Rockets Red Glare (wargame)

The game's title is taken from the American national anthem The Star Spangled Banner, written by poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships in 1814.

Movement in this area of rugged and undeveloped boreal forest is slow, and at both the start and end of a player's turn, units that are out of supply are eliminated.

Victory points are for areas occupied, which critic Peter Hatton pointed out is unhistorical — the war along the eastern and south-eastern coast consisted of British amphibious raids, such as the raid that resulted in the Burning of Washington; Hatton believed that by forcing the British to attempt to invade the entire United States, an American victory in this area of the game is guaranteed.

"[2] In Issue 91 of Strategy & Tactics, Eric Goldberg thought that "The design is original in many places and conveys a sense of one of the more senseless wars in history.

Goldberg did not like the convoluted Victory Point system, feeling that it "detracts from an otherwise likable — if eccentric — game."

And Hatton also found the Americans the clear winners of the land strategic game due to the victory conditions of owning inland areas pointing out that "Scattering 25,000 British troops over 216,000 square miles of the Southern U.S.A. is not a strategy of any historic merit."

"[1] In a retrospective review in Issue 10 of Simulacrum, Steve Carey called Rockets Red Glare "one of SimCan's icon games, an ambitious design on an unheralded topic.