Winter Fury - short review Some four weeks ago I received my copy of Winter Fury, the second part of the Avalanche Press' Soviet-Finnish Winter War Sequel. The game may be played stand alone or together with their first game on this topic, Blood on the Snow (at least this is what is announced by the cover and the rules, but see below). The box is already computer art, showing a Russian T-28 main battle tank burning, but it looks nice. By opening Winter Fury the same beautiful counter art is revealed as with most other Avalanche Press games. Graphically there is nearly nothing left to be desired. The 140 counters have the usual NATO symbols on them, with tank companies showing a Russian T-26 tank (with a Finnish flag on the backside for catured tanks, something Blood on the Snow is missing) and contain all necessary data. What is annoying is that in a game of this quality no game turn marker is included! And a marker to track Finnish reinforcement steps would have been nice, too! The map! At least in my copy and in my friend's one the map was folded in a manner that it did not fit into the box properly! That is most annoying in my eyes, as the map will get damaged over the time simply by putting it back into the box. There is enough free room on the map so that it could have been made fit into the box, or Avalanche Press could have increased the box size or decreased the map size a bit. Once unfolded the map is much more beatiful than the old Blood on the Snow map, with all hex types (computer graphics, of course) being more or less esay to distinguish. Additionally there are the turn track and the weather table on the map. And here is where the first blunder happened. The rules (rule 3.11) advise you to use the weather table, but there are no turn modifiers for the weather printed on the turn track!! Arrrgl... Players who own Blood on the Snow probably may attempt to use this game's weather modifier, but that's not how it should be! And even worse: There's no table like in Blood on the Snow which translates the weather die roll result into a number of impulses per game turn (yep, of course you can also use the one from Blood on the Snow, but what if you don't own this game?)! As usually no dice are included (why is that habbit growing?) and the rule book is much the same as in Blood on the Snow. There are only some minor rule changes or new rules, but guess - another blunder happened. In Blood on the Snow you'll get a player aid sheet with all the important values and tables on it. This sheet is missing in Winter Fury (I suppose there was none planned for it). Unfortunately already in Blood on the Snow the rules state some additional movement costs for ZOCs but miss to list them. While these costs are at least listed on the Blood on the Snow aid sheet, this more or less important information is simply missing in Winter Fury! Sigh! On 11 August Avalanche Press released some (first?) errata on their website for Winter Fury. Here they add the missing ZOC costs for movement and they add some info on the weather die rolls. The weather clarification is different to Blood on the Snow, as it simply says "Die roll 1,2 = Weather 6, Die roll 3,4 = Weather 5, Die roll 5,6 = Weather 4". Let's investigate the proposed option to play a big campaign by using both games together. The Winter Fury rules say that all units of both sides may be used on either map, but once used there they cannot be transferred to the other map. That sounds logic. But ... you waited for that, right? Ok, you'll get it: Both games (Blood on the Snow and Winter Fury) list different movement costs for some terrain types (Frozen Forrest, Frozen Lake, Cultivated). Hex size (2 km per hex) is the same in both games as well as unit sizes and terrain types are the same. Apart from these glitches there are only some minor things which are not fully clear to me, but the listed ones above are important enough. I sent two big e-mails to Avalanche Press so far, but their only reaction so far was to publish the mentioned mini-errata (I don't know wheather because of my e-mail or not). No personal reply, nothing. No good thing for a company which thinks to be a big player on the market. And on the other side the credits now state that Mike Benninghof is a Dr. Phil.! All in all the game so far is an extremly nice looking piece, but quality seems to decrease with Avalanche Press. Robert Holzer