Drang Nach Osten! ("Drive to the East!") is a monster board wargame published in 1973 by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) that simulates Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The game was the first of what was envisioned as a series of games with identical wargame rules and map scale that would simulate the entire Second World War in Europe.
Drang Nach Osten!, characterized as a "monster game" because it has more than 1000 counters, [1] is a two-player (or two-team) game that covers Operation Barbarossa along World War II's Eastern Front between 22 June 1941 and 31 March 1942.
The game, packaged in a ziplock bag, contains: [2]
Each turn represents 2 weeks of game time – characterized as first half of the month and last half of the month. Movement is modified by both terrain and weather. Combat results are determined by the ratio of attackers to defenders. Supplies are dependent upon home cities that act as supply depots.
To win, the Axis player/team must capture every major Soviet city hex before the end of the 19th turn (second half of March 1942). The Soviet player/team wins by preventing this.
In 1973, GDW published Drang Nach Osten!, a game designed by Paul R. Banner and Frank Chadwick, as the first in the 'East Front Trilogy'. [3] : 53 Cover art was by Don Lowry. GDW also published an expansion kit, Unentschieden ("Stalemate"), in 1973, that extends the simulation to the end of the war in May 1945. This was the first game of Europa, a planned series of games with identical wargame rules and map scale that would simulate the entire Second World War in Europe.
In 1984 Banner, Chadwick, Marc Miller and John Astell revised and greatly expanded Drang Nach Osten! and GDW published this expansion as Fire in the East . [2]
GDW went out of business before the entire Europa line could be completed. Following the demise of GDW, Game Research/Design (GRD) acquired the license to Fire in the East, and announced a new edition titled Total War, which to date, has not been published.
In a 1976 poll of 202 wargames conducted by Simulations Publications Inc., wargame players rated Drang nach Osten! as Number 1. [4] [5] : 148
In his 1977 book The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming , Nick Palmer wrote, "There is a school of thought which holds that the Europa series is for admiring and revelling in the rules rather than playing, but it is playable [...] given enough time or (more realistically) enough players." [5]
In the 1980 book The Complete Book of Wargames , game designer Jon Freeman questioned the balance of the game, stating "The Germans roll. [...] Only a top group of Russian players will be able to overcome this." While Freeman admitted that Drang nach Osten! was a legend, he said it was not because of its playability, but "because it proved big games — nay, monster games — had a place in the hobby." With its extreme size and complexity, Freeman found playing the game was like "sucking wind uphill." He also found that due to the length of time needed to play — he estimated two years — "Playability is limited to large groups with plenty of time on their hands." Freeman refused to give an Overall Evaluation grade for the game, saying "Its significance far exceeds its intrinsic merit {...] Not for public consumption." [6]
In The Guide to Simulations/Games for Education and Training, Martin Campion summarized the complexity of this game, saying it "shows a lot about the war but at a terrific cost in time and trouble." [7]
Europa is a series of board wargames planned to cover combat over the entire European Theater of World War II at a scale that represents units from divisions down to battalions and game turns that represent two weeks of time. The series was launched in 1973, and is still in production as of 2013, with over a dozen titles published and several more still in production or planning. Most of the titles qualify as "monster games", a subgenre of wargames featuring extensive orders of battle, a complex ruleset and usually a large game-map area with a detailed representation of the terrain they cover.
Fire in the East is a monster board wargame published in 1984 by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) that simulates Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
The Arab-Israeli Wars, subtitled "Tank Battles in the Mideast 1956–73", is a board wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1977 that simulates various battles during the Suez Crisis, Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War.
War in Europe is a grand strategic "monster" board wargame published by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) in 1976 that attempts to simulate the entirety of the European theatre of World War II from 1939 to 1945. One of the largest wargames ever produced, War in Europe features 4000 counters, four rulebooks, and nine maps that when placed together cover an area of 38.5 ft2. The game is nominally a three-player game, but each side can be represented by teams of players. SPI estimated the full game would take at least 180 hours.
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A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The modern, commercial wargaming hobby developed in 1954 following the publication and commercial success of Tactics. The board wargaming hobby continues to enjoy a sizeable following, with a number of game publishers and gaming conventions dedicated to the hobby both in the English-speaking world and further afield.
Paul Richard "Rich" Banner is an American game designer and graphic artist.
A monster game is a game that is either very large, very complex, or both. One criterion sometimes adopted is the number of pieces; a game which puts greater than 1000 counters into play at once may be considered to be a monster game. This classification can technically be applied to any board game, but most commonly refers to the kind of non-abstract wargames in which a large amount of time is needed to play each turn as a result of a relatively high commitment to period accurate military realism. There is controversy over which would have been the first monster game in the field of wargames with many stating that Drang Nach Osten! was pretty universally accepted as the first monster wargame. Drang Nach Osten and its companion, Unentschieden led to the Europa Series games, a giant WWII game.
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