GDW Cold War Madness...

When it came to gaming during my spotty-faced youth (as opposed to my spotty-faced adulthood) I was in the RPG crowd. In fact, much to my sadness now, I didn't really know any miniature wargamers. So, during the 1980's I moved from AD&D to Traveller to Twilight:2000. The I hit TW:2000 I was in my element. I absolutely loved it, and I was old enough to pretty much buy every little thing for it as it came along.

This was the start of my slid into Games Designer Workshop (GDW) madness, where I worshipped at the altar of Frank Chadwick, and tried to buy every Cold War wargame that he wrote, co-wrote, or happened to walk past the desk one day when someone else was writing a game.

So - today's post is all about Cold War Hot related GDW boxed sets.

Now I have to start with Twilight:2000



TW2000 was "my" game. If I had a choice witht he old gaming group - we played TW2000. I never really played "Last Battle" - but I'm pretty sure I owned every TW2000 book, magazine etc. I even wrote a couple of TW2000 tournament games for Macqauriecon, an annual RPG convention at my university. I'm actually still quite proud of both those games...

Anyway - moving right along. My next purchase (its a long time ago so I might have got the order slightly out of wack) was the Assault Series.



Much to my regret I never bought the Bundeswehr boxed set. Now (for whatever reason) I just about be prepared to do anything for it and the Reinforcement sets. This game is actually an excellent source for my current fixation with Cold War Hot wargaming and the info in the Briefings is now worth the price of the game alone.

Next up was the classic "The Third World War" series:



At least this time I made sure I got the complete set. Sadly I have never played these games - I never had a group of mates interested enough. But one of my many secret dreams is to have a game of this, with all the maps joined together. It's a pretty cool sight to see.

Next up was my first foray into air wargames. The Air Superiority Series.



With this set I also managed to get the "Desert Falcons" supplement, which amusingly enough ends in 1984 with some Tomcats shooting down some Libyan jets. How ex-GDW employess probably wish this could have included the Gulf wars...

Next up was the classic version (IMHO) of Harpoon:



When I first read that the naval scenarios in "Red Storm Rising" were gamed out using Larry Bond's Harpoon I was hooked. When GDW bought it out I knew I had to get it. A great game, which happily I was able to get two supplements "Battles of the Third World War" and "South Atlantic War". Again, just for the info these games and books provide - they are well worth it.

Finally, in my humble collection I give you these two:



Many an hour has been sent reading and playing these two games - particularly "Team Yankee". Once again, both these games have excellent reference material and Team Yankee is a good reference for Cold War Hot gaming.

So that's my little wander down memory lane - thanks for bearing with me and the bad photos of some of my GDW Cold War Hot boxed treasures.

Have fun,

Richard