Note: This is the original, unedited version of a review that appeared
in BERG'S REVIEW OF GAMES (BROG).  If you're interested in seeing more
of Richard Berg's celebrated wit and insight in BROG, you can contact
him at BergBROG@aol.com.

LAST BATTLES

"Everything that was old is new again," quite an appropriate quote for
war gaming these days.  The early 80's was gaming's first Golden Age,
when SPI and Avalon Hill had something like 200 titles in print, with
plenty of other little companies- Metagaming, Task Force, Peoples'
Wargames- hovering on the fringes.  Jump ahead now to 1995, when only
one of those guys is still around, and they're not even publishing
wargames anymore , when a couple of current gaming gurus, Doc Decision
and Keith Poulter, have decided that some of those Golden games are just
too good to leave lying around.  So, like Doctors Frankenstein (that's
Frankensteen !) , they've resurrected a few of those old corpses to go
staggering  about, mouthing incoherently and terrorizing the
townspeople.

Peoples' Wargames was Jack Radey's baby, jumping upon the scene in the
late 70's with KORSUN POCKET, a very original (and very revisionist)
East Front game, many of whose systems still stack up well today.  This
was followed by a bunch of stuff- GAZALA, AACHEN, TO THE WOLF'S LAIR-
which built on that parent system.  PWG sank beneath the waves at about
the same time as SPI, although many of its titles can still be found on
game store bottom shelves.  Well, this was too good of an opportunity
for mad scientist Keith Poulter to pass up, so dig up the carcass of TO
THE WOLF'S LAIR, jazz it up with new map and counters, steal Jack
Radey's brain from the lab and slap it in,  and presto-- LAST BATTLES:
East Prussia, 1945.

LAST BATTLES comes to us from CoSi, a German company (or so I gather--
the German title is ENDKAMPF: OSTPREUSSEN, which causes some strange
stares when you happen to be carrying the box in line at an ATM, let me
tell you) for whom 3W does the distribution here in the U.S.   The game
covers the Soviet offensive into East Prussia in January, 1945,
following up on the destruction of Army Group Center.  Historically,
this was the beginning of the end for Germany- the Ardennes offensive
had just failed- and helped by Hitler's amazing decision to send his
best remaining armored units south for a counteroffensive in Hungary,
the Soviets were able to do major damage to the Germans, capturing the
strategic fortresses of Thorn and Konigsberg in the process.

Graphically, it's a step ahead of what PWG was able to offer.  I imagine
that the profit margins at People's were pretty slim, because most of
their games were monochromatic and identifiable by the one predominant
color-- AACHEN was green, GAZALA tan, and so forth.  Keith sicced Joe
Youst on the map and counters, so they are more elaborate than their
precedents.  Not better, just more elaborate.  I prefer the minimalist
MacGowan/Simonitch style myself, so the LAST BATTLES map wouldn't be to
my taste anyway, but hooh boy, is this thing ugly.   Every hex has at
least three different terrain types in it (the rules never state which
terrain is dominant) , crisscrossed by a maze of rails and roads , so
that  the overall effect is of a busy ski slope during a thaw.   The
counters are plainer, with simple NATO symbols and a row of numbers at
the bottom representing strength points, barrage factors, and so on, the
only problem being that the counter diagrams are very unclear about
which number is which, nor do they use colors or symbols to help you
out.  But no movement allowances.  There's plenty of extra room, why not
put the MA on there ?  Very annoying.

Let's face it: clear rules writing is not exactly 3W's forte.   The
original material was pretty rugged to begin with- PWG was justly famous
for dense systems that required lots of effort to learn and use- and
3W's tender attentions have not done much to soften it.  Everything is
in there, and in pretty good order, but there's so damn much of it.

At bottom, this is pretty basic East Front stuff-- Igo/Hugo, Move/Fight,
get-the-other-guy-before-he-gets-you.  A nice twist on this allows
players to place units in reserve, from which state they can either
exploit after combat or move after the other player's movement but
before combat allowing you to rush reserves into the line before the
blow falls.  Rules like this allow armor to be used to its full
capacity-- I'd like to see other games doing it.   Unfortunately, combat
is a hopelessly intricate procedure involving all sorts of mechanics and
adjustments.  Players compute the "raw" combat odds by comparing
barrage, support, and combat strengths, then modify them for terrain,
air points, armor and AT values, and whether the Germans involved  are
East Prussians or Latvians (I'm not kidding!)-- suffice to say that one
combat example in the rules took up an entire page by itself. Now, all
of those ratings for support, barrage, armor, etc. are on the counter
somewhere, but who knows which is which ?  The rulebook sure doesn't
help. Tied into all this is supply.  Players must expend supply points
to use their barrage and support factors, the Soviets receiving more
attention for their Rocket and Artillery Division units.  The end result
is to make combat a very cumbersome, frustrating  process.

Special rules throw into the mix flamethrower tanks, Volksstrum (which
tend to pop up like mushrooms), refugees clogging the roads, and a host
of regulations requiring players to mirror history by freezing reserve
units until a specified turn or withdrawing their best troops, always
seemingly just when those guys would be most useful (Hitler raising his
strategically inept head, once again).  There is even a rule preventing
the Russians from attacking certain German units until those Germans are
released !  Excuse me ?

I really detest rules like that-- why not allow players to try something
different, with suitable VP penalties or release die rolls ?  War games
should reflect history, not repeat it.  Why are some game designers so
afraid that those pesky players will do something they're not supposed
to ?

A fair selection of "What If ?" scenarios allow gamers to try out Soviet
or German fantasy situations, while the last four pages give a military
history of East Prussia from 405 A.D. to the present, featuring a fairly
detailed history of the actual campaign.    3W has become notorious for
doing strange stuff with the rulebook, but LAST BATTLES is particularly
irksome.  Didn't anyone read this thing before it went out the door,
streamlining some sections (Combat) and eliminating others (movement
restrictions) ?  If you have four pages to spare for an East Prussian
history lecture, why not replace one with better counter diagrams or a
chart listing the various combat modifiers ? Gamers have been yelling
questions like these into the Cambrian wind for years, and been getting
nothing but a gust in the face in reply.

You ever put down the rulebook, squint at the map with all those
counters on it, and say to yourself, "So... what the hell do I do now ?"
That's what I said after setting up LAST BATTLES.  The appropriate
answer is, "Read the sequence of play, dummy."

So we did.  We were playing the historical scenario, which starts with
the opposing armies stacked up eyeball to eyeball along the East
Prussian line of scrimmage, ready to go at it.  There's no reason for
movement, so the scenario begins with a long series of combats, the
game's worst mechanic. There are three nice player aid cards in the box,
two for initial set-up and one for weather & terrain, but nothing to
help the poor distracted gamer keep track of all those combat effects.
Like a college Chemistry course, you have to memorize everything the
instant you read it, and woe betide the player who forgets that Soviet
rocket divisions require that extra support point.  A few minutes of
this and I started to bleed internally-- I don't see how the ASL guys
can stand it.

This is not a fun game.  The historical scenario is very unbalanced--
the Soviets are poised with overwhelming forces to smash into East
Prussia with the Germans withdrawing their best units three turns in and
a host of special rules forcing players to mirror the historical result.
I understand that 3W/CoSi will be publishing other PWG games in the
future; I just hope they're not as much of a chore as the first one.
LAST BATTLES takes a lot of work just to get going, and the results
aren't worth the intellectual effort.  I wonder if Igor dropped the
brain on the way to the lab...

CAPSULE COMMENTS:

Graphic Presentation: Ugh.  Too much detail on the maps, not enough on
the counters.  There must be a happy medium somewhere.

Playability: Mighty tough slogging.  Jack Radey's games were never known
for their smoothness of play, and 3W's tender mercies have not improved
them.

Replayability: It might be worth trying the optional scenarios, as they
allow both sides to operate with more freedom.  I think the historical
game will play the same every time.

Creativity: Seeing as how this is a re-make of an older game, not much.
Maybe Keith Poulter has finally given up on producing a decent game of
his own, and will now devote himself to publishing everyone else's.

Historicity: Good-- too good.  It's no fun playing an army whose overall
commander is a paranoid maniac (I mean Hitler, not Stalin) with dreadful
strategic vision, to boot.  However, the game does give a strong feel of
division-level tactics- particularly the importance of air, artillery,
and engineer support- and has some good rules that reward players for
the proper use of armor.

Wristage: Not bad.  For all of its numbing detail, combat only requires
one die-roll, and most of the other systems follow suit.

Comparisons: There must not be more than, oh, one or two thousand
division-level East Front titles out there.  LAST BATTLES doesn't begin
to stack up against such classics as PANZERGRUPPE GUDERIAN or
DESTRUCTION OF ARMY GROUP CENTER; even KORSUN POCKET, upon which the
system is based, is much better.  As far as more recent games, CAMPAIGN
TO STALINGRAD and STALINGRAD POCKET are simpler and far smoother; LAST
PANZER VICTORY is more complex and even less fun.  I don't know of any
other games on this particular campaign.

Overall:     Like climbing a mountain right after eating Thanksgiving
dinner.  Hard, heavy work, and when you're finished you ask, "Why did I
bother ?"

David Fox        fragilfox@aol.com