Blitzkrieg Module System
Blitzkrieg Module System is a series of expansion modules published by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) in 1969 that are designed to be used with the Avalon Hill board wargame Blitzkrieg.
Description
Blitzkrieg was a popular non-historical board wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1965. Four years later, Jim Dunnigan and Redmond A. Simonsen, the co-founders of the new rival wargame company SPI, designed a series of 16 modules of new rules for Blitzkrieg. These allowed players to mix and match any combination of new and old rules in order to explore new ways to play the game. These rules included the use of navies, railways, air forces, the arming of the small neutral countries, production, weather and guerillas.[1]
Although SPI provided the new rules, as well as more counters and revised charts, most unusually, players still needed to buy a copy of Avalon Hill's original Blitzkrieg in order to use SPI's modules. As Nicholas Palmer noted, this was a "unique example of one leading company building on the game of another."[2] In the 2016 book Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming, Henry Lowood noted that "Players were thus given access to the [game] engine itself, mixing rules in any combination they chose with the rules of the original game."[1]
Reception
In his 1977 book The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming, Nicholas Palmer commented "Any attrition tendency in the original game is removed, and the result is widely felt to be an improvement, though naturally more complex."[2]
Henry Lowood wrote, "SPI's Module System revisited Blitzkrieg not to improve Avalon Hill's game, but to morph it into a different, open system."[1]
Other reviews and commentary
- Strategy & Tactics Guide to Conflict Simulation Games, Periodicals, and Publications in Print #2
- Wargamer's Collector's Journal #7