Europa (wargame)

Europa is a series of board wargames planned to cover combat over the entire European Theater of World War II at a scale that represents units from divisions down to battalions and game turns that represent two weeks of time. The series was launched in 1973, and is still in production as of 2013, with over a dozen titles published and several more still in production or planning. Most of the titles qualify as "monster games", a subgenre of wargames featuring extensive orders of battle, a complex ruleset, and usually a large game-map area with a detailed representation of the terrain they cover.

The Europa series has been produced by four different publishers, as follows:

GRD began publishing play aids for Europa under a license from GDW, while GDW was still publishing the games. In 1989, they acquired use of the Europa trademark and began publishing the games, both new titles and "Deluxe Edition" revisions of previously published titles.

When GRD's Winston Hamilton died in March 2001, Mill Creek Ventures (principal owner Carl Kleihege) bought the rights and took over production of Europa. They continued using the terms "Game Research/Design", "GRD", and "GRD Games" alongside "Mill Creek Ventures" in their publications. They never published an actual Europa game, but they continued with the development of future releases and released several issues of The Europa Magazine.

In mid-2004, HMS bought the assets that formerly belonged to GRD, and thus took over production of the Europa series. HMS published the module Wavell's War in November 2005, and has released two issues of The Europa Magazine.

Under the terms of the agreement whereby GRD had obtained use of the Europa trademark, the intellectual property reverted to Rich Banner when Winston Hamilton died, so all Europa production by Mill Creek Ventures and HMS has been done under a license from Banner.

The changes in publishers have interfered with continuity in terms of publication schedules—only one new title has appeared since 1998—but there has been a great deal of continuity in terms of the people actually doing the development. For example, John Astell took over from Frank Chadwick as game designer for the series back when GDW was still publishing the series, and designed or co-designed several of the titles released by GRD. He appears not to be currently involved with HMS. Current HMS owners Gar Olmsted and Arthur Goodwin (and formerly Cory Manka, who left in the midst of a legal dispute) are also familiar names to long-time followers of the series, appearing in the credits of a number of the games and/or as authors in the official magazine of the series and fanzine publications.

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