From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Two new reviews Moscow Burning (XTR in Command 40) I think that Ty Bomba likes jokes, because this "simulation" of the next Russian civil war is more similar to an April Fool's Joke than a real game, even for a beer and pretzels style of a game. In this game, the players represent the White and the Red of next revolution, gaining militia, elite and armored units to their side simply rolling the dice. And you have to roll a die for each unit to determine is allegiance. Consider that there are 45 militia units (one for each city hex on the map), up to 33 armored units, and 16 elite units. So, you have to roll almost 100 dice only to set up the units!! Each unit is rated only for movement (4 or 10 movement factor; militia cannot move), while only the armored units have a "6" factor for strength and two steps. Militia have only one step and a random combat strength (for defense only) roll with a die before every battle. The elite units have "6" for combat and six steps. The game lasts up to 10 turns and victory is determined with the control of city hexes (most of them have a 1 VP value, but a few of them have 2, 3 or 6 VP). In each turn the players roll for Random Events (that are fun indeed, with happenings like Elvis apparition, Czar return or various deleterious event like plague, bio-hazards or nuclear explosions, but are added for "chrome" to a system already "crazy" in its basis), then move and have combat (Red player first), with a very simple CRT with only step losses as results. What can I say? The game is very simple, you have to roll tons of dice and the randomness of the starting situation (that could be very unbalanced) is not very good for competitive play (the bidding system used for two players' games is not really useful, and I think that the game could be fun for a solitaire exercise in statistic). But I don't think that with games of this kind (the game is paired with the awful Buena Vista in Command 40) Ty Bomba's magazine could survive even without the Warchess affair (and this is a real shame, as the magazine itself is simply fantastic for is historical value). I rate this game 5 out of 10