Was £62.99, Now £50.00 Illusions of Glory - The Great War on the Eastern Front is the latest Card Driven Game utilizing the legendary award-winning Paths of Glory system to simulate the Great War in Europe. Illusions of Glory takes this proven game system to a new and exciting level by applying its focus to the Eastern Front.
The challenges to both sides are immense. The Allied Powers player must bring massive, but fragile, forces to bear against Central Powers armies from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey and defeat them, while preventing a game-changing revolution in Russia. The Central Powers player must defeat Russia, hold off Italy, and win the upper hand in the Balkans, or face demoralization and rebellion at home. Players test their generalship and strategic abilities as Illusions of Glory lets you recreate the dramatic events of World War I's Eastern Front.
Your hand of strategy cards presents you with a rich array of strategic and operational choices. You must decide whether to use each card for its historic event, unit movement, combat, or troop replacements. You must commit your forces to a variety of objectives: winning the dynamic war of manoeuvre between German-led and Russian armies, seizing the Balkans and its vital objectives; or prevailing in the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Italy. If you are looking for a game that is relevant, fun, challenging, and tense, from complete campaigns to shorter playing scenarios, you will enjoy Illusions of Glory.
I really looked forward to 'Illusions of Glory', having played Paths of Glory a great deal. The history of the period and the front is really interesting. Overall, though, this game is a missed opportunity. It came out prematurely and at the very least it needs a new, second edition. There's a huge amount of errata and amendments to the 'Living Rules' to wade through on the GMT website.
The event cards and the unit counters don't in fact deal as much as they could with the Eastern Front per se (e.g. fighting in Poland, or around the major Russian cities). The outcomes in Italy, Greece and The Balkans are critical to an Allied victory, as is the Central Powers' position in Austria-Hungary, which is a soft target for the Russians. The turning points (e.g., Rasputin, the Russian Revolution) are of course included in the game but sometimes, or even often, they aren't central to victory.
It's quite derivative of 'Pursuit of Glory'; many of the mechanics are simpler adaptations of those in 'Pursuit'. Having played both, I do think 'Pursuit' is excellent and it makes Illusions of Glory look boring and underdeveloped. Some of the event cards are fun to play, but this is often because they're overpowered and can alter players' fortunes quite drastically. The design covers 'Alt History' results such as a Communist uprising in Germany - the mechanic is an interesting idea but the Central Powers are already de facto beaten if this revolution has any realistic chance of happening. Also, there are, perhaps, too many markers to monitor on the game track; maybe Troop Quality and National Demoralisation should have been integrated into a single scale. The game isn't awful but it isn't as good as it should have been.
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