Victory! "The Battle for Britain"

From: 692adams@gw.wmich.edu

Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 03:47:28 +0000

Victory!  "The Battle for Europe"
By Rolling Thunder Games
Strategic Wargame PBM
100% computer moderated (according to the company)
fast game - 15 day turnaround, slow game 21 day turnaround
Rules and setup - $15.00, turn sheat cost - $6.00, 1 or 2 turn sheats per turn,
	$0.05 charge per page of turn results up to $5.00 max.

Rolling Thunder Games, Inc.
PO Box 1240
Broomfield, CO  80038-1240
phone 1 (303) 466-8600

For those of you who may be interested in this soon to be released PBM,
I'll cover some of the highlights from the article in the July/August issue of
Paper Mayhem by Donald J. Lund.
	For those of you familiar with the new fantasy PBM, Legends, put out by
Midnight Games, I'm happy to say that the feature that makes that game unique
(its modular nature) seems to also have been used in Rolling Thunder Games' new
Stategic Wargame PBM, Victory!  Reading from the advertisement within the above
mentioned issue of Paper Mayhem it appears that "The Battle for Europe" is just
the first in a series of "modules" for the Victory! game system.
	"The Battle for Europe" is (as you may have guessed) based in the
European Theatre during WWII.  From what I've gathered from both the article
and the advertisement, the degree of realism far surpasses anything seen up to
this point in time.  Real unit types are used within the game and (so I've
read) react in much the same way as their counterparts in the real world might.
	Quoting the ad:

"Some games boast 30, 40 or even 50 types of combat units, with generic
names such as "Battleship" or "Armies".  Victory! has hundreds of combat units-
and you wont find any unit simply called "Battleship" in Victory!.  There's a
big difference between a U.S. Colorado class Battleship and a Russian Marat
class Battleship, and Victory! makes the distinction!  The game begins with air
units such as the Bf-109E-1, Bristol Blenheim IV, Plikarpov I-16, F2A-1
Buffalo, PBY-5A Catalina, TBD-1 Devastator, Gloster Sea Gladiator I, Hawker
Hurricane I, Bf-110C-4, P-36C Hawk and even the Fairey Swordfish I!..."

All hype aside folks, from what the ad and Mr. Lund have said, it
appears that Rolling Thunder has done their homework.
	Another nice feature that Victory! boasts is laser printed maps with
your turn results.  (There was a copy of one within the article and it looked
really nice).  Each of the 40 starting players also receives "two black and
white laser printed mapsets, one is a small weatherband map, the other is a
very large, detailed map of the game.  The main map is made up of individual
8 1/2" x 11" map sheets and when completed it can cover about 20 square feet
of a wall in your favorite war room."  The former quote is from Mr. Lund's
article.
	For all of you skeptics out there who are saying to yourself, "There
has to be something wrong here.  No game is this good.  Like most other WWII
games it must be badly balanced."  While the game may have its flaws, this
doesn't appear to be one of them.  Each player submits his list of country
choices from 1 to 40.  A random computerized drawing is held, and each player
is assigned the highest available choice from the list based on availability.
	Each player also gets to choose what type of units he or she wishes
to fight with.  The choices are U.S., British, German, and Russian.  The only
exceptions are those four countries themselves which must take their own units.
Each unit has its own advantages and disadvantages.  U.S. and Britain excell
in air power, Germany and Russia excell on the ground, etc.  What this lacks
in realism, it makes up for in fairness of play.  Everyone starts out with a
fairly even chance of winning (provided they use they read the rules carefully
and use their positions to their best advantage).
	Their is only one major area in which one can be misled by the ad in
Paper Mayhem (that I know of).  Within the ad it states, "Reasonable prices at
only $6.00 per turn-no combat charges, monthly status reports or newsletter
fees!"  What they fail to mention is that each player (as the need arises) can
send in up to two turn sheets per turn, each costing $6.00 (I'm not sure how
frequently this would happen).  This alone CAN (I'm not saying it will) double
the price of your turn.  Add on to this a $0.05 fee for each page of turn
results your receive (up to a max charge of $5.00 per turn), and it can get
pretty expensive (not to mention the costs of contacting other players).
	Well, I'm sure there is quite a bit I have left out.  For all of you
who are intrigued with what you've heard so far, I'd urge you to pick up issue
#49 of Paper Mayhem.  For those of you with an interest in stategy and military
PBMs (and some money to burn) this sounds like the best thing to come around in
quite a long time.  Let's hope that more companies will put time and effort
into challenging games like Legends and Victory!  Personally, I'd like to see
a similar system used for a sci-fi PBM.  Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the
article.  I look forward to seeing more of your comments and questions about
the big guns in PBM gaming in this section in the future.

Scott 'da Vinman' Werner
Western Michigan University

Please note that the opinions expressed above are merely that:  OPINIONS!
What becomes of them is strictly up to the reader.