From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Two more reviews Berlin 85 (S&T 79) I've recently bought this back issue of the most important magazine in the field, with a situation taken by the Seventies, when the Warsaw Pact "monster" still hovered over our heads, like a menacing phantom. This Berlin 85, designed by one of the founding fathers of our favored hobby, Jim Dunnigan, is a curious little "what if", a possible recurring nightmare of the late Seventies. It's not a gem, as the system is too simple for the scale, but could be of interest for the ones (not me) who liked hypothetical situation like the one here portrayed. The game simulates (or try to do) an attack by Warsaw Pact forces against the city of Berlin, defended by a few local NATO forces and several West Berlin police units (opposed by a few of their Eastern counter-parts). The map is full of peculiar terrain for a wargame (three different kind of city hexes, autobahn (major roads), a metro movement rule too (which consented to elude enemy ZOCs while moving underground). The system used is a composite one, which use standard Igo-Ygo turns (with movement prior to combat), with locking ZOCs (a strange choice for the kind of warfare simulated, IMO), units with different value for attack and defense, artillery units with barrage and protective factors (taken directly by other SPI games of the Seventies, like the Modern Battles Quads, IIRC), a differential CRT (where terrain differentials play an enormous factor in deciding the winner of a fight, making life really difficult for the attackers that don't use artillery well enough), and victory conditions based on terrain objectives and enemy elimination. There are also several particular rules, which greatly add to the game (but at the cost of a terrible number of dice rolls!!): directly from Panzergruppe Guderian, most of the combat start the game with their untried side one (i.e., neither players know exactly how much is combat unit is worth until it fights); personally, I don't like this rule too much, as there too few NATO units and after a couple of plays, both players know exactly the combat ratings of those units even when turned down. But, anyway, it was an expedient very popular in the SPI design of that period and gained a good reputation from most players of the time. Other more specific rules are the ones for poison gas (that, of course, only the "evil" Pact may use), honors of war (a very nice try to add uncertainty to the game, as the conquest of West Berlin proceeds), collateral damage (massive artillery use in urban or suburban areas may cause ruins and fires), airlanded reinforcements, paradrops and so on. There are three different scenarios, two 16 turns long and one only 10 turns long. Personally, I wasn't at the time, and today even less, very fond of WWIII hypothetical wargames and I owned and played not many titles from the Seventies and early Eighties. This Berlin 85 could be an exception, as the almost tactical feeling of the situation could be more interesting to approach. Could be, but it's not (at least for my tastes, that, as you know if you have read others of my Grognard rewiews, are normally different from the large mass of the wargamers). I found, after a few plays, that the game is too harsh on the attacker, trying to balance the situation with a terrific terrain protection which nullifies the superior strength of the Warsaw Pact player. So, for the NATO player, the important, in most of the scenarios, is to try a last stand, that normally should be victorious (at least in game terms). I found the total combat situation more boring than I hoped (as, in theory, there are several different options for the attacker, as there are dozens objectives on the map). Anyway, I'm certainly a little biased in my opinion and this game was very popular in the past and was the inspiration for at least another S&T game, Warsaw Rising. I rate this game 6 on a 1-10 scale.