Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles
Band of Brothers is a fast playing game of squad level combat in WWII. It covers the exploits of the 101st in their battles from D-Day through the Bulge. The rules are very simple (no combat charts are needed) with very few exceptions to remember and yet the game is meant to be all encompassing and will include infantry, tanks, and artillery.
Based on years of research, the game system uses a unique suppression mechanic. There are no longer two unique states for a unit, but varying degrees of suppression. This allows suppression to accumulate from multiple fire sources and means that the unit will not take a morale check until it is asked to do something. You will never know for sure how your units will respond until they are needed.
User Reviews (1)
Add a Review for "Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles"
You must be logged in to add a review.
Contents:
Ten Maps (5 printed on both sides)
90 7/8” Squads/Tanks counters
88 5/8” informational counters
16 Scenarios (+2 more that can be downloaded)
1 Rule book
1 Player Aid
2 Dice
Component quality:
Maps are card thick card stock printed on both sides. Although I think the hex size could have been bigger, it seems crowded once you put the counters on the map. This is not a show stopper, just an observation.
Counters are thick and large, easy to handle. Very readable.
Scenarios are in a book format, I would of like cards. (btw, You can download the scenarios and put them on your own cardstock). Scenarios are balanced and offer interesting puzzles to solve. Replay ability is high.
Rule book is well laid out and offers programmed instructions, meaning STOP here and play scenarios 1 and 2 and when you are comfortable read the next section.
Player aid is thick card stock printed on both sides. I would have been nice to have 2 copies, one for each player. (The player aid is available for download, so you can print another copy)
Dice is 10 sided, nothing relay special here.
Game play:
One thing that need to be said here is that when your read the rules, you must throw out any other war game rules that you are familiar with, It will mess you up if you don’t.
The first thing is the game uses no IFT (infantry fire tables) such as other war games. The game uses a unique varying degree of a suppression system mechanic. By which a unit can perform an action by taking a morale check, the more suppression you unit takes (reduced morale) the less likely they will perform. So it leaves that un-sureness that you unit might be able to do something in there turn.
I find this suppression system very neat and unique.
The other this that is pretty neat is that if a unit want to opportunity fire on a moving unit it has to take a proficiency test, different from a morale test, that is a dice roll.
There is also a conceal and decoy system. The conceal come into play for unit that are in say a building, so a conceal counter is placed on it, there will be negative modifiers for a unit shooting at them. The Decoys come into play based on the OOB for the scenario, these act like units, they move around and get shot at causing them to be revealed.
I think the main thing about the game is that you need to fire and maneuver and spread out your units.
This is the first game in the series, the next one which out right now is Band of Brothers: Ghost Panzer (stand alone), which Is in the Eastern Front following the exploits of the German 11 Panzer (Ghost) division