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Permalink Reply by Lincoln Graves on October 7, 2010 at 7:33pm

Hitler's War is fun but a bit gamey for me. I made an ADC2 gameset for it years ago. Alan Emrich had something to do with "The Big One". For my money there is no more salutary influence upon a game than having Emrich involved. For Emrich the art of design is just the breath before the long exhale of development. As a result he never turns out a product that is wanting. Most importantly, he truly understands what makes a game worth playing, and more, what makes a game worth playing again and again. His Victory Point Games produced the very popular game "No Retreat 1" Emrich's guiding hand is heavily present in this game. It seems to me a slightly larger and updated version of TBO. As GMT is now producing "No Retreat 2", which covers North Africa instead of Russia, it seems hopeful that this system will eventually form a new micro theater wide.

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Permalink Reply by Bill Owen on June 21, 2012 at 10:17pm

Hitlers War is an excellent game for wargame players that like to finish a game in 1 or 2 sessions. I never could get into its competitors -- two much effort for what you get out of them. HW's elements of gaminess and abstraction were (to me) acceptable tradeoffs for the incredible breadth of detail and flexibility built into the system. And some gamey aspects can be tamed by using variants that are easy to find... and these will add some more historical elements if you want that. The bonus appeal is research/production that can take history along different tangents.

We magnetized it and played on the motorcoach on our 1991 Millennium of Mayhem tour led by James F Dunnigan... along with other old-stand-bys that could actually be finished (Battle for Germany, Nappy at Wloo, Bulge).

Unlike SPI's increibly boring WWII, it is not really a move your counters through the hexes wargame and admittedly it has an fluorescent map (so get the Metagaming version map which is more muted) so it will turn off some people. But you'll be missing a lot of play/replay... like we missed until we bit the bullet and played Victory in the Pacific (which gives you another idea of the level of abstraction we enjoyed). Really it's better than VITP. And better than A House Divided which is another lots'o'fun per effort-expended game but AHD can get rather long.

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Permalink Reply by Enrico CS Viglino on August 30, 2012 at 2:16pm

Yeah, I was going to say it seems just a little too long for an evening.

Some of the gameyness though (Germany needing to launch a bombing

campaign on England so that they can research fighters more easily for example)

feel a little weird to me. The naval rules never seem sufficient either (although they're

the most complicated part). Still, the big encirclement campaigns on the East

Front are fun, even if they can devolve into silliness.

All in all though, I'd say the HW design is cool enough that it should

be a part of every gamer's collection.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Lennart Svensson on August 30, 2012 at 1:19pm

Doesn't the Avalon Hill game Hitler's War meet the criteria? I believe it is at army level with a fairly low complexity.

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