Designed by Dana Lombardy
published by Simulations Design Corporation, 1973, in Conflict 4.

NORAD is a low-complexity game depicting a Russian manned bomber attack over the North Pole, opposed by the North American continental defense network of fighters and missiles.

Players 2 (solo variant supplied)
Playing time 1 hour
Period 1960s (ICBMs do not appear in the game)
Scale Operational
Time 1 hour per turn
Space 300 miles per square
Force one air or missile wing per counter

Components
1 22"x30" squared map of Canada and the United States, with rules of play and counter manifest printed in the margins (I also note that the great city of Montreal is mislabeled "Quebec")
1 sheet of 70 diecut counters

A later version was released by the Mishler Game Company in 1978 in a ziploc bag with substantially the same components, plus a cover sheet.

Counter Manifest
70 3/4" square, printed black on pink (Russian) or black on blue (NORAD) They are done in a matte finish, unlike other Conflict games which had a glossy finish.

Russian units
23 bombers backprinted with mushroom clouds
7 decoy bombers with blank backs
5 submarine-launched missiles backprinted with mushroom clouds (variant counters)

NORAD units
12 fighter units
5 missile bases
5 decoy missiles (actually just blanks, and though only 5 are called for in the game there are 13 in the countermix
4 Canadian fighter units (variant counters
1 Canadian missile base (variant counter)

Collector’s Value

All the issue games in Conflict magazine are long out of print and are sought after by collectors. For some reason, the price commanded seems to vary with the playability of the game: for example, Alamo and Rifle-Musket, the two games that came out with issue #3, were overly simple and bland designs that were not well received and are not hot items today. Meanwhile, games like NORAD or Jerusalem are expensive and uncommon items. Boone gives low, high and average prices of 7/15/11.75 at auction and 6/60/ 18.88 for sale.

Player’s value

This is a simple game of bluff and counter-bluff. The Russian player enters and moves his 30 bomber units, real and fake, over several turns while the American player, who has previously deployed his 22 real and fake units (fighters face up, decoys and missiles face down) on most of the 30 American cities marked on the map, waits for his units to get in range (six squares and zero respectively for fighters and missiles). No dice are involved. Fighters and bombers (real or decoy) cancel each other out one for one, while decoys on either side are removed when exposed. When a bomber moves over a city and survives, it is flipped to reveal a mushroom cloud and the Russian player scores a number of points (a low of 5 for taking out hellholes like Dallas, a high of 9 for New York City or Chicago). The Russian objective is to take out 100 points worth of cities, while the American player wins if he can destroy enough bombers to prevent this. Playing time would be at most one hour.

Play is not particularly subtle except in the deployment of decoys. Adding more NORAD decoys and deploying fighters face down might increase the unpredictability and tension.

Support Material

“Of course, in a strict sense, it’s impossible for a game dealing with a campaign that never happened, to be historically accurate, but NORAD is accurate in that it gives you a ‘feel’ of what it must be like to be in the ‘war room’ beneath the Pentagon, the White House, or wherever it may be buried ... it plays very well, is tense, fast, great fun” Tyrone Bomba in Panzerfaust 60.

“It is, of course, not a detailed, ‘realistic’ simulation. It is a simple, playable game. As such it is a near-classic.” Don Lowry in Campaign 89.

A solitaire variant is described on the map, while the magazine contained designer’s notes and suggestions for four variants:

• DEW line - if Anchorage and Godthab, the two linchpins of the DEW line, are taken out then the Russian player enters his bombers on row H instead of row A;
• Optional Russian placement - any number of bombers can enter from Siberia on the northwest edge of the board, while up to five bombers (two of which must be fakes) can enter the southern edge of the map from their conjectural bases in Cuba;
• SLBM - the Russian player can deploy up to five missile counters, representing submarine-launched SS-N-4 “Snarks” (an early form of cruise missile), adjacent to American coastal cities. He has one turn to move them into the city itself and detonate them; and
• Canadian air defense - place four Canadian fighters, one Canadian missile base, and one decoy on Canadian cities, which now become fair game. This variant is assuredly for play balance, since Canada at this time did not have anywhere near the numbers and sophistication of USAF fighters and fielded only two small squadrons of Bomarc missiles at North Bay and La Macaza in northern Quebec. The Bomarcs, together with the 10 KT nuclear warheads supplied by the Americans in 1963/64, were returned in 1972.

Other games on this subject

ICBM (Mayfair 1981), reviewed in Simulacrum 13 Nuclear War, Nuclear Destruction, and numerous expansions (Flying Buffalo Games 1976-90s), Ultimatum (Yaquinto 1979) Code Ri-Yan, a game about the last chilly gust of the Cold War in November 1983, was designed by Bruce Costello and was to have run in Command magazine. It is now titled First Strike and he is attempting to find a replacement publisher for it.

Other games by this designer

4th Reich (TFG 1985), Alien Contact (Phoenix 1983), Cromwell (SDC 1974, Conflict 8), Dunkerque 1940 (SDC 1972), Battle for the Factories (Nova, 1982), Fire on the Volga (Nova 1984), Guerre a Outrance (SDC 1972,, Conflict 1), Kamikaze (in F&M 31), Khalkin-Gol (SDC 1973, Conflict 5), Streets of Stalingrad (Phoenix 1980).