one move by attacking it with two armor and one infantry
units then occupying the empty city with the remaining armor unit.

Unfortunately the demo ended at this point. Germany at this point was
running 3 months behind schedule, and had taken serious losses, which
could compromise the attack on France, not to mention alll the other
things that have to be done before going after Russia.

Although it is hard to say from the demo, it is my impression that
this is a much better game than its predecessor. For those familiar
with World at War and Hearts of Iron II, this is a much simpler game
in the style of Clash of Steel, but more complex that SC1.If you oplay
Germany, don't turn off fog of war, it gives a huge advantage to the
British Navy.

There has been some compoaints against the proposed anti-piracy
scheme, which will be a kind of registration thing.

I will probably buy the game, because there is a place for a grand
straegic WW2 game of intermediate level difficulty like this.Although
HOI and WaW are very good games, they are a bit too complex for my
taste.

Henri