Mine is indeed the Collectors Edition Deluxe game, which now sells for $269. Yep, it comes with most of the expansions. It omits a couple expansions that I didn’t really want anyway, like Factories in Flames, and it doesn’t have a separate Africa or Scandinavian map, but I haven’t needed those. One does have to get used to a slightly abstracted system of sea-zones around the abbreviated Africa map that comes with the game, but it’s not that hard.
Yes, WiF was a great winter project – really a great pandemic project. I was stuck indoors anyway, so why not play a monster game? But now that the weather is nice, I’m finding it harder to get to the wargaming table. :)
Really nothing in WiF is conceptually difficult; it’s just that there’s lots of everything! Lots of rules, lots of counters, lots of map space, heh.
Learning the rules is the biggest challenge, and it’s not that bad. I’m pretty sure you can download the rulebook for free, though the online version doesn’t have all the pretty pictures in the printed rulebook. Those illustrations really do help, as mostly they’re useful examples of play. I like the conversational tone of the rulebook. It’s much smaller and easier to learn than, say, Advanced Squad Leader – I know that’s not saying much, lol. The hardest thing about the rules is that WiF innovates in surprising ways. Major powers can’t do everything every impulse; they choose an Air, Land, Naval, or Combined (“a little of everything”) action. Naval movement and warfare centers around a brilliant system of sea-boxes within sea areas; these boxes represent time on station, fuel, etc. The land game is the most familiar to traditional grognards, but even this has its surprises.
For me, the coolest thing of WiF is seeing how what’s going on in the Med impacts the Far East and vice-versa; deciding which front to send troops to; stuff like that. The worldwide scope is awesome.
I don’t want to push WiF too hard, because I’d hate for you to spend all that money and then never get past the rulebook. I’d suggest downloading the rules and browsing through them casually, to see whether it’s your sort of thing.