Medium Dave and I have now completed five games of Urban War, and I promised myself I would scratch my thoughts on the system down sooner rather than later. It seems to have been later, but there you go.

Our first two games were simply to attempt to learn how the system's heartbeat sounded. As a old school player of games such as Blood Bowl, Battletech and so forth, I was pleased to see that Urban War used a traditional "rounds" system that allowed both players to take actions during the round. I have always found this much more realistic and satisfyingly tactical. During Urban War, each unit (in our case, single models) is given one of three orders, which influences what they are able to do as well as how quickly they do it.

It is at this point that my housemate Mark interjected himself into the discussions Dave and I were having. Mark is a former squaddie, and approaches almost everything he does tactically. It's inbuilt into him now. My breath held, the lashing did not arrive, and Mark found himself impressed with the realism of both the orders system, and the sequence of events. Nice!

By our third game (which was about two weeks after our first) I had come to realise that my Gladiators stood no chance whatsoever against anyone when I had no cover to use. Hand to hand combat specialists need cover, and plenty of it! "You;ve got some nice CQB's there - they're getting slaughtered in the open", Mark accurately commented. A flick through the book revealed some nice cover rules, which we combined with the character size rules to produce our own method of cover which has worked brilliantly so far. Dipping into Dave's sons' Lego collection, a box of potential cover came about. Each bit of cover was issued with a size (1-8) and this was then reflected in the rules as ot how much cover it gave. For instance, a size 2 model standing behind size 1 terrain would have 50% of them showing, and this translated into a certain "saving throw" in the Urban War rules. Outstanding. Makes perfect sense, as the bigger models have more showing, and therefore cannot use cover so effectively.

A simple random generator for putting cover down was made by Dave and I which went like this:

1) Divide the playing surface into a 5x3 grid, so that the surface had three rows running lengthways. My side, Dave's side, and "no mans land". Eahc one of these rows was divided into 5 sections.

2) Roll a D10 per section (of which there were 15). 1-3 Meant no cover, 4-6 meant my choice, 7-9 meant Dave's choice, and a 10 meant two pieces of cover, with one choice each.

3) The choices avaiable to each player were simple. Either "no cover", or a piece was picked and placed in the relevent section.

I recommend this system thoroughly, as it has produced some great tactical games so far.

The next step up for us is to find a system for true CQB (close qurter battle) and have a game of Urban War inside some buildings, seperated by a little open ground. As I'm on 0-5 so far, I'm looking forward to this a lot.

I know this hasn't been a full review by any stretch of the imagaination, but it was more like me throwing my thoughts down so far. I'll do a full review when I know the system upside down.