Another chance to play this excellent political game ended in anarchy.
Richard has provided this wonderfully detailed AAR that truly does this great game justice.
Chasing votes in the Reichstag?- be careful what you wish for....
It was yet another exciting roller coaster ride in the Weimar era. This game had the government teetering on the edge of anarchy for most of the game until it was finally toppled by the Black Friday stock market collapse and "successful" resolution of the Young Plan as the final, cynical, act of the game.
The KPD brought the spirit of revolution in every turn. Why wouldn't you? An extra card is always handy and they came very close to a Councils victory. It was only thwarted by the concerted government effort to force a couple of cancelled KPD Coup d'etat events and the play of Reichsexecution which knocked them back from being in a game winning position, but they were still in the fight right until the end.
The DNVP were, by contrast, keeping a low profile and despite managing to establish a single regime in Essen, were content to amass VPs by other means. They played an annoyingly skillful hand at winning or preventing others from winning issues in the Reichstag whilst letting the KPD take the brunt of government counter coup activity. The DNVP played an under the radar game of true evil genius.
The two government parties co-operated pretty well it must be said, despite the, not to be unexpected, frictions within the coalition, resulting in the odd difference of opinion and ways were parted for selfish reasons by both parties on more than one occasion.
Nevertheless, by turn 3, between the KPD and DNVP there were enough Councils/Regimes on the board and threat markers in the Deutsche Reich (DR) box such that a single further successful coup attempt would have collapsed the government into anarchy, with most probably a DNVP win resulting. It was a big surprise to see the Reich survive this turn.
Turn 4 saw the death of Reichspresident Ebert, which precipitated elections and the final run off vote was for either the DNVP candidate Paul von Hindenburg or the SPD's Otto Braun. The Zentrum were the king makers and backed their government colleague and the SPD had control of the Presidency.
Weimar forces you to make a lot of tough decisions. Do you play the percentages and hope that an outlier event doesn't happen, or do you plan for the statistically unlikely, but theoretically possible worst case to occur? It can be a tough choice.
In turn 2, mindful of the ever diminishing number of seats in the Reichstag as a result of failed crisis rolls and threat markers in cities causing losses of seats in the Reichstag, the Zentrum player urged their SPD partner to focus on different issues in play in the Reichstag as the Rentenmark issue looked safely in the bag at the 5 voting mark on the SPD's track. This proved to be a critical moment in the game as the DNVP ensured that the Rentenmark issue ended up on the zero space by playing a rare 5 Action point card to debate. (5 action point cards normally have very powerful favourable events on them for the party playing them, so to use one for debate is quite an important decision). With the issue on the zero space at the end of the round, this meant that it couldn't be resolved and as a result 2 inflation markers (there can be a maximum of three) were left permanently in the Deutsche Reich threat boxes. This was a very shrewd move by the DNVP who, having concentrated on amassing VPs, were no doubt looking to an anarchy win, the negative consequences of which they were shielded from by virtue of not being in the government.
This really made the situation extremely difficult and probably impossible for the government to extricate themselves from, with anarchy looking inevitable assuming there wasn't a successful coup d'etat before then.
Ironically there was another opportunity to introduce the Rentenmark available, but the Zentrum player didn't realise his one card left in the draw pile was this very card which allowed an attempt to introduce the Rentenmark via a different method. Instead he chose to add the Economy focused cards into his deck instead and thus buried this potentially game saving card in the draw deck with a slim chance of it being drawn. A fortuitous mistake as it turned out. Perhaps more ironically, whilst Zentrum was most annoyed at this spoiler by the DNVP, it turned out to be a critical, but not sole, component for forging an unlikely victory.
Everything you do in Weimar can have consequences in the game. Some are immediate or set you up for another action in the next round, whilst others can have unforeseeable consequences.
The turn 4 Flag Dispute issue was hotly contested between the DNVP and Zentrum. With 5 VPs up for grabs, but at the cost of some (easily handled 😉) NSDAP consequences. With an eye on the state of the DR threat markers and the likelihood of anarchy, those 5 VPs were an important potential buffer to the -8 VP penalty to the government parties if/when anarchy occurred. A quick scan of the VPs determined that a rare Zentrum victory was possible if they won the Flag Dispute and then toppled the Reich into anarchy at the very beginning of turn 5 before any attempt by the KPD to win via Coup d'etat. Zentrum went for it and with the final card play of the round in turn 4, the Flag Dispute was won by Zentrum and the 5 VPs were gobbled up without remorse for the NSDAP consequences. Zentrum was still in with a slim path to victory. Something else would need to happen to get them over the line however....
The composition of the Reichstag also changed at the end of turn 4 and some of the seats were now occupied by gentlemen in brown shirts. Following the tussle for seats, Zentrum ended up with the most seats as compared to their coalition partners in the SPD and the Chancellorship passed to them for the next turn. However, it seemed that Chancellor von Richard had been passed the poison chalice with 4 threat markers already in the DR box and one guaranteed to appear at the start of turn 5 thus finding himself at the helm in the unenviable position of seeing the government and Reich fall.
With Black Friday triggering the depression at the start of Turn 5, and thus placing the 5th threat marker in the Deutsche Reich box and with 35 VPs to the DNVP's 26, Zentrum could afford to absorb the anarchy penalty and still come out in front. The challenge was to tip into anarchy before a successful coup d'etat from the KPD which was still a possibility. If only there was a way to "generate" another DR box threat marker....
At this point, in an historical twist, Comrade Simon of the KPD received a call from the "Boss" at party HQ with instructions to have the Revolution over within 30 minutes or the only thing being "overthrown" would be his dinner....
Having drawn an extra party card as a result of his particular Agenda card the KPD player was required to play an extra card prior to the regular impulse. Perhaps with the thought of an angry "Boss" clouding his judgement or the urgency of getting the job done, but not realising all of the consequences, the KPD played an extremely powerful card, "BVG Strike" at the beginning of the Impulse phase as he is required to do. This card is a timeline card and offers the player the choice of placing a token on the NSDAP track and resolving the effect, but then allowing them to use the value of every other player's action card that round for debating OR do nothing at all. An extremely powerful opportunity. The NSDAP effect that was required to be resolved was to place an "Instable State" threat marker in the DR box.
The KPD chose to accept the choice and the NSDAP effect was to place a 6th threat marker into the DR Box. The window to an unlikely Zentrum victory had been opened...
With the Young Plan diplomatic event available for resolution, any attempt to resolve this diplomatic action would automatically place a Violent Peace marker in the DR box and regardless of the result of the attempt would tip the Reich into anarchy. Playing first in this round as the Chancellor, Zentrum successfully resolved the issue earning 3 VP to further increase the buffer, anarchy resulted and the two government parties suffered a -8 VP each. Game over.
The final scores, adjusted for the anarchy penalty (-8VPs) for the two government parties (Zentrum and SPD) were:
- Zentrum: 30
- DNVP: 26
- SPD: 16
- KPD: 13
It was a close run thing. A lot of people find the unexpected outcomes in this game to be a turn off. The twists and turns in this game are simply amazing. Personally, I think this is what makes this the game stand out as the best political game ever. So much can happen, and it is all thematically possible. The game is not so much about the outcome, but the journey and it is an exciting and absorbing one at that.
Thank you to my fellow Weimaraners for sharing the journey.
Looking forward to the next outing in Weimar!
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