Elias Nordling - 04:03pm Feb 23, 2003 PST (#68 of 84) 
The Anagram Man

Just sat through a rather comfortable 900 day siege of Leningrad. 

At the end of the game, My food, defense and health indexes were at 0 (0
being the best, 15 the worst). The morale was a 4, and thus the status
track at top. The category was also A. 

The relief came just in time, though, as I had 0 Activity Markers, 0
Logistical Markers, and 0 Crisis markers left, and 2 Social Fabric
Markers! 

The secret to my comfortable siege was to keep the category at A at all
costs. I had a dip down to B due to a failed Activity Marker check, and
didn't like it at all, so I spent 2 AMs appealing to Moscow, getting my
category back up to A (Lucky me!). After that, I avoided the Special
Table like the plague, playing Logistical Markers almost whenever the
result came. 

By keeping the category at A, I managed to get good resupply rolls on
the Event table and thus avoided the X:es most of the time, rendering
the Crisis Table harmless. This all of course assumes a steady supply of
Activity Markers, and I was lucky in that respect, rolling lots of 4:s
on the Event table, which I guess was the REAL secret to my comfortable
siege. 

To all of you who haven't played the Siege of Leningrad game, this is
probably totally incomprehensible. For you, let me say I thoroughly
enjoyed this game! It's an abstract resource management game (a bit like
the Fall of Röhm game, but longer and slightly more involved), but with
enough flavour I thought to keep my interest. It certainly was the
fastest 300 turn game I've ever played! 8-) 

Two rules questions:

1: The War Table rules say a military victory can shift the status track
upward if you pass the X:es. It doesn't say so for other rules that can
recover index levels. I took it that you regained status regardless of
the cause of the improved index, not just for military victories. Was
that correct? (Wouldn't have changed the outcome, except my status would
have been C instead of A.) 

2: When you play a Logistical Marker to nullify a SF result, do you
discard the accumulated Social Fabric markers, or is the roll still
treated a 2-3 for this purpose, you just don't get an additional marker?
I played that you DIDN'T discard the accumulated markers in this case,
because a)otherwise there would never be a reason to play an AM to
discard the SFM:s, and b) it added some tension and another choice. I
still found the AM option rather redundant compared to the LM option. 

Anyway, a fun little game! Not to everyone's taste perhaps, but for me,
the best of all the mini-sims of Panzerschreck! 

Gary Graber - 03:52pm Feb 25, 2003 PST (#70 of 84) 
Editor, Panzerschreck magazine (Minden Games: www.homestead.com/minden_games)
Welcome back, Walt! Glad to see you around again. 

Elias, thanks for your comments re: Siege of Leningrad. Yes, keeping the
Status as near to A as possible is the key, I believe. 

"Two rules questions: 1: The War Table rules say a military victory can
shift the status track upward if you pass the X:es. It doesn't say so
for other rules that can recover index levels. I took it that you
regained status regardless of the cause of the improved index, not just
for military victories. Was that correct? 

2: When you play a Logistical Marker to nullify a SF result, do you
discard the accumulated Social Fabric markers, or is the roll still
treated a 2-3 for this purpose, you just don't get an additional marker?
I played that you DIDN'T discard the accumulated markers in this case,
because a)otherwise there would never be a reason to play an AM to
discard the SFM:s, and b) it added some tension and another choice. I
still found the AM option rather redundant compared to the LM option." 

You are correct on (1). 

On (2), no, do not discard SFM. This question led me to review the rule
on p. 45, and I think an uncorrected error is here. Logistic Markers are
not supposed to affect SFM you already have (this should be left to the
Social Services activity via AM play, as you mention); but the cost to
affect a "SF" result should be two LM instead of the usual one LM. So,
if you roll a 3 on the Main Table (for instance), you'd need to pay two
LM to turn the SF result into "--". Looks like I will need to list this
in errata, something like, "After the word 'turn' in line three of the
Logistics Support paragraph on p. 45, insert: 'Exception: To change a
'SF' result into a '--' result, it costs two LM.' In addition, replace
'a LM' in the final sentence of the paragraph to 'two LM'. 

While I'm on the subject, you may wish to include this variation of the
Weather Table: "On the first turn of any December, January, and February
during the game, the Weather automatically becomes Harsh. It is subject
to change thereafter as usual."