From: Alan Poulter <grognard@grognard.com>
Subject: After the holocaust PBEM finishes
Cc: ath

The After the Holocaust (ATH) PBEM that I ran has just finished. ATH is an old
SPI game on the recovery following a nuclear holocaust in the US. Up to four
players take a region and try to build their economy up to a Social State of
at least 2 (all start at 1). Economies are modelled by farm, metal, fuel, industry
and transport sectors all requiring labour and capital machinery for production.
Sites of production are situated in the areas that make up a region, and these
areas can be added to or lost by political (plebiscites) or military means. The
main variable relates to agricultural production, but depreciation of stocks of
goods is also present on a random basis. ATH is a complex juggling act to try and
balance production across the sectors and grow. A complete record of the game is
at:-

http://www.poulter.demon.co.uk/ath/

Unfortunately all the players lost, ie failed to make Social State 2 :-( They were:-

North East - Nathan Wagner (nw@hydaspes.if.org)
Mid West - Chris Fawcett (YankeeAP@concentric.net)
South West - Allan Bell (abell@apple.com.au)
Far West - Alan Poulter (grognard@grognard.com)

However you can lose but still get VPs for holding areas. This meant that Allan
Bell (SW) 'won' with 16VPs, closely followed by Chris Fawcett (MW) on 12 VPs
and Nathan Wagner (NE) and myself (FW) on 6 VPs. Note that we were playing an
optional rule giving FW 15 extra VPs because of its isolated postion, so I could
have finished with 21VPs :) Throughout the game everybody had their fair share
of bad harvests etc. Allan launched an attack on Chris just at the end which was
the reason for his 'victory'.

Only one major rules problem emerged relating to strikes, which was settled. Allan
Bell has been collecting errata in his ATH game 'Alabama' at:-

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4531/index.html

I enjoyed the game, and it worked well PBEM but running it was hell! All those
numbers :-( After my summer break though I ought to be refreshed enough to run
another game :)