During the 2009 restrospectives last month I mentioned I'd defer comments on _Superpowers at War_ (S&T #100) until I finished the second scenario. I've just done so, hence this follow-up message. First, some background. _SaW_ is a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact game which had been so common during the Cold War years. Game scale is 4 km per hex, 1 day per turn, and battalion/regiment level counters. The two scenarios, "Drive on Munich" and "Across the Rhine," are played using half maps on a standard-size sheet. To fit within the limitations of a magazine game the counters for the two scenarios are printed on the opposite sides of the countersheet. Digression 1: Unfortunately no care was taken with front-to-back alignment to facilitate sorting. Not even the two scenarios' game- turn markers were aligned with each other! Digression 2: This is the only game I ever acquired in which the counters were prone to splitting front from back. That might seem advantageous given the comment in digression 1. However, the intact counters are on the thin side, so the split counters were too thin for convenient handling. My (solo) playing of the "Drive on Munich" scenario seemed typical of this game topic: NATO was pummeled unmercifully from one end of the mapsheet to the other. At the end NATO had been squeezed into a pocket inside the city that was at most eight hexes long and at most five hexes wide. And then, after totaling the victory points, I was astonished to find that NATO had won by a mere 6 points (68 to 62)! That tiny pocket contained enough Munich city hexes to offset Warsaw Pact advantages in attrition and territorial gains. Digression 3: At that point I had a vivid image of a stone-faced committee entering the Commie HQ and saying, "Comrade General, we gave you ten turns to capture Munich. The Praesidium would like to speak with you." Much the same was true for the "Across the Rhine" scenario. Warsaw Pact forces were beyond the Maas River as early as turn 4, yet at the end NATO achieved the middle level of victory, in part because of points gained by attrition from limited counterattacks and in part because the West German defenders of Koln held out to the end of the game. When _SaW_ first came out some 25 years ago, it was mostly forgettable. But now it was a major nostalgia trip for me. I had played games that included units from the former Soviet Union, most recently in _Central Command_. But I couldn't remember the last time I played a game that included West Germans. I checked my solitaire notebooks and found that the last such time had been in 1994! _______________________________________________ Consim-l mailing list Consim-l@mailman.halisp.net http://mailman.halisp.net/mailman/listinfo/consim-l