Hopefully this is my last column like this, as Peter Robbins and David Lippman should be handling things from here out. Hopefully the double issue will have given them time to gear up at an easy pace.

A double issue gives us a chance to do some things we don't like to do in our normal 48 page issue. We can put in "useful" long-term items and still have room for some things that might be of more immediate enjoyment. We've included reproductions of the countersheet fronts for SF, always useful making replacements for units missing in action, or checking to see if there really is a unit with the ID you are looking for.

By the way, our club's new gamers (see my column in TEM #**) finally made it to Europa a while back. They duked it out on the isthmus on each side of A Winter War over two Tuesday night sessions, as two players on each side (we play teams on everything) thrust and parried along the more difficult to play front from Ladoga to Petsamo.

The new folks spoke kindly of the game, but more indicative was that everybody showed up for the conclusion of the game on the second Tuesday, a phenomenon that doesn't always occur in our troupe. There's some life left in the old Europa mare yet.

Why Europa?

A passerby at Origins asked a question that I tried to answer: "Why would you spend so much time playing a big Europa game when you can play a smaller game on the same subject and finish it a night or two?" Well, I know why I prefer a Europa game. It's hard to explain, but I'm going to try again.

There are three types of decision: decisions under risk, decisions under uncertainty, and decision under certainty.

A decision under certainty is what you make at the grocery store. Do I want ground beef for $1.49 a pound, or ground chuck at $1.99 a pound? You make your choice and pay. You choose the outcome. A Europa example is movement. You have 10 MP. You know the TEC, you know the weather, so you know where you can go. You make your choice and go. No risk, no uncertainty.

A decision under uncertainty has various outcomes, each with a certain known probability. The most common examples are games of chance such as the state lotteries currently popular as a way of avoiding tax increases. You can pay your dollar and get your ticket with a statement in small print something like "Odds of winning I in 24,300,000." The obvious Europa example is combat. You know you're making a 3:1 +1 attack and can tell with a glance at the CRT what the possible outcomes are and the probabilities of each, even though you don't know what the exact outcome will be.

A decision under risk has various outcomes but we do not know the probability of each. One direct Europa example is planning an amphibious or airborne operation. You don't know the probability that the enemy player will move a big stack of defending units into the target hex.

Now let's try a different tangent. I'll go out on a limb and state generally that all wargames are pretty lousy (or abstract, if you prefer a more positive term) simulations at the lowest level that they try to simulate. Just so I'm not always picking at Europa, let's look at the squads in Squad Leader or ASL.

Nobody gets wounded, perfect command and control, all streets are 40 meters wide, and so on. Now all of these are useful abstractions and I'll sure admit the whole thing can make for a darned fine game, but at the squad-to-squad combat in ASL is a pretty lousy (abstract) simulation.

The same thing goes in Europa. The hex-by-hex combat system has so many simplifications (such as terrain, stacking, AEC, perfect intelligence, no step reduction, no fatigue, and on and on) that it is really a very abstract simulation at the hex-by-hex level.

Now to say that ASL, Europa, and all other wargames are lousy at their lowest level is not to condemn them, but to praise them. If they tried to be less abstract simulations at their lowest level they would become hopelessly complex and, by the definition above, develop an even lower level that would in turn be abstract. Indeed, most games that try to be accurate at their lowest level, are so complex they are rarely, if ever, played.

What does this have to do with risk and uncertainty? The lowest level of a wargame almost always involves decisions of certainty (movement) and uncertainty (combat). These are abstractions because in real life movement is an uncertain event (doctrine and experience usually allows a commander to have a fair estimate of the probability of a unit successfully carrying out a non-combat movement) and combat is a risky event (never do real-life commanders know the exact probability of success).

In most Europa games, (and in good monster games, in general) the strategic and larger scope operational decisions are made under risk. When you make a decision where to invade in Second Front, you cannot directly calculate the probability of success - there are too many variables and some of those depend upon player interaction (air support for example).

SE and SF succeed wonderfully as simulations not because every unit can repeat its historical hex-by-hex movement and combat path (usually they can; on some occasions they can't) but because the depth and scope of the game means that most strategic and operational decisions, that is, the one's taken at a level above where we move and attack with individual units, are taken under risk, and not under uncertainty - and in direct parallel to their real-life counterparts. The same is true of ASL at the platoon and company level - just not at the squad level.

You need only to listen to Europa players discussing strategy questions, such as, "Will a '43 invasion of France work in SF?" to realize that Europa strategic decisions are truly decisions under risk, as they should be. On strategic questions you will hear debate that almost parallels a discussion of whether an early invasion would have worked in the real thing.

That's one of the things that keeps me playing Europa.