Case blue or Barbarossa ?

[karolinerna2000]

I have just bought the first installment Warsaw to Paris and am enjoying it and wondering which I should buy next now when it is on sale. It would be natural to pick the last one in which the A.I is best developed according to the developer but are there reasons to consider Case Blue before Barbarossa ?

[Philippe_at_bay]

Case Blue is conceptually like WtP, only on the Eastern Front and with better AI. It's on the same scale as WtP (four units to a division), and covers of the southern third of the Eastern Front in 1942. There's some pretty exciting stuff in there (the failed Soviet offensive, the German summer offensive that ends at Stalingrad and that morphs into the grab for the Caucausus, and the famous Soviet counter-offensive).

I'm not sure there's much difference between the AI in the last two games. The reason you would want Barbarossa lies elsewhere. The scale is different (one unit to a division with many functions handled abstractly) because you're cast in the role of the Theater commander. But Barbarossa is a one-of-a-kind experience that redefines what a wargame is supposed to be. Counter-shuffling is only half the exercise: the other half is managing unruly and cantankerous subordinates, superiors, and equals of ambiguous authority, and trying to orchestrate the invasion of Russia (or the defense and eventual counter-offensive) in some kind of semi-coherent whole.

[karolinerna2000]

Thanks for your comprehensive answer. I checked out the manual for the Barbarossa and was stunned to see it was 3 times larger than WtP which at the time makes the game a little too time consuming right now. I think I would go with Case Blue first.

[cherryfunk]

I think Case Blue is actually a bigger game than Barbarossa -- it's said to be the most detailed game in the series, though it lacks the layer of decision-making that Barbarossa adds.

[Simulacra_53]

I prefer the scale and control of DC1 and DC2 over role playing of DC3.

DC3 leans heavily on decisions and cards, but is actually a more simplified game, whereas DC1 and DC2 offer more control and strategy - including air and sea components.

After a third bug stopped DC3 game - I'm going to do another DC2 game.

The devs deserve some credit for the 2nd hotfix, but it is pretty bad that the 1st hotfix did not fix the issue. OTOH VR Designs as enough credits to make such a boo boo.

[Simulacra_53]

...I like the idea of decisions, but combined with a dice roll, you can lose a lot of PP for nothing.

To each his own, but up to now I have been more frustrated than anything else with the decision component of the game.