I've only played one game (and that one I conceded halfway through) but I'm not so sure about the bit about "conforming to history". If anything, there are cards that let you do stuff that was considered but rejected historically. (For example, you can do an Axis invasion of Malta to get full supply to Africa for the Axis, but it permanently removes one of your valuable "5" operations cards.) Also, I have read complaints about the cardplay making certain things quite ahistorical; for example, clearing the Axis out of Africa is not required for the invasion of Sicily - you just play "Husky" and an army appears on the beach. IMHO, if anything the "conforming to history" business is more enforced by the June 1941 start time and the victory conditions. If the Axis are going to win they've got to invade Russia and try to grab as much of it as they can. They can vary the parameters of how they do that, or neglect it somewhat to focus more on Africa. The Allies have to hang on until the US shows up and then start beating up on the Axis. But strange stuff can still happen - in the game I conceded last night, the Allies did "Operation Sledgehammer", invaded Norway, and, because I didn't take the threat seriously enough, conquered it, jumped over to Denmark, and had an American army in Hamburg before I knew what had happened. So the crux of the matter is how much complexity modeling the beginning of the war will add. I think I am with Krieg's designers here - there was a lot of really wacky stuff diplomatically and politically in the early war and modeling that is going to require a lot of special cases no matter what you do. (I'm thinking of things like the situation with France after the surrender, the coup that got Hitler to invade Yugoslavia, and the whole Italy/Greece mess. The rules for Vichy seem to be messy in most ETO games.) Also, designers have to make judgement calls as to how possible some of the ahistorical stuff could have been (there are arguments to be made that Sea Lion had no hope of succeeding, ever). That said, I have not found a WW2 ETO strategy game I wholeheartedly like yet, having tried A3R, Krieg, Totaler Krieg, the Columbia "Front" series, and now Barbarossa to Berlin. My wargame partner and I are going to try BtB again next week. My main difficulty with BtB is with figuring out how to do basic things effectively, like maintaining an advancing continuous front, within the game system. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 2 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com