[DavidStallard]

Back in the '80s I got a copy of Fortress America for Christmas and it blew my mind. Up to that point, my concept of a wargame was Risk, and Fortress America was so much cooler than Risk. Plus, at that time Red Dawn was still a fairly recent movie and it still rocked my world, so in some ways Fortress America was an extension of that.

I quickly bought Axis & Allies and Shogun, and I thought I had completed the GameMaster series of games at that point. This was back in the days when these types of games, and TSR RPGs too, were easily found at Toys-R-Us.

Then a friend showed me his Conquest of the Empire set. I couldn't believe there was another cool GameMaster game that I hadn't played! It may have already been out of print by that point...I'm not sure, but I never did see it on a store shelf. I never got to play CotE, but boy did I want to...even though my friend said it wasn't quite as good as the others because it had some annoying bits like having to build roads before you can move (I see from your review that this isn't actually true...roads just let you move MUCH faster).

Anyway, this game has been somewhat of a holy grail with me for about 20 years now. I'm mightily tempted to pick it up despite your comments saying that the gameplay is out of date.

I still have Fortress America, Axis & Allies, and Shogun (later re-released as Samurai Swords), and would never get rid of them even though I haven't played in many years. There are just too many good memories attached to them all, like the New Year's Eve battle of Fortress America where the dads played America and the kids played the invading forces.

The only Eagle game I own is Civilization: The Boardgame, but sadly I've never played it. My wife is a Civilization fanatic (the PC game) so I thought we'd be all over it, but thus far nobody has taken the time to read all the rules.

EDIT: I'm aware that there is one more OOP GameMaster game out there...I can't remember the name but it's a pirate game and the board was actually two plastic ships so you could manuever, board and attack, etc. Sounds cool, but I don't feel such a need to get this one 'cause it's not quite the same style as the others.