August 19 2011
Good review, fair overall. While it is true that this game could pass muster as a introductory wargame it would want to be someone with a passion. There is quiet some nuance here for the game, and while its easy you are jumping in for sure.

I was surprised to see the complaint regarding set up time. The units are color coded. Perhaps that was missed?

Areas that disappointed me were as you mention rules organization, sloppy wording and formatting. Its as if Berg got half way thru and said “yeah done”. Then left it to someone else to clean up. Which is a shame really.

If GMT wanted a new lease on life for GBoH (Great Battles of History) and Men of Iron Series the new activation command structure is highly adaptable to these 12-13 titles in GBoH games.

GBoH suffers from counter clutter, this game does a great job of dealing with that as it does dealing with the often over wrought Bergian Combat sequences.

This game shines in combat and captures a lot of essence. It would have been nice to see more chrome options for die hards, but leave the basic game as is. By the way here is a play aid for all to use:
http://meshtime.com/2011/08/15/infidel-play-aids/

I made a brief stop motion video of game play for those who are curious about buying into the series.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPOLDWD3eIw]

The rules are backward compatible to the first game in the series also. I messed with the command system in GBoH and used the Infidel mechanics along with SGBoH… it works pretty well.

I think its a shame that GMT have not tied more of this together and created a cleaner command activation system for GBoH. Nor have they released the long waited for v 2 of SGBoH. This could be significant to the ancients guy sitting on the sidelines.

Enjoy the game, I’ hoping to cycle back to it in a few months.