Box Cover 111K	PUBLISHED 1993 DESIGNER David James Ritchie DEVELOPER Kevin Boylan and Gene Billingsley ART DIRECTOR Rodger B. MacGowan MAP ART Mark Simonitch PACKAGE DESIGN Rodger B. MacGowan ERRATA ONLINE RESOURCES

Six weeks later, it was all over. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been driven from the continent and the French, Belgians, and Dutch had all capitulated. Hitler had achieved a victory in the west, and the world would never be the same.

But, what if? It didn't have to happen that way ... Bad generalship and correctable flaws in their armies hastened the Allied defeat. What if the High Command had bothered to stay in radio contact with its armies on the frontier? And had then reacted promptly to the developing situation? What if the Maginot Line had been extended to cover the Meuse crossings at Sedan where Guderian's Panzers broke into the Allied rear? What if the BEF had included a strong British mobile corps that could have fought Rommel's Panzers on even terms at Arras? What if the French had prepared to meet the Blitzkrieg by building eight tank divisions instead of three? Or by mechanizing their cavalry the way the Germans did after the Polish campaign? Or even by developing their own blitzkrieg doctrine? The Allies could have taken any or all of these actions, and any of them would have altered the campaign's course. But which ones would have changed the outcome?

Victory in the West is a realistic two-player game that accurately recreates the 1940 campaign in all its aspects except one: the outcome is totally up to you. The game's centerpiece is an options system that lets the Allied player trade Victory Points for changes to his armies and policies that might (or might not) have changed history. Can you, as the Allied commander, repel the Germans with the forces on hand in 1940? How about if you train them better? Or give them a better command structure? Or provide them with more and better anti-aircraft an anti-tank guns? What do you think is the key to victory in the west? Can you, as the German commander, still beat the Allies if the French Army is motorized like the BEF? And how does your strategy change if the French don't build their Maginot Line, but do build a bigger and better air force? Do you still try to sneak through the Ardennes forest with your Panzers? Or do you ignore Allied bombers and wheel across the open plains of northern Belgium in a repeat of the 1914 Schlieffen Plan? Or do you do the unexpected and land a left hook through the Alsace? Your commanders await your orders. The future of Europe is in your hands.

Game Components

COUNTERS	720 full-color two-sided counters.
MAPS	One 22x34" and one 22x17" full-color mapsheet
OTHER	One 10-sided die 32-page Rule Book 8-page Example of Play 4-page Design Notes Player Aid Cards: Axis Command Card, Allied Command Card, Operations Card, Strategy Card, Summary Card

Game Features

Richly textured recreation of 1940-style Blitzkrieg; includes rules for exploitation, reaction, panic, overruns, Blitzkrieg attacks, refugees and stragglers, bridgeheads and coups de mains ... plus a flexible air game. Extensive historical information, including highly accurate orders of battle, historical commentary, and the most detailed wargame map of France and the lowlands yet published. Scenarios for the fall of Holland, Manstein's "Sickle Cut" through the Ardennes, the full historical campaign and an alternate campaign with free deployment and historical options. Eighteen historical options explore how the Allies could have beaten the German Blitzkrieg and won their own victory in the west.