Armchair General Magazine

Matrix Games. $59.99; $49.99 digital download

Passed Inspection: Uncompromising detail, great grognard fare.

Failed basic: Clunky interface, not enough short scenarios, confusing graphics

The best way to Duxford is not through London’s AA guns and barrage balloons.

Almost seventy years ago, massive fleets of German bombers tried to bludgeon Britain to its knees. In the summer of 1940, Heinkel 111s, Dornier 17s and Junkers 88s flew daily missions over Britain, and inflicted terrible damage on military and civilian targets. But three years later the tables were turned. By mid-1943, Allied B-17s, B-24s and Wellingtons bombed Germany around-the-clock, and pulverized Germany’s industries and cities into rubble.

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Matrix Games’ recently released title, Eagle Day to Bombing of the Reich, covers this air war over Europe, from the Battle Britain to the devastation of Nazi Germany. The game is actually an update and re-release of two Gary Grigsby games originally published in 1999 by Talonsoft.

Like many Gary Grigsby titles, the re-released EDBTR has a definite hardcore feel. The game is not for casual gamers or those who don’t want to take a deep dive into game play. For grognards who may have missed the originals however, the revived EDBTR is just great news. Gary Grigsby is much more than legend in the wargaming community. It is not hype to say that Gary is one of the handful of designer-developers who have been the bedrock of PC wargaming over the last 20 years.

So it’s a good thing that Matrix Games has found a niche in updating classic war games from the past -not only is the new EDBTR comfortable running on MS Vista, the Matrix team also exterminated bugs, fixed errors in the game data, and tinkered a bit with game play.

Of course, EDBTR looks and plays pretty much like the original games did in 1999, at least as far as this reviewer’s moth-ball-filled memory can recall. What this means for today’s wargamer is an interface that is a clunky and graphics that are nostalgic, to put it politely. But these will be minor issues for the hard-core strategy buff.

Grizzled gamers who still have working copies of the original games may rightly question having to pay full fare for the new EDBTR. But for gamers who never owned the original games, or who no longer have a game rig that will play the 1999 versions, Matrix’ re-release is a welcome effort. Like the recent re-master and re-release of the Beatles albums, EDBTR is a Grigsby classic that grognards shouldn’t miss.

As the player fires up the game, he is asked to choose which campaign he wants to play. The Eagle Day portion of the game focuses on the Battle of Britain, and the action happens mostly in 1940. Bombing the Reich focuses on the Allied bombing effort, starting in 1943 and going to the end of the war.

Each game within EDBTR has a decent number of scenarios. These offer a pretty good picture of air war. For the more casual gamer, there are a small handful of scenarios that represent a week or several months and have limited maps. But most of the scenarios are very long, and will take many evenings to complete. The full Bombing the Reich 1943 scenario is 700 turns long – probably unplayable by most of us in our lifetimes. While the long scenarios are nice, more short, one-month and one-week scenarios would be welcome.

The maps in both Eagle Day and Bombing the Reich cover the campaigns fully. In Eagle Day, all of England is portrayed, along with German bases in France and Norway. The Bombing the Reich map is just huge, going from England to North Africa, Eastern Europe and parts of the Soviet Union. All of this space is not wasted. The player can set up shuttle-bombing missions that start at one base and end at another; so starting in Italy, bombing Romania and flying to a base in the Soviet Union is possible.

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