In my late teens I came across my first dedicated board game shop. It was the late 90s so it was still simply a shop. Unfortunately it didn't survive for many more years, but I still remember it fondly. It was my introduction to board games outside of the classic kid games, into games that took themselves a bit more seriously.
High on the display shelf was Axis & Allies Europe. I decided to give it a go. It was a fascinating game. The basic premise was to refight WW2 in the early 40s. One player took Germany and up to 3 other players were Britain, US, and USSR. The starting positions weren't completely accurate to WW2 but were adjusted slightly to make the game slightly more balanced. Germany's starting position was after its conquest of Europe, but just before it invaded Russia. Britain had been pushed back to the home islands, and the US had yet to bring its full economic might to bear, so at the start it was mostly a sit player.
What made this game different to other games such as Risk is the economic side. Certain territories gave industrial production units, which is the game's version of money. The more territories you held, the more IPU’s (Industrial Production Units) you had. Units such as tanks, planes or ships will have a cost. The better the unit, the higher the loss, so a player had to defend its industry centers as much as trying to defeat the enemy. For example, a good amount of Britain's IPUs came from the north Atlantic convey spaces, which the German player attacks with its submarine, and can severely limit what it can do. The US player on the other hand has one of the highest IPU’s in the game, but has to ship its units across to Europe to defeat the German player.
Usually the game ended up with the German player trying to hold off the British and US players from helping the Russian player while doing its best to occupy Moscow and winning the game. The allies goal is to conquer Berlin and win the war as a team. We spent many evenings recreating WW2 at the dining table, and even expanded into other Axis & Allies games.
The original MB game included Japan and the pacific war and there was a pacific version which had British and American forces face off with Japan. It's been many years since we moved on to other games, but it's still an enjoyable game which is still produced including one you can combine into a large world map. This was on my list of games to try, but at the time another completely different beast came into my world. The world of collectable card games.
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