Which Edition's Timeline Is Most Plausible?

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

None of them make sense.

The first was understandably based on Cold War ideas of the internal workings of the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc. Of course now we know that most of our assumptions were flawed in their very basis.

The second was based on what little we knew from examining the former Warsaw Pact but still didn't scrutinise our own place in it.

After this we get into serious retcon territory and try and make events slew towards those early assumptions for the sake thematics, they make even less sense.

A rational Hot War is the Soviets launch during Operation Able Archer 83, but it's not likely to be survivable as the nuclear launch escalates.

Of course the first not only not made sense on what we didn't know but on what we did know. That France would stab NATO in the back was laughable while also being offensive. Spain, the largest western army in Europe, had joined NATO but goes off elsewhere for . . . reasons. The Italian-Greek thing not only made not sense, it made you wonder what planet it came from.

The game derives out that 1980s genre of Tom Clancy's "jam a war in everywhere and they'll buy it" (I did)

Nearly everyone I know uses a different setting.

I agree with you on the Spanish Army - both the V1 and the V2.2 basically ignored Spain - and there is no way they sit out the war - at the very least they would have sent a couple of divisions to fight against the Soviets or possibly even the Italians without overbalancing the NATO forces against the Soviets