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Hello fellow Twilighters,
Firstly, thanks to Free League for bringing Twilight 2000 back to life. I absolutely love the look and feel of the Alpha, the art and design in the pdf's is really atmospheric while having a slightly retro feel to it, and it certainly succeeds in introducing the game as more of a survival game, different from the standard fantasy rpg fair, and not just a soldier sim.
I cant wait to run/play Twilight, if i can build a group to play with.
All rpg's require a suspension of disbelief, and i have no particular concerns with the world building timeline being accepted by players who will just want to get on with the game.

However there is one thing that has struck me.
The default campaign start is described as being somewhere around Kalisz, which is in the western quarter of the main map. NATO based players will more than likely just want to head west to get back to safer territory and friendly forces. This effectively wastes three quarters of the available map area, and will put the idea into the players heads subconsciously that the objective is to get off the western edge of the map.
To make better use of the map area, i think immediate western travel needs to be restricted, or at least not the obvious direction of travel, and the start point needs to be fairly central on the map.
To achieve this i would start the players in the Opoczno area, remnants of a southern Lodz encirclement/recon attempt, with blown bridges west of them, and add into the 5th ID Operation Reset handout something about the last chemical weapons being expended by both sides on the axis Lodz-Czestochowa.
Whilst the map in this handout is excellent for an overview of the plan, i think it would be advantageous to include a second hand annotated version showing the "reality", a Soviet pincer counter attack from Lodz-Kalisz before momentum and unit integrity broke down completely on both sides.
This would hopefully give the players a better starting mentality, understanding the total intermingling of the remnants of all sides forces and the effective negation of "sides" as a functioning entity.
Rumours and news taking the players in any direction other than west would then be more likely to be investigated rather than discarded out of hand.
What do you think?

What will determine what direction the players head will come down to the referee. The players are going to need food, clean water and supplies. They are also going to want to avoid major enemy forces.

If the rout is heading westwards with the Soviets in close pursuit then west may well be the last direction the players will want to go.

I agree that direction can be provided by the ref, but we all know what happens to well laid plans once they come into contact with players, especially those new to the setting.
The only map the players have showing troop disposition shows a NATO advance eastwards towards large Soviet forces, so i can see them heading west initially to avoid those major enemy pursuing forces.
Adding knowledge that forces have already got behind them before disintegrating might make that direction initially less appealing.

The PCs have to cross a river to move west, and the bridges and fords are in Soviet hands. The PCs will discover this if they attempt to move west. Complications may ensue.

I agree that this should probably be made more explicit in the setup. I took a look at some of the stats and the map in more detail last night as I was starting to set up a campaign. If the characters start with an Abrams, with an off-road speed of 9(!), then they could drive right off the map in TWO SHIFTS, if they don't have mishaps or encounters.

That is, if there's nothing in particular stopping them beyond randomness.

My solution is to start them east of the river on the other side of Sieradz, blow the bridges, make sure they don't have a full tank of good fuel to start, and most importantly place a large Soviet encircling element due west. This flanking element is no doubt why 5th Mech was so rapidly destroyed in the counter-attack. There is a suggestion, after all, that the Soviets knew the NATO offensive was coming...