Dave Shaw dshaw62197@home.com The Big One: The War in Europe, 1939-1945 Gamefix #7 The Big One is a large-scale treatment of WW2 in Europe. With 100 counters (representing army-size units, fleets and air wings), eight pages of rules, two pages of charts and tables, and an 11x17 map of Europe (from Scandinavia to North Africa, Ireland to Kuwait), TBO is an attempt to compact this conflict down to a contest playable in a single evening. In many ways this game is similar of AH's Hitler's War--a treatment of this theater of WW2 at a large scale yet with relatively simple mechanics. Unfortunately, this is pretty much TBO's undoing, since at times the game is too simplified. The rules on combat are scattered about (examples in the margins, a section in the rules themselves, and an "expanded" explanation of combat on the Turn Sequence Chart). While not overly complicated, some details on combat seem to be left out, leaving gamers puzzled as to what the designer really intends. For example, if a paratroop lands on an enemy unit, and that enemy unit is not destroyed or retreated, what happens to the paratroop? The rules do not say. This lack of detail affects other aspects of the game, as well. It's unclear, for example, if Germany is actually at war with Poland at the game's beginning, or if Poland is neutral. Likewise, if the Germans conquer Britain, what happens to her colonies? A section is devoted to the fate of France after its conquest, but a similar look at Britain would have been nice. (To say nothing of no mention what happens if Italy or Russia are conquered.) There's other rule problems, too -- in the same paragraph, the rules say that the Allies may not invade any neutrals, then go on to say that each neutral the Allies invade pushes US entry back a turn. Huh? But TBO's biggest failing is that it just isn't that exciting. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill treatment of WW2 -- after a few rounds, you get the feeling you've seen this all before. Unlike some other games covering this period (Krieg! comes to mind), TBO really doesn't feel like it has anything new to bring to the table of WW2 grand strategy. Which is a shame, because The Big One really does try hard. It's just that vague rules and stale mechanics bring down what could have been a nice "all in one evening" simulation of the war in Europe.