larry marak - 09:10am Dec 5, 1999 PST (#30 of 37) Warring States was by Stephen Newberg, founder and still director of Sim Canada, in 1979. Warring States: the Unification of China 231-221 B.C. is played on a standard hex map portraying kingdoms, thee Ch'in, Ch'u, Yen, Chi, Chao, Wei, and Han. In a remarkable few pages it incorporates productivity based on agriculture, assassination of leaders, and the political differences between core and frontier kingdoms. The two player version is the Chin versus the other 6 kingdoms. There are also rules for multiplayer gamers. The counters are rather hard to distinguish. The printer's palate consisted of grey, yellow-grey, yellow and white. I penned the nationality of all the counters on the reverse sides before punching the counters out from the tree. One map, a 12 page rules booklet, 200 counters. Warring States is graphically unimpressive, even for a SimCan game, but this multiplayer had one rather noteworthy charactersistic. This was a period of semi-legendary wandering advisors, who sold their services to local princes. The advisors are present on the map as counters, and they move in diagonal lines and ricochet off province boundries, like the Space War video game of the very early 1970's. This mechanic works fine in the game, but sure looks childish in play. Hope this helps. In twenty years no one has come up with a better game on the subject.