World in Flames - 1

In a bit of serendipity when I visited Tactics on Wednesday I saw a hand written sign on the noticeboard saying players wanted for World in Flames, giving the location as my suburb and saying to ask at the counter.  While browsing through the store I gave this some thought.  WiF was a game I played and enjoyed many times twenty years or more ago (actually must be closer to thirty years). It is also a big commitment in time.  Then there is the issue of getting to know new players etc...

WiF won and I asked at the counter, but got off on the wrong foot over Flames of War or something.  Thankfully that was quickly sorted and we got on the same wavelength.  Better still the guy I was talking to was the organiser and I was able to talk intelligibly enough about the game that I was invited to play Russia and join them next Thursday.  "You mean tomorrow?" "Yes."

So now I am playing WiF as Russia/China in a five player game using the latest edition and lots of the optional rules.  A bit of a learning curve, but it is all quickly coming back to me.  Major changes seem to be the 2d10 combat system and oil.

 China is not a lot of fun.  

This is after our second impulse and we have pulled back to shorten the line, abandoning a resource hex.  The weather is fine and we were expecting a massive Japanese attack.

 Troops are being massed on the Iran border.

We are also massing on the border with Romania.

Poland is about to collapse and we seized the eastern part and the Baltic States, 

purely to protect them from the Nazis of course.

Unfortunately these actions adversely affected US opinion.

Great game and it's only just starting.  My only criticism is that initial actions seem to be very well defined, optimum play.  There is also a bit of fiddliness in trying to max out the best combat outcome (nothing new in that though).  It always seems with WW2 games of this nature that actions always happen sooner than they did historically (the benefit of hindsight can't be downplayed without a lot of restrictions and that would just produce a recreation of the war, not a delightful game of "what ifs?").  I did read to today that WiF doesn't really start until after the fall of France.  As the Russian player I hope that is a long way off.

The game host is blogging the game in the Facebook WiF group.  A link to the first post is here (although only of use if you are a Facebook user and a member of the group):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1574341082623164/permalink/2536864069704189/