I hope that many of you are aware that a reprint for Next War: India-Pakistan is up for pre-order. This particular game in the series has long been touted as a good entry point into the system as it concentrates solely on the ground and air war and doesn’t have those pesky naval rules. This will be a second printing with a few updates. To keep it simple, I wanted to give you a brief outline of the following changes, i.e., it’s not a new edition with a bunch of changes.
Counters
We will, of course, be correcting the two errata counters (PRC J-31 and Pakistani JF-17). In addition, we’ll provide the counters presented in Supplement #2 including the Pakistani T-129 Attack Helicopter and the new PRC Group Army (the 77th) as well as some independent units. The ROI Tejas will be upgraded to the Tejas Mk2 (which will also be available in Supplement #4 when it’s published). There will also be a host of other changes to bring the game up to the current standards for the Russian, US, and CW units.
Rules
Naturally, we’ll include the latest Series Rules (which will probably be the ones from Next War: Taiwan, 2nd Ed.). The Game Specific Rules will undergo a serious overhaul which will likely end up making them shorter since several sections introduced in the original NWIP have since been migrated to the Series Rules such as:
- Major Rivers and Canals
- Bridge Destruction and Repair (including HQ Bridges)
- High Mountains
- Almost all the special “Units” notes
Obviously, scenario setups will have to be changed to accommodate the counter changes above.
Player Aid Cards (PACs)
Other than errata fixes and reinforcement table updates (for the new counters above), these will largely remain unchanged in the sense that we’ll include the latest versions of the Series Charts/Tables, i.e., Advanced Game Tables, Sequences of Play (both), CRT, etc.
Map
As of right now, we’re not planning any map changes.
Expectations
As you can see, this is a pretty short list of changes. As of the time of this article, the game is sitting at 195 pre-orders, and it will need quite a few more to see the light of day. Let’s turn expectation into reality!
Author: Mitchell Land
Thanks for the info, Mitch! Looking forward to add this volume to my growing NW collection.
Regarding the GSR-to-Series-Rule moves, another candidate might be the Refugee Optional Rule, which appear in almost all of the games IIRC. You might incorporate it to the Series Rules and only mention in the GSR whether it applies or not, as well as any game-specific DRMs or nuances. Just an idea.
Vincent, thanks for the idea. I’ll mull it over. I tend to like keeping most of the optional rules in the GSR and/or Supplements so as not to clutter the Series Rules too much.