2003’s ATTACK! was the one game that Eagle Games produced in the prehistoric era before Fantasy Flight Games helped to make big-box Ameritrash games with tons of plastic pieces and dice fashionable again that came the closest to being a very good, if not great game.

It was a fairly simple, straightforward “dudes on a map” game with a pretty interesting combat mechanic that had a World War II setting- but it wasn’t historical or really all that specific. You didn’t even play a named country. Yet it had enough detail in the differences between units and in its action cards to lift it above the level of abstraction in a game such as its forefather RISK but it was also free of any kind of predestined historical setup or gamey balancing issues. It had its share of typical Eagle Games problems and clunky design issues, not the least of which was a bizarre, outside-the-system naval element that handled maritime affairs through an awkward and horribly vague card-based mechanic. An expansion added actual ships to the mix along with expanded rules for politics, economics, and further detail but the game sort of lost its simplicity and the focus shifted somewhat from the concept of ATTACK! as an easy-to-play, high-action conflict game.

Now, six years later, ATTACK! is back. Well, at least in a way it’s back. Under the guidance of Mike Selinker, who was in charge of the AXIS AND ALLIES revision a few years back, Eagle Games is releasing a new expansion to the base game that they are now calling the total package ATTACK! DELUXE. Essentially, what Mr. Selinker has done is retooled the existing ATTACK! products into a very streamlined game with the addition of a limited number of new components. The ATTACK! base game remains unchanged, but the expansion now includes a couple of extra counter sheets, some player mats, and naval dice which finally integrate that part of the game into the game’s core combat system. It’s a smart move on the publisher’s part to basically recycle existing components into a new game and the good news is that if you already own the original ATTACK! expansion, they’ll set you up with a special upgrade kit to get you up to speed with the new edition.

ATTACK! was- and is- very basic. I think it’s a simpler system than AXIS AND ALLIES and I would actually recommend it as a step up from RISK over most games of this ilk. Players each represent a combatant nation identified only by one of four political affiliations. National boundaries and other parameters of World War II as we know it simply don’t apply, so if you’d like to take over the world from a powerbase in a Canadian province, the world is yours. There are no on-map resources so each territory is fundamentally identical save for its geographical position and water access. Each turn takes place over four seasons and each player gets to select one action from a limited menu that provides several movement and attack options along with unit building and technology research choices. There is also a negotiation action that allows players to take advantage of an alternative method of territorial conquest- the selector gets to flip over a political token and pay a cost in relation to which of the four political factions it represents. In winter, a player can not take an action unless they have five oil certificates, which are generated by a player’s onboard oil wells.

The goal of the game, of course, is to take over the world. And being the kind of game that is, you do so with a handful of the nearly 1000 plastic tanks, planes, artillery pieces, and infantry men that the game features. The game’s economics are simple: each controlled region produces a dollar; you use those dollars to build units. In a neat twist, you can’t build units anywhere but in your capital province unless your Factories tech is upgraded to allow you to build further away.

Battles are simple, fairly fast, and a lot of fun. In an attack, each player lines up four of their embattled units with the remainder behind the frontlines as a reserve. The attacking player gets to fire any artillery or destroyers that it brought first to try to knock out some of the defenders. The dice system relies on custom dice with one blank side, one side each for tanks, infantry, and guns, and two sides for planes. The idea is that you want to roll to match which units you have, so the system naturally rewards combined arms. In each round of combat, players get to bring another unit to the front so it creates a sense of escalation while also preventing fights from turning into endless dice-offs- if you have more units, you’re probably going to win unless the other side gets really luck. I’m actually really fond of the combat system- it offers a good mix of detail, tactics, and drama.

Detail is also provided by way of a simple technology system whereby players can buy technology levels in various research areas that all more or less offer enhancements to existing actions. In order to build advanced units (tanks, planes, and some of the larger ships), players have to have increased levels of Minerals for example since the number of Mineral levels you have affects how many advanced units you can purchase. The Oil tech lets players establish oil wells in their territories to generate oil income. Population research gets you an action card, increased income, and a victory point in the end. It’s all very simple, and it’s really just a re-implementation of the economics cards from the original game, but it does add some long-term strategic planning and fills in some of the details. I’m not really crazy about how the technologies are actually paid for. Each lists two different sets of units and players must eliminate one of those sets from their onboard forces. I suppose thematically it makes sense, as resources are shifted around to pay for the developments, but too often it feels gamey and needlessly abstract. I think a better idea would have been to simply pay for the research based on the costs of the units depicted.