From: "Brian Datta" <grenadier@mailcity.com>
Subject: Hitler's War

     This is a short review and replay of Metagaming's Hitler's War, published in
1981. I've owned this game for approximately 10 years, but never played it until
last night (9/11/97).
     I played the Barbarossa scenario, starting in Summer '41. There are 3 turns
in a year BTW (I'm planning on trying a 4th turn). Overall the game resulted in a
stalemate, which in turn means that the Russians won (all they have to do in this
scenario is survive). The Germans made good progress in the first turn, pusing the
Russians back all along the front, but failing to make any decisive breakthroughs.
Because of the initial deployment, almost no progress was made on the southern front,
and the Russians were able to plug the holes before the Germans ware able to redeploy
Mech SP's to exploit. At one point in '43, Army Group Center was down to 3 Mech SP's
and no Inf! I called the game in the Summer '44 turn because of the stalemate.
     The map is functional, if nothing else. It is printed in brown, black and white.
The map includes Europe and the Near East as well as North Africa. Off board boxes
handle sea moves and production (in the cases of the U.S. and India). Bookkeeping
is handled by 3 sheets (one each for Axis, Russians and Western Allies) whith spaces
for army strength, tech level and Strategic Warfare units (the last tow are used
in the advanced game). The counters are horrible. The W. Allies are black print on
yellow, the Germans are yellow print on black, and the Russians are red print on
black. I haven't seen the TAHGC version, but I hope the counters are better. 
     The mechanics are fairly easy to understand. When you want to attack a hex,
the defender (if any) gets to inflict casualties on your unit first. If the attacker
survives, it then inflicts causalties on the defender. The attacker then rolls on
an Advance Table to see if it can move into the defenders hex (empty enemy hexes
have an intrinsic defence value of one). It is possible to not be able to move even
into a friendly hex. The Advanced Game adds Paras, Air (tactical Air), Amph (amphibious),
and Fleet SP's (strength points). There is also a fairly detailed Strategic Warfare
capability, involving Fighters, Bombers, Subs and ASW. 
     The economic system is easy to use but has alot of variety built into it. Strength
points in the basic game have a flat cost, but in the Advanced Game, they have a
sliding cost based on tech level (and tech levels can be bought just like units).

     I like this game. It takes some getting used to, but once you've played a few
turns, it's quite intuitive. I would've preferred to have the charts and tables on
a separate sheet, but given the minigame format, that apparently wasn't possible.
on a scale of one to five, I'd give this a 3.5, maybe a 3.75. I'll play it again.

Brian Datta - grenadier@mailcity.com

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