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PUBLISHERS AND RELATED PUBLICATIONS Games The ''Europa'' series has been produced by four different publishers, as follows:
GRD began publishing play aids for ''Europa'' under a license from GDW while GDW was still publishing the games. In 1989 they acquired use of the ''Europa'' trademark and began publishing the games, both new titles and "Deluxe Edition" revisions of previously published titles. When GRD's Winston Hamilton died in 2000, Mill Creek Ventures bought his estate and took over production of ''Europa''. They continued using the terms "Game Research/Design", "GRD", and "GRD Games" alongside "Mill Creek Ventures" in their publications. They never published an actual ''Europa'' game, but they continued with the development for future releases and released several issues of ''The Europa Magazine''. In mid-2004 HMS bought the assests that formerly belonged to GRD, and thus took over production of the ''Europa'' series. HMS published ''Wavell's War'' in November 2005 and has released two issues of ''The Europa Magazine''. Under the terms of the agreement whereby GRD had obtained use of the ''Europa'' trademark the intellectual property reverted to Rich Banner when Winston Hamilton died, so all ''Europa'' production by Mill Creek Ventures and Historical Military services has been done under a license from Banner. The changes in publishers has interfered with continuity in terms of publication schedules — only one new title has appeared since 1998 — but there has been a great deal of continuity in terms of the people actually doing the development. For example, John Astell took over from Frank Chadwick as game designer for the series back when GDW was still publishing the series, designed or co-designed several of the titles released by GRD, and appears to still be involved in the titles now under development by HMS. Current HMS owners Gar Olmsted, Cory Manka, and Arthur Goodwin are also familiar names to long-time followers of the series, previously appearing in the credits of various games and/or as authors in the official magazine of the series and Fanzine publications. Cory Manka has announced that he is negotiating with the other owners to withdraw from an ownership position. GRD, Mill Creek, and HMS have also worked on newer game series covering the War In The Pacific (the ''Glory'' series) and World War I (the ''Great War'' series), which are somewhat similar to the ''Europa'' series, though not part of it. Magazines and accessories During 1976-1977 GDW published four issues of a flier called ''The Europa Newsletter''. The fifth issue became a full-fledged magazine called ''The Grenadier'', and expanded its coverage to GDW's other, non-''Europa'' offerings as well. In 1988 GRD revived ''The Europa Newsletter''. Issue #5 saw the title changed to ''The Europa News'' (TEN), a somewhat more substantial magazine with a stiff glossy cover. Starting with issue No. 11 the name was changed to simply ''Europa'', and it has continued under that name since then. (As of December 2005, the most recent issue is #87, published in 2004. The repeated changes in publishers since 2000 have made the appearance of new issues somewhat erratic, but the magazine is still in existence.) The ''Europa'' magazine sometimes refers to itself as ''The Europa Magazine'' (TEM), but it is just ''Europa'' on the cover and title page. Various subtitles have been in use over time as well, such as "The ''Europa'' Systems Magazine from GRD" (TESM) on the cover of #86 (with "HMS" substituted for "GRD" on the title page). The magazine subscription is also a membership in The ''Europa'' Association, whose members also receive discounts on game orders and free copies of some of the "refit kit" materials. As with ''The Grenadier'' before it, ''The Europa Magazine'' has come to cover the publisher's other, non-''Europa'' offerings, but unlike ''The Grenadier'' it has not strayed far afield, and still focuses primarily on ''Europa''. Over the life of the series a great number of official and unofficial play aids, rules variants, Fanzine s, and other ''Europa''-oriented materials have been published. The most important of these was a fanzine called ''ETO: The New EuropaTM Newsletter'', published by Bill Stone and running to 56 issues during 1985-1990. Starting with issue #45 in 1989 the subtitle was changed to ''The Independent EuropaTM Newsletter'' in response to GRD's acquisition of the trademark and publication rights for the system. This fanzine was an important focus for fans of the ''Europa'' system during the years when GDW was sidelining the system and it had not yet been turned over to GRD. As of April 2005 HMS has an official ''Europa'' website at hmsgrd.com . The site has information about the availability of previously published games, the status of games now in production, plans for future games in the series, information about The ''Europa'' Association, downloadable errata sheets, and other material of interest to ''Europa'' players. THE EAST FRONT TRILOGY The ''Europa'' series had its beginnings as a project by Paul Ricard ("Rich") Banner, Frank Chadwick, and Marc Miller to produce a series of three wargames to cover the entire Eastern Front of the Second World War at the scale of operations — that is, with more detail than a strategic simulation would provide but less than a tactical simulation would provide. The trilogy was to include:
The titles appealed to the historical Drang Nach Osten concept and the mythological Götterdämmerung concept as symbols for an epic struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Banner, Chadwick, and Miller founded Game Designers Workshop (GDW) to publish the trilogy. The game rules were a merger of Chadwick's earlier system for ground combat with Miller's earlier rules for Science-fictional space combat adapted to represent WWII era air combat (both had published earlier titles reflecting those interests). Banner served as art director for the project. GDW released ''Drang nach Osten'' and ''Unentschieden'' in 1973. Due to an expanding range of interests that the developers wanted to pursue with their successful new company, ''Die Götterdämmerung'' was postponed indefinitely and will now probably never be published as originally conceived, due to a greatly revised plan for the series. The scope of the expanded series is covered more thoroughly below. EXPANSION FROM TRILOGY TO ''EUROPA'' The originally conceived trilogy began its expansion to cover the entire European theater when the developers started working on a game to cover Germany's unplanned 1941 Balkans Campaign to overthrow the governments of Yugoslavia and Greece, which delayed the onset of Operation Barbarossa by several weeks and partially contributed to its failure. The game was published in 1979 as ''Marita-Merkur'', after German operations Marita and Merkur carried out during that campaign. However, it was published as a stand-alone game; by this time the ''Europa'' concept of covering the entire European Theater had evolved, and the plan called for publishing a series stand-alone games that provided ''Europa'' material, but concentrated on a single campaign and left most of the link-up issues to be addressed by future publications. The series also grew to cover topics such as the Spanish Civil War , which, though not strictly part of World War II, helped with the map coverage and provided a basis for what-if scenarios had World War II gone differently. The plans for the series have evolved somewhat over the three decades of its existence, but can be appoximated as follows. The various games traditionally been identified as "''Europa'' Game X", where X is a Roman numeral. Since some of the games have been published under different names for their various editions, the list given here describes the subject matter for each game and breaks out the individual titles as bullets. Many titles have unofficial but commonly used acronyms, given in parentheses after the title. Acronyms for the games' publishers are given as well. Several of the games listed here have had separately published "refit kits" for corrections and minor upgrades, and in some cases those have been included in later printings of the games. Some games have also been reprinted with new box art. Such details are not shown here. ''Europa'' I - The German Invasion Of The USSR and the Soviet riposte, 1941-1942.
''Europa'' II - The Eastern Front , 1942-1944
''Europa'' III - The Balkans Campaign , 1941.
''Europa'' IV - The Norwegian Campaign , 1940.
''Europa'' V - The Battle Of Britain and planned German invasion, 1940.
''Europa'' VI - The Western Desert Campaign in North Africa, 1940-1942.
''Europa'' VII - The German Invasion Of Poland , 1939.
''Europa'' VIII - The Western Campaign in Holland, Belgium, and France, 1940.
''Europa'' IX - Operations in the Near East .
''Europa'' X - Potential involvement of Spain and Portugal in World War II, including the planned German assault on Gibraltar .
''Europa'' XI - The Allied invasion of French North Africa , 1942-1943.
''Europa'' XII - The Allied invasion of France, 1944.
''Europa'' XIII - Expansion module giving a bigger picture of the Soviet war effort, plus updates and play aids for FitE/SE, and a scenario for the 1943 campaign.
''Europa'' XIV - The Winter War between Finland and the USSR, 1939-1940.
Material included in ''Balkan Front'' and ''First to Fight'', published in 1990 and 1991 respectively, agreed with the above (excepting titles not yet released), and proposed the following extensions to wrap of the series, though none of them have been published: ''Europa'' XV - The naval campaigns in the Mediterranean Sea and around the shores of Europe, 1939-1945.
''Europa'' XVI - Rules for integrating the individual games into a single game covering the entire war in the European Theater, 1939-1945.
''Europa'' XVII - Czechoslovakia fights rather than surrendering to Appeasement in 1938.
However, material included with ''War in the Desert'', published in 1995, introduced substantial changes to the plan. It included all the material previously distributed over ''Europa'' VI/IX/XI in a single publication, now officially ''Europa'' VI but billed as "''Europa'' VI/IX/XI" on the game box. It also offered the following changes to the earlier numbering scheme, though none of the proposed new material has been published: ''Europa'' V (a combination of the earlier V & VIII)
''Europa'' VIII - The partisan/anti-partisan campaign in southeastern Europe, 1941-1945.
''Europa'' IX (previously XVII)
''Europa'' XI (previously XV)
''Europa'' XV (previously XVI)
Material included with ''Storm Over Scandinavia'', published in 1998, retained the same scheme, but proposed some new titles:
Much of this planning apparently became moot when GR/D's assets were picked up by Mill Creek Ventures in 2001. Work on an ''Europa''-style game covering the Campaign In East Africa had already been underway by a group calling itself "The East Africa Map Company", and it now became an official ''Europa'' project to be published as ''Wavell's War'', covering all of World War II not only in East Africa, but in North Africa and the Mediterranean as well. It was offered for preorder in 2002, and was published in November 2005. No ''Europa'' series number has been announced for it. Mill Creek Ventures also began development of ''Total War'', the third edition of ''Europa'' I, and has offered it for preorder since 2003. Though development of the series continues, no formal plan for its completion has been announced since the one given in ''Storm Over Scandinavia'' in 1998. CURRENT STATUS The current status of the series can be seen at the publisher's ''Europa'' site, hmsgrd.com . As Of November 2005 the plan for ''Europa'' conforms approximately to the plan offered in 1998 (above), except that no Roman numerals are given for the games, and:
The changes to the 1998 plan indicate an assessment by the new publishers that the ''Europa'' system cannot be completed simply by publishing the three discarded titles. Instead they propose ''Wavell's War'' and ''Ike's War'' as intermediate steps toward a completed system. There is also a freely downloadable "Boot Camp Rules" set, with simplified rules to help people get started with the complex ''Europa'' system. NOTES In 1988 , ''Scorched Earth'' won the Origins Award for ''Best Boardgame Covering the Period 1900-1946 of 1987''. REFERENCES
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