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I picked this up this morning -- The components are quite impressive but I had hoped the rules would be a bit clearer given this is their second go at a Firestorm game.

I am looking forward to playing a campaign but I hope our club can come up with some rules to make the lists a bit more historical.

Any chance of a detailed review? I am yet to see any impartial review of market garden.

I am reading through the book now and I hope to play the "General's Game" on the weekend so I will try and post something in the next few days.

Good stuff, look forward to that.

My friend couldn't make it to play the General's game on the weekend and I ended up spending most of the weekend gardening so this is more of an overview of Firestorm : Market Garden rather than a detailed review.

The Box -- this is a bit flimsier than I think it should be. It will probably survive given some care but I was a bit disapointed when I picked it up in the shop.

The Map -- This really nice, and quite big. I think the size is a negative for playing a miniatures campaign but our club will probably magnetize it and mount it on a stand so it won't really matter. It covers the whole battle area and gives 3 routes to get across all the rivers.

The Plastic Pieces -- Very nice, I would have like the Americans and British to be different colours but they are fine the way they are

The Posters with the Firestorm Lists -- looked at them once and they will probably stay in the bottom of the box forever since it is much easier to look them up in the rulebook.

The Book -- Similar to Firestorm : Bagration in organization (or lack thereof). There is a bit of potted History about Market Garden, then the rules for the battle commanders, the rules for the overall commanders and then the rules for the "General's Wargame". There is a guide for running a campaign, some ideas for terrain. Two new missions and 2 historical scenarios. Other than organization I think the rules are ok but they will take a few readings (and a few turns) to put them all in context.

Overall, I think this is OK but I was expecting to see an improvement over Bagration in the rules (or at least the way they were presented) and I was hoping (but not really expecting) more special rules -- such as having to do a river assualt if you cross a major river other than at a bridge, or rules for blowing and repairing bridges and optional rules for restricting the lists (as far as I can tell, the only restriction is that you can't use Airborne supply if you have non-airborne Firestorm troops).

I am looking forward to playing this.

This example of play does help clarify a lot of the rules
http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/Documents/WargamesIllustrated/FS-MG-Campaign-Report.pdf

On the other hand, I think that the "sequential" battle scheme will make club campaigns a bit more awkward.

For what it is worth, I recently played a bridge too far and enjoyed it. Same board and models as far as I am aware, but a nice quick game (about 2 hours), with lots of fun airdrops and supply lines issues. Played a lot like the old horus heresy/battle for armageddon boardgame but with more detail and fun stuff going on.

That is good to hear. Based on its play as a boardgame do you feel that it will translate well to a minis campaign?

It would be fairly good, but it would take a very, very long time. If you played out every battle, it would be on the order of 45 full games. You'd need a very large range of troops to play out the terrain bonuses and strength differences between forces in specific battles too.

My club managed 7+ games a turn during our Bagration campaign so the number of games doesn't seem too bad (though it did take almost a year to play).