Unentschieden
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Unentschieden (German for "Stalemate") is a board wargame published by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) in 1973 that simulates combat on the Eastern Front during World War II. The game is a expansion of GDW's popular "monster" wargame Drang Nach Osten!, and was the second game in the Europa series that was planned to eventually cover all operations in the European Theatre.
Components
Unentschieden, characterized as a "monster game" because it has more than 1000 counters,[1] is a two-player (or two-team) game that covers operations on the Eastern Front from April 1942 to December 1944.
A copy of Drang Nach Osten! is required to play this game,[2] which uses the 1800 counters and four maps from Drang Nach Osten!, and adds another 2100 counters and four more maps. The combined maps of both games cover the entire Eastern Front at a scale of 25 km per hex.
Publication history
Drang Nach Osten!, designed by Rich Banner and Frank Chadwick and published by GDW in 1973 as its first commercial release, covered Germany's surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa from September 1941 to March 1942. It was the first in an ambitious project to create a series of twenty wargames called Europa that would use the same rules system and the same map scale.[3] When finished, the maps of the series, when placed edge to edge, would cover the entire European theatre, and the games would cover every European operation. Unentschieden, also known as Europa II, was GDW's second release, published in 1973 with cover art by Don Lowry. Unlike subsequent games in the Europa series, it was not a standalone game but was designed as an expansion to Drang Nach Osten!
In 1984, GDW revised and republished Drang Nach Osten! as Fire in the East, and followed this in 1987 with a revision of Unentschieden titled Scorched Earth.
In 1989, following the demise of GDW, the new licensee for the Europa series, Game Research/Design (GRD), added another expansion to Fire in the East/Scorched Earth titled The Urals.
Awards
At the 1988 Origins Awards, Scorched Earth won the award for Best Boardgame of 1987 Covering the Period 1900-1946.[4]