Stefan and Andrew Farrelly, New Zealand

Okay. Here goes. My brother and I live way down in the Southern Hemisphere in a small country called New Zealand (somewhere near Australia). We are both Europa fanatics, but we are having a few supply problems. Firstly, we can't find Europa modules in shops anywhere! How can we play Europa if we can't find the modules to part with our hard earned cash for? We have scoured the planet, and through relatives in the UK hunting around backstreet gameshops for us we now have copies of most of the modules, with the exception of FoF, WD, CW and Narvik. We then found a little card in a copy of SE, which was the last module we purchased, with an address for GRID, which was a godsend. We wrote and found out the great news that GR/D was picking up the Europa series, and was even going to continue and improve it.

Wunderbar!! We couldn't believe our luck. After playing board games for 12 years, starting with AH's France 40 and continuing to anything and everything, we found out about Europa, and hit on the best game system for strategic/tactical warfare for the whole of Europe during WWII available anywhere. We are now devoted to the cause and want to obtain all the modules/accessories we can get.

Soon the Europa magazine #11 arrived and we found great articles, "Rules Court," etc. We soon saw the advertisements for other Europa modules, all available from GRID, so next day an order was in the mail. We duly purchased back issues of the Europa mags #1-10 and enjoyed them immensely. The items we found of particular use are the suggested rules and OB changes, which are great, but were a little annoyed as we had no idea there are so-many changes according to the way we play FitE/SE. We now know about two other newsletters about Europa: ETO and Nuts & Bolts. Problem is we now have to order all of these to keep up to date!

For example, we believe in a couple of issues there was a version of a 2D6 Combat CRT which is for suggested use, but we can't find it in any of our 14 Europa magazines. Now we have to order the correct copies of ETO to find out about this important suggested change. And then there are references to Nuts & Bolts articles. Do we now have to order Nuts & Bolts to find out about other suggested changes to the rules/OBs which Europa hasn't mentioned!? There should be only one authoritative magazine. People like John Astell should only comment on suggested changes to rules/OBs in the official GR/D magazine, not all three, otherwise he should duplicate anything he writes in one publication in the other two, to save us and probably other Europa players from having to buy all three Europa periodicals.

I can well appr eciate your frustration trying to obtain out-of-print games and materials from New Zealand and tip my hat to you for your perseverance. Seems you did a fairly spectacular job in scraping together many of the hard-to-get games.

As for all the many articles, ideas, scenarios and so forth appearing in various Europa periodicals over the years, I have a few remarks. First, most issues of ETO and all but one of Nuts & Bolts were published BEFORE the Europa magazine (even in its preliminary newsletter format) came into being. Would you have us reprint all the old material from these periodicals (assuming we were allowed to do so)?

In any case, don't forget what John Astell pointed out in TEM #11: "The published games, together with the published errata sheets, are official Europa, and nothing else is. If it's not in the rules of a game or on the errata sheet, it's not official and you don't have to bother with it if you don't want to."

Since Nuts & Bolts has long been out of print and it has been a very long while since either ETO or The Grenadier last appeared, it seems that at least temporarily the Europa magazine is the sole source of official or experimental Europa stuff. But I'm quite sure very few fans of this system take any pleasure in this state of affairs - most remember fondly the "good old days" when there was more than one source for such information. -RG

Arne Rassek, Germany

We are a novice group of Europa players from Germany. We have played Case White several times, and are now in our second FitE/SE game. I'm a great fan of the Arctic/Leningrad theater of operations, based on my knowledge about the Russian Civil War. We play FitEISE without a Soviet-Finnish stop line, which means that the Axis Arctic player may advance into Soviet territory as he wishes, and the Soviet player may likewise push into Finland.

I know the Soviets didn't actually do this, but why? Maybe the answer is simple. The Swedish government guaranteed massive help for Finland if the Soviet forces advanced over a stop line in Finland. As you know, the Swedish Air Force had a mixed group of planes with volunteer pilots in Finland already. To put this into game terms, if the Soviets cross a stop line five hexes behind the grey Soviet-dictated border, Sweden will enter the war.

We worked out an OB for Sweden and placed the counters on the map. It looked fearsome! In the beginning of the war, the Swedish Army is somewhat under-equipped. One of my friends, a Pz.IV modeler, told me that Sweden delivered some parts of the Pz.IV to Germany, and that the Bofors AA makes a very good self-propelled Pz. Jager.

If you take this information and think about a wartime production footing for a country like Sweden, you may see what might happen to Murmansk or Arkhangelsk. The Soviets had enough trouble on hand with Finland, so it would be mad to engage Sweden also.

We are looking for copies of Narvik and Near East. If you could supply us with these games, even without the boxes, please let us know how much we would have to pay.

I wish I could give you a better answer, but neither of these titles are currently available from GRD. I will advise you if any stocks of these are located. If you do obtain a copy of Narvik, you will be pleasantly surprised to find it contains an Europa level Swedish OB and counters. I wouldn't call this Swedish Army"fearsome," but it is a solid force, and would take some reckoning with. However, note Mr. Karnekull's remarks later in this column! -RG

Johan Herber, Sweden

The Nordic Europa Association now has twelve paying members--not many, but we count on having quite a few more in a short time. Keep up the good work and keep the games coming, but only when they're ready!

Stuart Lee, Australia

As you know, we are the Australian branch of The Europa Association (our motto is "East of the Urals; west of Pearl"). One of the things we do is distribute the current errata to our members, so please keep us up-to-date.

Keep up the good work with the Europa magazine. It's coming along nicely, although I think the cover needs a little work, particularly for retail display. It may also be time to start including an index to each 6-issue volume, or maybe just a complete listing every so often.

Mauro De Vita, Italy

Thanks for your proposal that I write a letter or an article for the magazine. I considered very seriously the latter, because I agree with you that different perspectives from all over the world would enhance the overall quality of the magazine.

In fact, I think the only potential incompleteness of the magazine is the almost exclusively American point of view; nothing wrong about that, of course, because your products are selling mainly in the U.S. But I think it would be interesting to read something coming from other countries' sources about the Europa project.

The Europa games are, generally, very accurate regarding OB and OA, but they suffer sometimes from an "English-speaking sources only" syndrome, although admittedly less than other companies. For example, a really good game like Panther's "Trial of Strength" shows absurdly low ratings for the elite Italian Alpine Corps--even the Slovakians rate better! Not to speak about the unbelievable rating of the elite Folgore Division in so many North African games (in AH's ASL series even the worse Belgian units are better than Folgore's).

While it is a fact that the Italian armed forces showed poorly in WWII, it is true that considerable portions of it were as good as other major countries' forces. I wonder if this situation is shared with other minor nations' armies (i.e., Bulgaria, Rumania, etc.)?

Actually, Europa's researchers do tap quite a few foreign language sources: Shelby Stanton routinely looks into the German microfilm records in the National Archives, Charles Sharp and Louis Rotundo access Soviet material, and John Gee has handled Polish, Greek and Spanish source data. And John Astell himself has a substantial library of foreign language books. This is one of the central reasons why Europa is the best researched wargame on the market. -RG

Olaf Karnekull, Sweden

A friend of mine has done some extensive research on the Swedish order of battle, as the one in Narvik was not very accurate, and neither was much of the terrain in Sweden. I hope to provide this information to the magazine in the future.

I have paged through a few articles to EXchange from other players, mostly Americans, who have written about various subjects. The thing that struck me most was that the Europa rules and ratings have both devoted players who accept everything and then opposite we have the critics. Designing a wargame is costly and demands playability and accuracy. I am sure Europa will have both when completed. Concerning the rule where Finland either surrenders or seeks an armistice with the Soviets--I think that the German player should still be able to trace a rail element supply line in weather zone A. Sweden granted supply transition of non-armed troops from July '41 to August '43. Approximately two million soldiers were transited, including the fully-armed 163 "Engelbrecht" Division.

The Swedish Rule works like this:

Before and after Finland surrenders, the Axis player may use the rail hex between the Swedish and Finnish borders (5B:2604) as a regular supply source, but may not use the Finland rail capacity for moving troops when drawing supply from there. The ability is lost when the Axis player has less than 25 victory points, as in the Eastern Troops withdrawal.