Fortress America

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Fortress America is a strategic board game published in 1986 by Milton Bradley. Fortress America was the fourth of five games in the Gamemaster series.

Set in the 21st century, the board game begins with the premise that during the Cold War, the United States perfected so-called "Star Wars" technology and launched into orbit a satellite-based laser system capable of destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles (nuclear ICBM's) before impact. That is, the US made the world safe from nuclear threat.

This creates a great deal of political turmoil and while the rest of the world realigns in various ways (through alliance and conventional military conflict) the US - complacent in its technical superiority - becomes isolationist in nature.

The game opens with the world divided into three major world powers outside of the US:

1) The East Asian Commonwealth (yellow player)

2) The Central American Confederacy (blue player)

3) The Euro-Soviet Alliance (red player)

These three powers have launched a surprise assault on the now-conventionally weak United States: Asian invaders on the Pacific coast, Central American Invaders along the Southwestern border with Mexico, and the Euro-Soviet invaders along the eastern seaboard.

The unique nature of this game is the notion of three of four players cooperating together for the elimination of one player (the US). The game has an interesting dynamic of the US player being outnumbered 3-1 in military strength but the rules of combat heavily favoring the defender. The result is a rather exciting game that - if played well by all players - will result in a very close contest.

Critics have noted the game's rather byzantine set of rules and an excruciating amount of time devoted to set up.

Commercially, this was considered to be the third most successful board game in Milton Bradley's Gamemaster Series. In 1987, Fortress America won the Charles Roberts/Origins Award for Best 20th Century Game of 1986.

[edit] See also

Invasion America (board wargame) - for the hex-based wargame covering the same subject from SPI done in 1976 that Fortress America was based on.

Fortress America is less complex than other Wargames. This, and the fact that the game does not limit itself to two players, as most wargames do, combined with the numerous miniatures, make Fortress America a good title for beginning wargamers.