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Monitoring Victory. When a wargame uses a Victory Point system to determine which players win, I always wonder whether you can trust the VP system to give you an accurate picture of who is winning in the middle of the game. Is one side (in many WW2 games this would be the Allies) expected to get behind, and then come roaring back later on? The VP system for Blitz! is designed to give you feedback along the way. Of course, for major powers not yet at war with their main foes (Japan, USA and the USSR at the start of the game), you have to temper this until they have joined the fray. As a rule of thumb, once all of the major combatants have been in the war for 2 or 3 complete turns, then you can look at the VP situation and have a pretty good idea of who is actually winning. In many games this will be Turn 5 or 6.
A good benchmark is comparing VPs to the Turn. If any major power has more VPs than the present turn number, that’s bad news for everyone else. The game’s maximum length is 15 turns, and 15 VPs will win (and end) the game. So if another major power is averaging 1.5 VPs per turn (for example 6 VPs at the end of Turn 4), then they are on a pace to have the needed 15 VPs by the end of Turn 10. If so, watch out!
Lastly, you should keep in mind which VP awards a major power has “locked down” and looks likely to be able to achieve every turn going forward, until an enemy does something to change that. Anytime a major power has “locked down” 2 VP awards, then the claxon bell alarms should be ringing in their enemy’s ears, because a major power getting 2 VPs per turn has a clear path to victory. This is often when opponents will gang up on that enemy major power in an effort to slow down the juggernaut. (Of course, if it is one of your allies, then it might be time to stop sending them Lend Lease and perhaps divert your forces away from campaigns that are helping your ally more than you….)