Anyone have, have played, or is at least familiar with the game? I used to own it a long time ago. I wish I hadn't sold it. There are some obvious flaws, but BGG has some fixes to these flaws; they can always be overcome.

A blast from the past! It's funny, I never played the game, never owned it, never even knew anyone who HAD played it. But for some reason i recall seeing the game and almost buying it (several times). You would think I would have forgotten all about such an obscure memory but damn, I can almost see the box in my head right now (and it was maybe 15-20 years ago?)

FINALLY! Someone answered my thread on Supremacy!!! And thank you very much for doing so. Unfortunately for you I am now so excited that I have made a long post. The game is a little gimmicky, but I enjoyed owning it (though I was able to play it very few times and my father did not really like it). Yes, you should have bought it and kept it, even if only for its collectible value!

If you want to see what it is like, see my Wish List on http://www.boardgamegeek.com. My name on there is the same as my Redscape screen name (JimHackerMP). I have put the game there, as well as the brand new game called Supremacy 2020, which is released or to be released (date = 2014) There are, however, a few images taken; I do not like the map, in particular (partly because it divides up the United States with a Eurocentric map )

There were editions of 1984, 1986, 1988, and finally, 1992 (with a redesigned, flashy-looking box), and I think the '86 and/or maybe the '88, both with the normal looking blue box, are the most common on eBay's, Amazon's and Board Game Geek's markets. They are actually going for quite a pretty penny, but not too bad for gamers like us.

The game was made by Supremacy Games, Inc. which, as the name seems to imply, was its only product, to my knowledge. (Probably not the best way to stay in business!) But, thanks to the necessities of clearing up the rule ambiguities and drawbacks---really only a few minor fixes are needed and there are lots of websites for this---they probably cleaned up pretty nicely on the plethora of blister packs and expansion packs which they likewise produced; a few of them were:

Neutron Bombs & Killer Satellites
Resource Deck 2
Resource Deck 3
The Middle Powers
Pirates and Warlords of the Neutral Zones
Boomers - Ballistic Missile Subs
The Unconventional Forces
Main Battle Tanks
The Mega-Map
Field Marshall's Handbook (supposedly expensive if you can find it! But it clears up questions and ambiguities people had with the rules...)

I myself owned three or four of the expansion packs; they came in these little boxes and looked so darned nifty. OK, yeah, I got a little into it even though I had no friends at the time who would be willing to play this game!

Players can develop the bomb and the "L-Star" ("Star Wars"/SDI-type satellites) and build them. I remember playing with my father and I got the bomb before he did. He said "Well, looks like your German scientists are better than my German scientists!"

There's an international market for Grain, Oil and Minerals; you need to control companies to have access to these commodities; purchasing them on the open markets raises and lowers prices (a flaw in that caused the markets to be either entirely depressed to $1 million, or grossly inflated to $1 billion!), you can borrow money from another player, at interest or whatever terms agreed upon. Movement of your fleets (which can carry four armies each) requires oil, of course. Too much nuking can end the game in Nuclear Winter (oops!) Of course, one of the flaws was the fact that anybody could roll to shoot down a nuclear strike with their L-stars, and got to roll one die for each L-star they had. It almost made a nuclear strike pointless unless the target didn't have the L-star research & development yet (you had to spend money on the R&D just to roll to see if you actually invent the Bomb, or the L-Stars (plus how much each L-star and nuke costs in commodities and money).

The nifty thing was the little black plastic mushroom-clouds to denote a territory which has been nuked.

The money was soooooo cool lookin'; Like Monopoly money but more colorful, and of higher values: seven denominations, from $1,000,000 to $1,000,000,000. Also these little "supply centers" (not like a supply center in Diplomacy, they are cards with little black plastic disks used to keep track of your commodity resources (oil, grain, minerals) and the nukes and L-Stars you own.

Sounds fun, doesn't it? Maybe if we both got one we could play by email, however that might be done!!! No pressure, tho...

The BGG link for Supremacy = http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27/supremacy
And the link for Supremacy 2020 = http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/141920/supremacy-2020

Geeze, we cannot POSSIBLY be the only two members on Redscape who have heard of Supremacy???

wow, information overload!?
I heard of the game and THOUGHT about buying it but I (until now?) didn't know anything about the game. Why not try to devise a way to play online? I would be happy to help you with the graphics. Map, any cards, counting tables???? Let me know if you think it can be done. If I play it online and like it, then no doubt I would finally buy the thing.

I had done a similar thing with the game Feudal and Kingmaker that we ran here many years ago. The Kingmaker game looked so damned sweet! I still have it in my archived folders but it just didn't seem to have much interest at that time.

Yeah sorry lol I did not realize I had posted so damn much.

I wonder if that could indeed be done. Though if there is a Supremacy 2020 out, I would wonder about rights you know? If whoever owned Supremacy Games Inc., sold the rights off to whoever makes 2020...you know what I mean? How would we go about doing this?

I'll have to get my hands on a copy, however. Then I could at least take a picture of it or something, and we could form a map. But how far are we allowed to go with this? I mean, putting a game online like that? I would assume that when this website was started (and I know it was back when A.H. still existed and had the rights to Diplomacy that there had to be some sort of permission granted, right? I have not found a verbatim copy of the rules online but I have found links to rules that people have improved, or has been improved by (I am assuming) the Field Marshall's Handbook or the other book or whatever they came out with, that somebody mentioned something about.

That was pretty specific wasn't it?

What did you have to do for Kingmaker and Feudal as far as that?

I would however be happy to help with the map and so forth. Look on Board Game Geek to see what it's like that would be a start. Here is the link to regular Supremacy:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27/supremacy

Let me know what you think...they might not give it a high rating--5+--but I dont care I liked it anyway.

Oh I just gave that didn't I? haha....

Vassal has a module for Supremacy: http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Supremacy

Awesome! Thanks SLOTerp!

I'd love to set up a game if anyone would like. Maybe we can wait until I receive the game (borrowed $50 and am now the proud owner of Version 3.0 (1992) edition--the one with the redesigned box graphics). then I can go over the rules and look for the flaws, or we could fix those as we play. It is up to you guys (whichever or both of you wish to play with us on Vassal, tho I remember Sloterp you said you were fairly booked for the moment). I could actually scan and email you the rules (please don't tell anyone of course because with there being Supremacy 2020 being in existence, somebody obviously owns the rights now you would think? We could work together to perfect the game and see how we can make it the most fun. Or I can do the bulk of the work even: I'm unemployed haha)

If I can remember correctly there were a few flaws I saw in the game that I have heard repeated on BGG. To wit: [skip this section if you prefer surprises!]

Commodities Market: L-stars are "Star Wars" satellites that shoot down nukes. But even if you are not the target, someone else is, you and others can be "L-Star Champions" by firing an L-Star to try to shoot it down anyway. And, you get to roll one die for each L-Star you wish to fire once (up to as many as you own), and so does anybody else who comes forward to be a "champion". This makes it damn near impossible to use the Bomb. But this is probably because, should too manny nukes explode successfully, nuclear winter is triggered and all players lose.

Commodities MarketEvery time a unit is bought or sold it affects the price for the next purchase of Grain, Petroleum, or Minerals. There are 18 steps in between $1 million minimum to $1 billion maximum. The picture of the French version looks like 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 50, 100, 100, 200, 200, 400, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000. Frequently I am told, the price is either too depressed or too high to be "fair" to all players.

Research & Development for L-Stars and Nukes: to R&D correctly you must announce which one you are researching, delete one of your mineral units (two mineral units if you're trying to get an L-Star), and keep turning over cards until you turn over the "Research & Development Completed" card (there are three such cards for the L-Star, three for the Nukes). And for each card you turned over, you must pay $200 million. I think you can quit the attempt at any time, but you still must pay the cost of turning cards over. So the cost of R&D of the bomb, or the SDI to shoot them down, is quite high, and presents a significant barrier that some players pay more than others due to the luck of the draw; so just make sure you shuffle that Resource Deck pretty well! But I guess this prevents what one W would have called "nucular profileration". [sic.]

Nuclear Winter Causes All Players to Lose: as I said too many nukes go off and nuclear winter is triggered and everybody loses. There ought to be a better repercussion for using nukes: like a diplomatic or monetary consequence for he who whipped out the can of whoop-ass, rather than allowing someone not in a position to win to cause all players to lose.

Other than that I remember it's a dynamite game. So yes, let's set up a game, Tom, shall we? Anyone else within earshot of this thread would be welcome if I could manage to put the game together online for us......anyone game for that? (Just wish I could get my hands on that Field Marshall's Handbook!

I could give it a shot but remember, I have never played and know NOTHING about the game other than what the box looked like a dozen years ago.

I would need the rules and maybe some explanation of tactics.
But after that, sure I would give it a whirl

What do you need to do to play on line?
Is this link given a site to play on? (I only quickly looked at it a day or two ago)
Or do we need to do some leg work here first? I can get busy with whatever graphics stuff you need but need some marching orders since I am 100% clueless about the game.

Already I found a map pre-made that looks pretty nice. Even if not needed for this online experiment, it would be a nice reference at least?
http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com ... %2Bmap.png

sorry to bombard the thread with message after message but I found another map, this one being the Euro-centric 2020 map. I could do some sort of mergiing of the two versions if you like?
http://www.commandpostgames.com/wp-cont ... k-Up-a.jpg

and on this one it shows the commodity cards
we could do-up a card for each person.
Assuming we would have to do all online (maybe not if that linked site allows games to be played?)
Then I picture a big map where we manually place armies and fleets and the commodity cards are also tracked maybe alongside the map.

But I am guessing a lot here since I have not played and don't know the first thing about the game. I'm sure we could do it, but it would require some basic paint shop editing from turn to turn

[Note: Supremacy 2020 by Command Post is now herein referred to as S-2020, and Supremacy by Supremacy Games, Inc., as S-1984 to avoid confusion below...]

In my inexperienced but possibly logical opinion, there is really no way to merge the two versions or play one with the others map. Just take a look at the computerized S-1984 map you showed me, then take a look at S-2020 map on the Command Post Games website. The map has been totally redesigned for S-2020: the superpowers are different, some of the territories are different, hte oceans are all different...almost everything has been re-vamped, including the all-important Commodities market and the entire deck of cards (I do believe).

Speaking of the commodities market, I could not find a photo of the S-1984 map in English on BGG including the markets, but the French version of S-1984 shows clearly enough that that is totally changed for S-2020 as well. Now, on both maps, there are 18 increments in the markets, price-wise. In S-1984 it goes from $1 million to $1 billion. ("un milliard" = one billion, if I remember my high school French correctly.) The way the commodities markets are different in S-2020 from that of S-1984 leads me to believe that there are some different rules, as well as totally different currency required. This is the French map I found on BGG, showing the markets at the top:

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/451238/supremacy?size=original

BTW wouldn't there be some sort of copyright issue for using the S-2020 map ourselves? I'm not so knowledgable about these things. Of course perhaps no one owns the S-1984 rights anymore...but then again maybe Command Post does now, even if Supremacy Games, Inc. is defunct?

My suggestion: we use the perfectly good Vassal module that SLOTerp gave us the link to. That is probably the best way to proceed. And from what it looks like on Vassal, the cards are dealt for us automatically. (That is, the cards requisite for S-1984.)

The S-1984 I bought (actually it's the 1992 "3.0" edition but same difference...) has already shipped and is due to arrive on Saturday (Aug. 9). So I'll make a photocopy of the rules and maybe pdf them (I'll have to ask our resident computer expert exactly how that's done) or I can fax them to you...or something. Then you and I can go over the rules, maybe even suggest some changes to each other, and so forth, as we get familiar with them...because I cannot find a copy of the rules posted on BGG for S-2020. (Valley Games was nice enough to do that ahead of time when they came out with their edition of The Republic of Rome---by the way that game too is awesome and I own it...but that's off topic.)

I GOTTA get my hands on a copy of The Field Marshall's Handbook but that's always going for a pretty penny on eBay, even ones in dilapidated condition. (That is of course for S-1984, not 2020.)

But God, yeah, S-2020 does look nifty from the YouTube video on the website; doesn't it? Almost wish I had saved my pennies and bought that one but not sure what it is going for and I think it's still in pre-order.

Oh you said "even if not needed for this experiment..." about the S-1984 map you showed me. Sorry I misunderstood that....to answer that question, yes, that would be terribly useful perhaps.

I didn't look very close at either map for differences. What I was speaking about is I could make the 2020 map LOOK more like the other (not splitting the us in half and lay out as a more familiar map that splits the Pacific instead) I could merge the look and feel of one to the other.

Same with commodity charts assuming those are different.

If we can use that linked website...wonderful, so much easier!
I was simply lending some help if required.
...as far as copyright issues, I wouldn't worry about it much. We would change things enough and if they had a problem with a handful of people giving the game a test run on a small website that may very well BUY it if they liked it, well then they would be crazy! And we would first be told to cease and desist using it as well. All added up, it's a non-issue at best! (especially since we are only helping increase the games awareness)