All Quiet on the Western Front (2009)

Translated as All Quiet on the Western Front, this game covers the entirety of World War 1 in the West in 10 turns / about three hours. Powerful German forces must drive deep into France, while Britain comes to the aid of her beleaguered ally. The game is on the high strategic scale with corps and army units fighting a cross a map running from Aachen to Paris. Each turn is six months, with ten turns covering the entire war. The game system is a distant derivation of the "area-impulse" mechanic created in Storm Over Arnhem. Units are activated by group in a single area, and may generally move or attack but not both before becoming "spent". Spent units are more vulnerable to attack. Storm Over Europe uses a card-driven system for activation, with each side getting varying amounts of cards each turn. The cards generally allow special moves or combinations that break the standard rules of the game, or provide events that shape the strategic outlook. Players choose their hand each turn from a pool of sixteen Operations cards. Special Strategic cards are added to the pool once a turn from the third turn on; these allow special tactics like poison gas, or desperate offensives to turn the tide. The rules are only seven pages, and the game is simple and fast enough to play in a short evening. Components: 1 full map 198 counters 48 cards