I bought paper copies of 14 and 15 back in the day, so it was lovely to see them all available here. I will work backwards until I come to a 'Nah, not even for that price' issue - Jagdpanther was definitely a magzine that got better over its life.

Realistically, you are going to get this one for the game, which is definitely worth the money. The pages of variants are a mostly a mix of a 'you won't have this game' / 'not a very good variant if you do' / 'both', with few good ones mixed in. If you read the blurb about the Sorcerer review, then read it, you may laugh. I did.

But what about the game? It's a mix of the familar for its day - SPI Kursk 'move fight move-if-mechanised' - with some very interesting (unique?) twists. You can't move next to an enemy unit unless a) it's across a river, b) there's already a friendly unit in the hex, or c) you're at least as strong in terms of combat strength as it is. You can't, in other words, form a new defensive line next to the enemy unless you're at least as strong as it is. And as the Soviets in most scenarios, you won't be, giving the Germans more freedom of action as they won't be starting in ZOC. Similarly, units with a high enough movement value can go through enemy ZOC. As you can't retreat into an enemy ZOC and the CRT is very likely to lead to a retreat for the defender (4/6 for even 1:1 attacks!) this leads to some 'surround, kill, expolit' tactics.

There are some layout issues - the railroad section is split in two by the forts rules for no good reason - but this turns out to be still worth playing. With ISO paper sizes, you want to print the map to fit on A3 paper and the counters on A4. This will give you large enough hexes to fit the counters. If you print the map on A4, the scaling makes the hexes too small. I do like how much overlap there is in the map sections: no trying to join sheets edge to edge here.

The scenario mix is also good, a mix of Germans finding it easy, the Soviets making an effort, the Germans getting out of trouble, and the Germans being in big trouble. I do like the way that two of them are next to each other in time, but you can't combine them: historically the Soviets woke up at the join point and the start of the later one would look nothing like the end of the first. Without a bunch of rules, it's far easier to do it this way.

So thank you Stephen for designing it, and thank you for making it available again.

It's a series of quick sketches for you to fill in. It does drip atmosphere and your version of the area will be like no-one else's, but that's because there simply isn't enough detail for there to be much in common.

Eleven of the 126 pages are blank, and the main areas get four pages each: 'here's some ideas for the aesthetics of the area, here are three themes for games here, here are five one sentence ideas for adventures, here are five or six character outlines (one or two sentences) for NPCs here, here are some sample names, here's a D20 encounter table'. Other areas just get two pages.

As you might expect given that, it's completely system agnostic. There are three pages of thoughts on using it in a 5E D&D campaign, but even most of that is applicable to any system.

I'd play in one of his campaigns, and I'd love to see a studio licence it to produce a video RPG, but I don't think I will ever use it myself.

A very nice basis for a campaign: it's a long decision tree which will result in some historical or historically plausible battles without, for example, the Royal Navy attempting to force its way past Denmark into the Baltic (one of Churchill's suggestions vetoed on the grounds of its suicidal nature!)

The historical reluctance of the Kreigsmarine to risk too much despite this meaning they sink fewer ships is covered by some battles possibly having major Royal Navy units turn up late on in battles, and a 'quit rather than sticking around' table.

The whole thing is also mostly rule system neutral apart from the way that, like Naval Thunder, it does not state the scale anywhere - all the distances are in tabletop inches, and times in 'turns'.

Looking at Steel Dreadnought's quiet forum suggests it's 1" = 500 yards and one turn is four minutes, but it would have been far better to have had the ranges in yards and had times in so many minutes in the first place.

Another KS backer who had a long wait, but yes, it was worh it.

An inovative system with a good set of extras.

Don't read the designer's notes if you don't want to see a huge spoiler, mind.

Plus points: they're short and at a scale I like: units are regiments, but you use them in brigades. They are figure size neutral - all distances are numbers and whether they are inches or cm depends on the figure size.

Minus points: Infantry moves 10 (inches or cm, remember) per order. (Whether it is moving or charging - the only difference is that charging troops don't get a -1 when in hand-to-hand combat that merely moving ones do. As there's no penalty for charging, charge everywhere!) Musket range is 9. Combat happens after movement and is either ranged or hand-to-hand. So if your infantry is 10 away from musket-armed infantry you are attacking, you end up in hand-to-hand combat without being fired on. That doesn't feel right, even if the defender rolls first in combat - you need to be quite lucky to remove a base.

Actually, that move/charge is just for units under poor commanders. Average comanders get to move their units twice as far (and the best ones three times) so can easily outrange the rifle range of 12.

In fact, there's no good reason for having rifle units if you're having a points-based army: the difference is minimal and musket armed ones cost less.

There are an annoying level of typos too, even in the version 1.2. Oh, yes, although there are four files, two are earlier versions and two are identical versions of the 1.2 version. It's sadly typical.

An interesting supplement including several battles - real and near misses - from the Russo-Japanese war, the 1898 war between Spain and the US, and the war between Greece and the Ottoman empire before WWI.

However you should know that just as the first supplement finishes its period before Jutland, this one mentions but does not have any scenarios for Tsushima.

Inexpensive, and plenty of info, but it's late WWII only - the German tanks are the Panzer IV, Panther, Tiger and King Tiger, with the Panzer III only in a dummy gun observation variant as part of an artillery unit, for example.

Six scenarios from the start of World War One, most with 'what if' variants, a couple of optional tweaks to the main ruleset, a simple campaign system, plus a pile of data cards for ships of the Royal Navy, German navy and Austria-Hungary.

Note the timescale in the description: 1914-1915. This means Jutland isn't included and will doubtless be in another supplement.

I got it when it was a 'deal of the day' and I'm very happy. Had I paid full price, I might well have been not so enthusiastic.

It's ok to have a game be a Vassal module. It's not ok for the game to be so undeveloped.

So, four pages of rules (the PDF has five pages, but the fifth is completely blank). There's not much text on those four either, leaving lots of questions. Let's start with a basic one: what happens in a turn? No idea. There's something about movement, and something about combat, but no turn sequence.

Stacking is perhaps the most complete section, but... "Stacking in any Art of War D10 game is not allowed, unless stacked under a commander." OK, unless it's with a commander, you can't stack. "Otherwise each square can hold 4 tokens." Otherwise?!? You can't stack unless you're with a commander... and if you're not you can stack four things?!? How many can you stack with one? "A commanders stack only counts as one out of the 4 spaces available in the square." So, you can have as many as you like, but only four commanders? etc etc etc.

Utterly unfit for purpose and for purchase.