I was very excited when I first saw this game, and I just had tp have it. Although the rules seemed a little confusing, I think I got, and we started playing.

But some problems arose. We played 6-8 people over most of 2 days, and an unfortunate tendency seemed to appear. The game seemed to favour the Reich. There was good synergy between some heroes and troopers,t hat seemed almost impossible for the Union to break. They in turn had none of the same synergy. The Union seemed never to get their heavy weapons and smoke bombs into good use. And there seemed very poor balance between the different equipment packs, it almost alsways was a no-brainer which one to use. The Union's awards and medals seemed to have 1 or 2 good ones, the rest were useless.

By then we started to invent house rules, nerfs and boosts to try and balance things out. We found the errata from the website as well.

Second time around, with 2 players from the previous round of "trials" and 2 completely new ones, things started to make sense. The Union actually could and did win! The flash guns and smoke bombs did come into play. And the balance seemed much better. Plus most equipment packs seemed to offer some advantages in certain situations. Hooray!

One thing was, we always found thr rules for the smoke bombs wierd. They don't offer cover - since standing *in* it actually makes you easier to shoot, from the outside! E.G. A smoke bombs is on a blue path, a Union guy is on a blue/yellow circle, a Reich guy is on yellow and shoots at the Union guy. Reich attack with full dice, Union guy defends with reduced dice! Why? Shouldn't he be in better cover, if he's hidden by smoke? It helped us to think of the smoke as tear gas or other irritant smoke. Standing *in* it, you get hampered. Perhaps the eye irritant is the cause of your poor dodging abilities.

So to use smoke wisely, don't toss them in your own starting area, to hide and protect you! This only works for the dude with the Goggles. Instead, push forward, and chock 'em at the enemy, where he must advance through. So standing outside it, he'll be iether unwilling to go that way, or an easier kill (from the outside of the smoke).

Now one of uour major gripes is playin Story/Objective mode. When you *know* who on the other side *must* activate the objectives, because they have the skills, the game can turn into Death Match regardless. Perhaps it's just our game style. But spending as many VP (or more) than you get from doing the objective doesn't win the game for you. Some players've had problems with the tha fact that currency usable to do the objectives is also the currency that wins the game. But I like the choices you need to make. Spend VP to counter attack or heal? Or keep them to see if you win? But the story objective are somewhat limited on those 2 maps, it's almost the same game every time.