I want to thank Peter Robbins for a fair, thoughtful, and well written review of A Winter War. I do wish to respond to a few of his points, however.

Not printing Soviet naval units in their usual dark red color was an economy measure for A Winter War only; it doesn't change the official colors for Europa. Dark red would add an extra ink to the counter sheet. This may seem like a small thing, but would have increased the cost per sheet significantly.

Peter mentions the weak 0-1-0 Finnish artillery battalion. This unit, comprised of several coastal artillery batteries, would probably have been better represented as a 0-1-0* fortified area.

As regards the illegibility of the first edition maps, this was all set right with the second edition printing. If you have not already done so, you may order a second edition map for a $2.00 handling charge from GR/D at P.O. Box 591, Grinnell, Iowa 50112.

The combat effects of a bridged strait (open water) hexside is attacker (except artillery) quartered. This alters Peter's analysis of an attack from 4714 to 4614. Peter was unaware of this clarification, which only appears in the AWW errata sheet. It also contains an important note on the 4108/4207 hexside that affects the tracing of Soviet supply lines into Finland. If you need a copy, consult the errata sheet ad on page 94.

Peter's biggest disappointment with the game is its lack of extensive naval rules. In fact, we originally planned to include a full set of advanced naval rules in the game, using the naval system from Arthur Goodwin's Northern Theatre of Operations as a base.

This amounted to four pages of rules, which I thought worked pretty good for the one and a half turns you used them. Unfortunately (or, maybe, fortunately), John Astell went through these rules in a very incisive manner, and cut them to ribbons. He found numerous loopholes and raised many questions. As this came at a very late date in the development of the game, the naval system was dropped. It didn't seem advisable to invest the time necessary to rework a naval system that would only be used on the first two turns of the game. Thereupon we simplified the naval rules to simulate the historical roles of the navies.

Nonetheless, we saved the draft of the rules, along with John's comments, hoping one day to develop an East Front naval module. That hasn't happened yet, but for what it's worth, here is the material.

A Winter War

A Small Game about a Small War
Designer's Response: Gary Stagliano
Rule 38-Advanced Naval Rules
John Astell's Commentary on the Naval Rules