Monster Boardgames - Twilight in the East

AWB is mildly surprised to discover that the Wednesday night boardgaming group they are connected with has decided to commit some time and table space to Michael Resch's '1914 - Twilight in the East' by GMT Games.
Slightly old now with a 2007 release, TitE covers fighting against Russia by the German and Austria-Hungarian empires for the first year of World War One at 5 miles per hex and 2-3 days per turn. The vast majority of units are divisions, there are eight counter sheets and five maps. So a reasonably big game then.
Although, having sat down during the week to desperately attempt to relearn the rules, AWB was also reminded that TitE isn't as counter dense as one would originally expect.
Three and a half of the counter sheets are dedicated to information counters - attack markers, step loss counters, entrenchments and the like - and of the 'units', a goodly percentage of these are also used off map. TitE is a game of vast armies grinding into each other and the combat system tracks both step losses - most divisions have around 10 - and division 'Combat Effectiveness' (think 'morale' to use generalised terms) and hence each division has it's own Combat Effectiveness marker used to track this value on off map displays.
What this means is that this vast front is often one of great manoeuvre. Both sides lack the manpower to form a continuous front and due to the supply restrictions, advance is more often then not tied to the major rail lines. Large gaps can and will appear and screening using cavalry is highly recommended.
The turn sequence is a case of A Moves, B Reacts, A Fights, B Fights. Attacks are pre declared during movement with a 'Prepared' attack costing MP and locking units into the combat as well as giving the attacker a handy column shift. 'Normal' attacks do not cost MP but can be reacted away from. The reactive player can also place attack markers during his phase meaning that an overly aggressive active player can find himself counter attacked up and down the line during his own turn.
Net result is that everyone gets hurt and cherry picking the weak spot in the enemy line to attack is not as easy as it first appears.
Our Wednesday group will be trialing/learning the game using the small four turn Masurian Lakes scenario these coming weeks.