Raid on St. Nazaire felt like more of a combat simulation apparatus than a board game and often, this thing was a clerical foray of dice accounting.
So the comments by other players about the tedious, near endless dice rolling for the water attacks are not overstated: I had one turn that lasted twelve rounds in the Harbor and (one of the) Dockside attack phases. So that's 24 rolls (of 3 dice) to hit, plus other guns fired in the Dockside phase (about 6 of those). Each of these 30 attacks against me required 3 dice to track (so that's now 90 dice rolled), then two dice to determine the severity/type of hit (now we're up to about 150 dice rolled), then often another roll to determine the number of crew or commando strength or weaponry lost. So if possibly rolling 175+ dice against yourself in a single part of a 17 step turn sounds fun, Raid on St. Nazaire was designed for you.
For those of us who are not clerical robots, the boat oriented phase of this game may prove very time consuming and often tedious. I spent more time looking at paper and dice and the dense, badly laid out rulebook than at the actual board or characters.
Once the titular land raid commences, things get more interesting very quickly and certainly there is a sense of accomplishment at this stage because so many ships have been sunk and so many injuries and deaths have occurred. A lot of the landings and targets (read: choices) are determined ahead of time by history/this system, which also adds to the feel of this being a simulation.
The activation and placement mechanisms of the Germans troops are well done, as are the linear movement rule system and the requirements for a proper English bombing. Still...these latter positives cannot wholly overbalance the tedious first portion, but the game does have some pluses if you survive the dice rolling tsunami that it takes to get there.
I can see playing this simulation again once or twice, but not often, though it is a memorable clerical undertaking that occasionally resembles a "game" and possibly influenced the development of great, modern solitaire wargames like D-Day at Omaha Beach.