On the Way!: 83

On the Way! 83 is the first major expansion for the solitaire Cold War tactical combat RPG On the Way!, and REQUIRES OWNERSHIP OF THE ORIGINAL GAME. While the original game postulates the hypothetical outbreak of WWIII between NATO and the Warsaw Pact to occur in the winter of 1968-69, this expansion is set in the late summer of 1983, offering players the chance to command brand new era-appropriate tanks and operate sophisticated new weapons systems (i.e. laser rangefinders, thermal imagers, and anti-tank guided missiles). Additionally, the scope of the game has been significantly expanded beyond the so-called “Fulda Gap”, and now includes the entire East-West German and German-Czechoslovakian border, from the Northern German Plain, to the German Central Uplands, South Scarplands, and Alpine Forelands. Inspired by the legendary Avalon Hill classic, Patton’s Best, the On the Way! 83 expansion for On the Way! intends to capture much of the outstanding realism, abstraction, and excellent campaign of Patton’s Best in its own unique way, making it a fresh and original game. A few select differences and additions from the original Patton’s Best system are: Rules for dawn, dusk, and night combat, as well as night vision devices (infrared, thermal, etc.) and other Cold War gadgets like advanced two-plane stabilizers and auxiliary driver and/or gunner controls; a comprehensive selection of period-appropriate ammunition, including APFSDS (Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot) and ATGM’s (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles); sixteen (vice the original 4 of the base game!) playable tanks representing the most common types that would be available to each respective nation and unit in mid-to-late 1983 (the M60A3 TTS and M1 Abrams (US), Leopard 1A1A1 and Leopard 2A1 (West Germany), Leopard 1 (BE) (Belgium), Leopard 1 (NL) (Netherlands), T-55A (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Poland), T-72 (East Germany), and T-62, T-64A, T-64B, and T-72A (USSR)); a detailed tank damage system, accounting for non-KO penetrations, hits by kinetic energy and chemical energy projectiles, as well as detailed crew wounds and a brand new bail-out minigame to resolve the abandoning of your tank turn-by-turn; condensed and specific objectives with particular mission end conditions to specifically avoid mental fatigue and cut out tedium; and much, much more! Additionally, the game has been intentionally designed with modularity in mind in order to account for potential expansions set in later decades (such as this first expansion, On the Way! 83) with the introduction of advanced systems like thermal technology and explosive reactive armor (ERA), as well as support for WWII campaigns. Over a period not exceeding more than a month and a half (when it is assumed that the war will either be halted by ceasefire or escalate into a global nuclear war of heinous “mutually assured destruction”, depending on the actual course of your campaign, which changes with each playthrough), your tank commander and his crew will need to fight tactically and soundly to ensure the survival of both themselves and the tank. While your crew fights engagements as they appear to them through their hatches and periscopes, the rest of the war rages around them (represented as a dynamically changing “victory perception” with weekly campaign events), with your outfit’s successes and/or failures potentially having a small but palpable impact on the result of the campaign, potentially earning your nation an early victory, or perhaps a terrible defeat. Combat missions and their associated objectives, as well as enemy units, weather, the time of day, and so on, are all generated through their respective generation tables. Combat missions are resolved on a week-by-week basis, with up to seven combat missions occurring per week until the end of the campaign. In that time, you and your crew may increase their ratings (an abstraction of veterancy – their skills as combat soldiers), suffer casualties using detailed wound generation tables, gain nation-appropriate decorations and promotions, suffer from fatigue, and more. Ultimately, though, surviving the first dramatic, fast-paced, violent weeks of WWIII’s conventional ground war of maneuver is the main goal of your tank commander; after the war on the ground comes to a halt, the rest is out of your hands. Overall, On the Way! 83 includes two new campaigns: “North” and “Center”; ten playable nations (Belgium, Britain, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United States, and West Germany) along with exhaustively-researched tank crew ranks, nearly 50 nation-specific awards and decorations, and sixteen new historical nation-specific units to join (the Belgian 16th Pantser Division; the British 1st Armoured Division; the French 1st Armoured Division; the Dutch 4th Division; the U.S. 1st Armored Division and 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized); the West German 11th Panzergrenadier Division and 5th Panzer Division; the Czechoslovakian 1st Tank Division; the East German 7th and 9th Panzer Divisions; the Polish 20th Armoured Division; and the Soviet 10th and 15th Guards Tank Divisions, and the 20th and 39th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions); sixteen playable tanks (AMX-30B, Chieftain Mk.5/3, Leopard 1A1A1, Leopard 1 (BE), Leopard 1 (NL), Leopard 2A1, M60A3 TTS, M1 Abrams, T-55A, T-62, T-64A, T-64B, T-72, and T-72A); brand new early-1980’s enemy unit types (spread over 8 front-and-back enemy unit cards), such as the M2 Bradley, BMP-2, and Jaguar Tank Destroyer; two new counter sheets; revised tables; a new combat calendar; a new combat mission track sheet; and a supplementary rulebook which clarifies the aforementioned changes and additions to the game. The On the Way! 83 expansion for On the Way!, REQUIRING OWNERSHIP OF THE ORIGINAL GAME, requires two six-sided (d6) dice to play, and may be (but is not required) enhanced by taking notes and keeping a log on a separate sheet of paper, or digitally with any free word-like program, as your tank commander's story develops. —description from the designer