Great War in Europe: Deluxe Edition

Description : The Great War in Europe: Deluxe Edition is a new revised and combined edition of two of Ted Raicer's most successful designs for Command magazine, The Great War in Europe and The Great War in the Near East. The Great War in Europe won the Charles Roberts award for best pre-WWII game, and its designer the James F. Dunnigan award for elegance in game design, and was nominated for an Origins award. The latter was nominated for a Charles Roberts award for best pre-WWII game design. Both have been out of print for over a decade, becoming collector's items earning high prices online.

The Great War in Europe (TGWIE) is a division level game (with some 1200 counters) covering all of the First World War In Europe, from the trenches of the western front, the mountains and plains of Italy, the vast expanses of the eastern front, and the Balkans to Gallipoli. The order of battle including infantry, cavalry, army headquarters (with attached artillery), German stosstruppen and Allied tanks. The Great War in the Near East adds in the Turkish fronts in the Caucasus, Egypt/Palestine and Iraq on a division/brigade scale.

TGWIE Deluxe Edition contains many innovative features, including event chits that introduce new weapons, tactics, and political events into the game, Trench Levels for different nations at different points in the war that remove the need to place hundreds of trench markers on the maps, rules to cover the German U-boat campaigns and its effects on US neutrality, and the conversion of the Tsarist army to the weaker units of the demoralized Provisional Government after the fall of the Tsar.

Best of all, this is a rare "monster game" that two people can play to completion in a long weekend's gaming. That's because the maps divide the game into Eastern and Western fronts, allowing one player to move and attack in the east, while the other is moving and attacking in the west. No waiting around for 15 minutes while your opponent moves all his divisions, this mechanic effectively cuts playing time for two players (or teams) in half.

Successful as the original games were, Ted has continued to tinker with them since their publication, and the new version adds revisions which improve both history and play balance. (Players of the original version will particularly appreciate the ability to call up Emergency Replacements -- at a cost in victory points.)

The new edition also includes all the scenarios published for the two designs. You can play The Great War in Europe and the Near East separately or together, and play out each year of the war in its own scenario. Plus pre-war variant chits allow you to explore major What-Ifs (what if Teddy Roosevelt won the election of 1912?).

Perhaps best of all, TGWIE Deluxe benefits from the map and counter art of Mark Simonitch, and Rodger's wonderful box art, reflecting the usual high standards you've come to expect from GMT.

With three maps and approximately 1500 1/2-inch counters, The Great War in Europe: Deluxe Edition updates two classic designs in an edition that provides all the challenges and Great War flavor you've come to expect from the designer of Paths of Glory, Clash of Giants, Reds, and Grand Illusion.

It is August 1914, and The Great War is about to begin...