Invasion America (board wargame)

Invasion: America is a wargame designed by Jim Dunnigan and published by SPI in 1976.

Gameplay

It depicts a hypothetical invasion of North America by a coalition of three invaders. The game is played on a 35 by 42 inches (89 by 107 cm) map, with 400 cardboard pieces representing the armed forces in the war. As is typical of wargames of this genre, each piece has numerical combat and movement ratings printed on it. The board is divided up into small hexagons (each of which represents approximately 50,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi)). On each turn a player can move all of his pieces through a number of hexagon spaces equal to its movement rating. Then pieces in adjacent spaces will engage in combat by comparing their combat ratings and rolling dice. The combat ratings and the dice roll are cross-referenced to determine the outcome of the combat. Many spaces on the map also have distinctive terrain features, like forests or mountains, which affects the ratings of units in those spaces.

Invasion: America is intended as a four player game; one player is the defender and controls the forces of the United States and Canada (Mexico and Central America are depicted as American-occupied territory). The other three players are the invaders; the European Socialist Coalition, the South American Union, and the Pan Asiatic League. Each turn of the game represented one month and the game lasted for 60 turns for a total of 5 years. The North American player wins if he still controls a portion of the continent by game's end. If the North American player loses, whichever of the invading players has the most territory is the winner. The result is that the invaders cooperate to an extent in attacking the North American player but are ultimately competing against each other.

Publication history

Invasion: America was a popular game for SPI and led to a 1978 sequel, Objective Moscow, which explores a scenario where the Soviet Union is invaded either by NATO or by a coalition consisting of the United States, a unified Europe, China, and Iran.

Reception

Tony Van Lien reviewed Invasion: America in The Space Gamer No. 16.[1] Van Lien commented that "For those of us who are into holocaust, Invasion: America, by Simulations Publications Inc. is the game we've been waiting for."[1]

Eric Goldberg reviewed Invasion: America in Ares Magazine #1, rating it a 6 out of 9.[2] Goldberg commented that "There are serious problems in the scenario victory conditions and some of the miscellaneous rules; the game is not one this writer would play more than once. There was enough interest in the system, however, to do a game in which the Soviet Union got the same treatment (Objective: Moscow)."[2]

See also

  • Fortress America - a plastic figure and area movement wargame with a similar scenario.

References

  1. 1 2 Van Lien, Tony (March–April 1978). "Invasion: America - a review". The Space Gamer. Metagaming (16): 29.
  2. 1 2 Goldberg, Eric (March 1980). "A Galaxy of Games". Ares Magazine. Simulations Publications, Inc. (1): 29.

Invasion America at BoardGameGeek

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