This is the first time I've come back to the game in about four or five years. It's interesting to see how one's perceptions of a game change over time. Playing it now, I'm struck, as Karl mentioned, by how glacial the pace is. Of course, I'm slowing down too, but even taking that into account, the turn sequence with its impulses, subimpulses, and first and second echelons is really labyrithine. I never noticed before how poorly written the rules are.
Terrain starts to become really abstract at that scale.
What the Pact gains in Germany, after the first turn or two, is, at least in my games, limited to a hex here and there. I think this is interesting in the light of the WWI trench warfare discussion we had on this list sometime in the last 6 months or so. Yet this series gets high marks, even though the rate of frontal movement in the Germany game is very slow. But I think it's unlikely that the Pact player is going to accomplish anything like that, given reasonable Nato play, and anything other than remarkable luck. Yet we seem to like this game.