Strategic Command WWII: World at War

Publisher: Matrix Games / Slitherine · Studio: Fury Software · Creator: Hubert Cater

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Anecdote

The fourth main instalment of the Strategic Command series initiated in 2002 by Canadian designer Hubert Cater, World at War was published by Slitherine in July 2018 and offers the most comprehensive coverage of the Second World War in a grand-strategy turn-based wargame. The global map, divided into fifty-kilometre hexagons, encompasses the entirety of the worldwide theatre from September 1939 to August 1945: Europe, Africa, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic. The player can lead the Axis or the Allies and take command of Berlin, Tokyo, Rome, London, Washington, or Moscow interchangeably, each with its own economic, industrial, and diplomatic characteristics. The research system models technological advances — strategic bombers, sonar, radar, jets, atomic weapons — and allows each nation to be developed along historical tech trees. The diplomatic management system encourages courting neutral nations such as Turkey, Spain, or Sweden, which can switch sides depending on the pressures brought to bear. A full game covers nearly three hundred weekly turns and requires between sixty and one hundred and twenty hours to complete. Hubert Cater spent more than three years balancing orders of battle and modelling each power's economic conditions based on the work of historians Mark Harrison and Adam Tooze. Shorter scenarios offer Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, the Pacific War, or the Italian campaign in more accessible formats. The expansions World War 1 and Spanish Civil War round out the chronology. Strategic Command World at War has established itself as the benchmark grand-strategy wargame for French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking players alike, and continues to be enriched by its community.