From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Eight reviews REICHSTAG: THE FALL OF BERLIN (Minden Games) This is a solitaire game on the fall of Berlin in 1945, insert of the first issue of Panzerschreck. The player takes the role of the Russian army and have a maximum of 12 turns to take the Reichstag. The map is a point to point recreation of the city of Berlin, with all the important edifices, in particular the Cancellery and the Reichstag itself. It's colorful enough to be pleasant to the eyes, very good for a DTP project. The combat units and the other markers are of very poor quality, instead; you have to cut them, glue them on cardboard and mount them to play. The only value of the combat units is a defense factor. There are also several cards (that you have to cut and mount) that you use for various functions of play. The sequence of play is the following: - Russian determination of the intensity of combat (artillery, cautious or aggressive: only in this last case you may continue the assault against a German defended position until you want; otherwise you're limited to one assault per turn - two assault for the elite units): you draw a card and depending on the result, you may change your type of combat mode. - Barrage and Reinforcements: again, you draw a card to see how many barrage points and reinforcements you have; with barrage points you eliminate from the map certain German units; reinforcements are self explaining. - Movement (up to two areas for turn for each Russian Units; they must stop if they enter an enemy occupied area) - Combat (simultaneous: you have to roll less than the combat value of a unit to eliminate it; there are several exception to this rule, but all in all the system is so easy) - Special Event draw (you draw a card and read the special event section; lot of chrome in the results) - Fuhrer status draw (you draw a card to see how is the morale of Hitler: he may decide to suicide or to flee from Berlin) - Victory determination phase (you have to control the Reichstag: if you have accumulated less than 16 victory points you win; you accumulate one point per turn, one per Russian unit eliminated, one for each German strongpoint or blue point (five particularly important areas of the map) you don't control) The game moves really fast (less than half an hour), it's fun enough to make more than one play, and it doesn't take more than five minutes and a really small table to play on it. I rate this game 6 1/2 on a scale to 1-10.