Chris Farrell's KublaCon convention report is well worth a read for his interesting comments on the Europe Engulfed phenomenon, as well as debunking Up Front and giving us some first impressions of Memoir 44 the latest Battle Cry spin-off:

Firstly, I'm glad Europe Engulfed has been successful, but its high profile for a wargame seems to be drawing people who are sort of poking at it rather than taking it seriously. We saw a bit of this with Paths of Glory; many people heard it was great and wanted to try it, but weren't willing to learn the rules or put in the non-trivial effort necessary to learn what is a fairly serious and challenging game. We had several people show up for this event wanting to play, but never having even looked at the rules. This is not the way to go. Europe Engulfed is an absolutely great game, so I recommend that if you want to play, read the rules ahead of time (they're online) and take it seriously. You won't regret it; as I say, it's a fantastic game, and really just not that hard to learn in the main. But you'll get a heck of a lot more out of it by being prepared.