Due to the Lurgy tricking me and coming back for a second bite! The Ardennes game that I set up to play as an anniversary game on the 16th has just sat there winking at me. But today, the first three turns got played, I look forward to getting that done over the next day or so.

Making the day even better - Unconditional Surrender! has just arrived by courier and at £35 in the UK (Second Chance Games) it offers a lot for it's money. I have never owned or played its big brother, but this seems a very do-able bunch of campaigns covering, Poland, France, Norway, Italy and French North Africa.

The Poland game is just half a turn long and seems a good intro to the system - I watched it being played on YouTube, which made me buy it.

Time scale Monthly Turns, map scale, 30 - 40 miles per hex, unit scale, Army, fleet or wing.

I was intrigued to see that the side of the box has a panel that gives the name and address of the EU importer (UGG) and the UK importer (SCG), this is actually printed on the box, it is not a sticker, so it looks like some bespoke box lids are now being done, probably based on pre-orders. I am wondering whether this was part of a contingency plan by a U.S. game publisher to avoid recent tarrifs by having some stocked shipped direct from China direct to two European distributers.

The blurb on the back of the box says it plays in ½ hour to 4 hours, has complexity rating of 5 and solitaire rating of 7, so hopefully there will be stuff here that will fit into our shortish face to face sessions.

I always had the impression that the system would be rated higher than 5 for complexity, but I think this box is an easier route into the system and it includes a superb 32 page Guidebook (in additiion to the play book) which is VERY well illustrated and gives a playthrough of the France '40 scenario (rather similar to what Swords and Bayonets does for the GBoACW). As I understand it the fleet rules for this game have been heavily abstracted with the consequence of reducing complexity.

Counter density for these small campaigns is low and the map boards are all U.S. letter sized, except for the North Africa map, which is 2 times a letter size, done longways.

Rules look to cover land fighting, integrated with air, naval and invasion. Also production is thrown into the mix.

The play aid is a folded card document. It looks dense, but also looks all encompassing and superb.

There is a single counter sheet with ½ inch counters.

Each map obviously has to include all the geographic elements that are physically exist, but the non-relevent areas are shaded out to indicated that they are prohibited, so for example in the Italian campaign, in capturing italy, the map also captures the nations on the other side of the Aidriatic, but Greece, Albania, Yogoslavia and Hungary are shaded out, as is a one hex capture of North Africa .... though Tunis and 2 adjacent hexes are in.

I read on BGG that at a future point an Eastern Campaigns module will be made, which doubled my enthusiasm to jump on this .... 1 set of rules, lots of campaigns.

I am quoting from the back panel blurb here ..... 'USWC is dereived from Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Euriope (USE). They each have the same unit and map scale and use the same rules for air, ground and combat mechanics. However more strategic elements (e.g diplomacy, strategic warfare etc) have been abstracted or removed in USWC to simplify the rules and reduce playing time'.

I did read somewhere that if you have USE, you don't need to buy USWC. There are 9 scenarios here and a couple are 'what if' such as France 1941.

Anyway, much to like and I will set some proper time aside to break into this. I think this is going to fly off the shelves and is worth getting now rather than hoping it is still in print by the time that the Eastern Campaigns gets done.