A World at War, a wargaming masterpiece, brings together in one game all of the decisive elements of the Second World War. With roots tracing back to Avalon Hill's classic Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, and to its eventual successors--Advanced Third Reich and Empire of the Rising Sun--A World at War takes this popular gaming system even further, clearing up ambiguities and adding more detail to what was already a fine family of wargames.

Developed through a decade of design and playtesting,A World at War has it all: marines and paratroopers blasting away at armor and infantry; submarines and carriers skulking cruisers and pouncing battlewagons; army planes and carrier planes crisscrossing the skies with bombers and interceptors and ultra-fast jets. Yet unlike in other games, in A World at War you get to decide which units to build and where to deploy them. Will this corps go to Europe or the Pacific? Will those planes prowl the eastern front or the Med? You must be careful though, for armaments don't constitute the only battlefield: the struggle extends into foreign parliaments, through diplomacy; into your own skunk works, through research; even behind enemy lines, through partisans. So seize every advantage you can get--not just in drop tanks and detonators, but also in oil fields and fur-lined boots. Most of all stay flexible, for when the worst happens and you find yourself outwitted and outgunned, you may need to surge-research the atomic bomb or to take the exigency--less risky and less glitzy--of barricading your beaches and erecting flak near your factories. (Self-recrimination can come later, like how you cracked too few encryptions, or gobbled too many island groups, or skimped too much on Murmansk.) For in A World a War, winning never comes easily. To contend with so wide-ranging of a conflict, your strategies must always be interwoven and your choices anguished. But take heart, if you soldier on long enough and unleash the latest weapons in the cleverest assaults, you just might knock those rivals to their knees!

A World at War, a game that has it all. Warfare not only on the land, under the sea, and in the air--but also on trucks and in treasuries, on the lab bench and in the diplomatic pouch. A battlefield where only the elite can thrive. Master every sphere, weather every setback, and you'll earn that rare chance to conquer armies and rule nations . . . even if they're only cardboard.