Lightning Strikes: The World Wars of the 20th Century

ETA Late 2024

Lightning Strikes! gives players the chance to write a completely new narrative of 20th-century world history. In the full campaign game players create a new global history by managing their countries from the outbreak of war in 1914 through 1954, navigating potentially several world wars, as well as intervening lulls of global peace, while overseeing the development of exciting and devastating new weapons, until one player’s power bloc emerges victorious. There are also many shorter scenarios (from single campaigns to an entire world war) for players with limited time or focused interest. Lightning Strikes! is based on the legendary World in Flames family of detailed wargames.

Players take the role of one (or more) of 5 major powers: Commonwealth, Germany, Japan, Russia, or the USA. Secondary powers include Austria-Hungary, China (3 factions, Communist, Nationalist, and an imperial faction), France, Italy, Ottoman Empire, plus dozens of minor countries, including many new ones that were created along the way.

During each 6-month turn during wartime (or 2-year turn during global peace) players move and fight with their armies, fleets, and air forces around the globe, while also managing the economy, international diplomacy, and internal affairs, for the player’s countries. 3 to 5 impulses per turn each with variable weather gives both flexibility and uncertainty to your on-map units and their military offensives.

Lightning Strikes! provides an unmatched opportunity to explore all of what-if possibilities of this time period.

• Re-fight the Chinese, Russian, and Spanish civil wars to ensure your preferred faction wins the field (possibly with the help of your volunteers).

• See if the Central Powers can win (or at least not lose) World War I, and whether the Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman Empires can survive and modernize.

• Encourage new regional powers India, Poland, Spain, and the Ukraine to burst onto the world stage.

• Create numerous historical minor countries such as Czechoslovakia, Finland, and Turkey, as well as many might-have-been’s (many of whom emerged later on in real life) such as Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam.

To win a game of Lightning Strikes! you have to be a great statesman as well as a great general.

Whatever your choices, you’ll have to live with the consequences throughout 40 years of tumultuous change as you create new world history that will redefine the future. Only one thing is certain: no two games of Lightning Strikes! will ever be alike.

Product Information:

• Complexity: Standard Game High (8 out of 10); Basic Game Moderate (6 out of 10)
• Playing time: Scenarios from 1 hour or more. 50+ hours for the full campaign.
• Solitaire Suitability: Good (solitaire “bot” rules are included)
• Players: 2-5 (suitable for solitaire play)
• Map Scale: Global, area-based
• Time Scale: 1 turn = 6 months
• Unit Scale: Fleets; Air Forces: Armies

Game Credits:

• Game Design and Development: Dave LeLacheur
• Artist: Dave LeLacheur
• Box Design: Knut Grünitz
• Production: Julian Thomas
• World in Flames Collector’s Edition Design: Harry Rowland*
• Fatal Alliance’s Design: Andrew Rader*

*Lightning Strikes is based on the World in Flames game series published by Australian Design Group, including Fatal Alliances published by Compass Games, LLC.

Game Components:

• Two 25” x 26.5” mounted maps of the world
• One 11” x 17” zoomed-in mounted map of mainland Europe
• 17 countersheets of 5/8” units (a total of 2,992 counters)
• Fifty-two 2.25” x 3.5” political cards
• Five 8.5” x11” one-sided PMP Track displays
• One 17” x11” one-sided Turn and Era display
• One 17” x11” one-sided Future Additions display
• One 8.5” x11” one-sided Minor Countries display
• Two 17” x11” double-sided combat/game charts
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided war ending/innovation chart
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided declare war/diplomacy chart
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided peace/government types chart
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided conquest/surrender chart
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided civil war/liberation chart
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided very detailed sequence of play chart
• One 8.5” x11” double-sided solitaire play chart
•  One 8.5” x11” double-sided unit description chart
• Four ten-sided dice
• One rulebook
• One Scenarios (with play examples) booklet
• Box and Lid set