Quarter Master General is a great game. It’s a map conquest game. It’s fast. It’s easy to learn. It’s a barrel of monkeys fun. The expansion Air Marshall is good. It’s more of the same. It’s not essential but it does add something. To be exact planes.
Air Marshall introduces airplanes to the proceedings which… don’t act the way you think they would. You were expecting dakka dakka? Sorry try sacrificial meat shield.
Planes can jump in, take one for the team, lookout sir style if they’re cohabiting army is about to get blasted or they equally can jump in and remove enemy air support. A few of the new cards allow actions on sectors next to or containing planes too. Again like the base game you’ll really need to play through each faction to see what’s in the post for you during a game.
Air Marshall adds about a dozen cards to each deck which makes it more difficult to run your opponent out of cards but also opens players up to dumping more and not being as tied to the whim of the deal gods.
The game also introduces bolster cards. These are reactions (in some cases) and can be played directly from your hand as a reaction to someone else’s move or else cards that play out of sequence and setup a chain of plays. They’re interesting. Certainly way more interesting than reaction cards, which I found were a bit of a waste in the base game. That said I’ve never won as the Axis so what would I know.
The new cards and planes not only offer new possibilities but also patch the original game and make it harder to go for proven killer combos. It can lead to players turtling which for this game is fine as the base could often feel like a knife fight in a phone box.
All in all I liked this. I think the card play system is solid and I’d like to see Griddly Games use it on another setting for their next game. The only negative I can see with this is games can often feel a little samey, then again this is a semi simulation of an historical event and for me I’m still excited by this game and happy to play it at the drop of a hat
More of this sort of thing
Huzzah!
Vic
Victor Gannon Games 
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