Black Swan

"Black Swan" is a block wargame with over 200 combat units. A game turn is three months (a season) and there are several three-season Scenarios and two Campaigns (1939 and 1941).

When in 1939 Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland, few in Germany - and probably in the rest of Europe - believed that France and Great Britain would have declared war.

In the previous months Hitler had broken the Treaty of Versailles, by which the harsh conditions imposed had humiliated and starved the German population for years and led to a political reunification of the original German Reich: restored the Rhineland, annexed Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia, with the tacit consent of the other nations, Great Britain and France above all.

"Black Swan" is a block wargame with over 200 combat units. A game turn is three months (a season) and there are several three-season Scenarios and two Campaigns (1939 and 1941).

When in 1939 Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland, few in Germany - and probably in the rest of Europe - believed that France and Great Britain would have declared war.

In the previous months Hitler had broken the Treaty of Versailles, by which the harsh conditions imposed had humiliated and starved the German population for years and led to a political reunification of the original German Reich: restored the Rhineland, annexed Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia, with the tacit consent of the other nations, Great Britain and France above all.

So his assumption that he could have done the same with Poland had a logical basis. Instead this time events went another way. Most European countries had been so devastated by WWI that few wanted another war. Ignoring the German preparations for a renewed war of revenge based on the new Blitzkrieg tactics, France developed an old fashioned concept of static border fortifications - the Maginot Line - and Chamberlain's Great Britain focused entirely on diplomacy in an attempt to deal in a gentlemen fashion with the rapacious and very ungentlemanly Nazi regime.

Even after the fall of France, which surrendered in a few weeks after a blitz attack across the Ardennes - almost the same move adopted at the beginning of WWI - Great Britain still tried to reach an agreement with Hitler.

This did not happen and Great Britain remained alone, with no American help, and was on the edge of the defeat, having to choose between an unfair peace or the threat of an invasion. It was only one man, the freshly appointed prime minister Winston Churchill - going against any logic and even against his own political peers and the Crown - that wanted to resist, and the outcome of the Battle of Britain later proved him right. However many months would have to pass before the Soviet Union first and the US later would join the Allied cause to restore peace in Europe, at the cost of millions of deaths....

• As the Axis Powers you have to swiftly win the war, either by a Mediterranean strategy to break the British Empire, or an all out effort to demolish the Red Army. If a Decisive Victory is unobtainable, you can still go for a Strategic or at least an Economic Victory.
• As the Allies, you must survive the initial onslaught and prepare for a long war of attrition before dealing a deathly blow to the Reich's body.