From the Depths: Supremacy

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Now you've done it. Awakened the dormant Supremacy Virus. That means making the 30 mile trek to the storage unit, sorting through several score of boxes, pulling out my dusty copy, finding 4 or 5 other gamers with a day to waste, re-reading the rules, explaining the rules, pouring the whiskey, and fondling the black mushroom clouds menacingly throughout the game.

Good write up for an excellent USSR era game.

Thanks! Yeah, that was always the challenge. Who else do I know that would like to spend an entire day immersed in modern geopolitics? We used to play Warlords and Warlords 2 simultaneously with Supremacy, so that people had something to do during downtime (i.e. two other players skirmishing across all of West Africa or something like that.)

It still looks extremely good graphics-wise imho

I think it has its cachet. It's very clearly an 80s production, when a lot of things at the time attempted that really clean design in an attempt to look modern/futuristic/computerized. There's not a lot of detail that clouds the imagery, which is fine for clarity. It just always feels to me as if I'm playing on a prototype of something that will later have terrain and other detail added. I actually took the pics on the giant map expansion, which has a bit more detail and a higher number of territories than the regular board, but still uses the same motif.

We would play that when in the service. That was one of the best things about barracks living, a fairly large amount of gamers to lasso into games.

I have been chasing the game for a number of years, but the price point is much too high. I'm also not certain the gameplay will live up to the nostalgia.

This was a constant presence in high school (I had the privilege of going to a boarding school) in the early 90's. I recently scored a copy for nostalgic purposes but the expansions were way out of my budget.

But really, given the simplistic designs, this seems like an easy self made game if you have some wood shop skills or access to a 3D printer. I'm kinda surprised it hasn't been kickstarted but I suppose the rights are a mess.

This *did* get Kickstarted, back in 2013.

www.commandpostgames.com/product/supremacy-2020/

I've come across this before, though I don't know anything, really, about the revision (and it's out of stock at this point).

I also have some fond memories of Supremacy classic, which I believe I came across (and bought from) a hobby place about 60 miles away that my friends and I would sometimes make a trek to. I remember the market being wonky, but it could be that we weren't doing it right either; there wasn't much template for this game in our experience.

Damn, you are right! Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, that kickstarter is what may have prompted me to get a copy of the original

Alas, as fun as I remember it being, it is definitely the kind of game no one really plays these days

In a confluence of this, KonMari, and game prices, I just saw a copy of Supremacy + all expansions for sale for $500. And this wasn't found new in shrink; this stuff has been played. Like someone said in those threads (take a bow if you'd like), you'd have to hope the other players would be included in the game.