How Well Will CMBB Model...

[Shep]

Panzerblitz?

I mean, we've all talked about the minutiae of CMBB to exhaustion, right? The effect of the left-handed smoke bender on the fighting ability of PZKW XII and such...

We've even compared ASL and CM in no small amount of detail (hey! there should be an advance phase in CM, darnit!)

But let's go back a ways in wargaming history...

It's the early 70s, and Avalon Hill releases Panzerblitz, and all of us grognards don't even have pimples yet, right? But we dig it because it's soooo historical and has a high realism factor (nostalgic sigh).

Anyone here old enough to remember the particulars? I'm old enough to have been a crew member on the M60A1 MBT... in the Army (I think Marines are still driving Stuarts, but they may have upgraded in the past few years), so I do have fond memories of 'Blitz.

[Runyan99]

I think I used to have PanzerBlitz, but I never got a chance to play it. It may still be in my parent's attic...

As I remember, the scale was platoon level or so. I wonder, could you convert PB scenarios into rather large CMBB battles? Interesting...

[Agua]

Well, it had been out quite a few years by the time I picked it up as a teenager. I think the scale was 1 hex = 250m. The basic unit of manuever was the platoon. I think some of the soviet infantry units were modeled on the company level, though.

It was a blast for its time. Pretty simple rules too. I recall that it was referred to as "Panzerbush" amongst some players because the original rules, providing for no opportunity fire, allowed the players to run armour in and out of LOS and get off a shot during a single game turn. It was a fun little game though.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Shep:

Panzerblitz?

[snips]

But let's go back a ways in wargaming history...

It's the early 70s, and Avalon Hill releases Panzerblitz, and all of us grognards don't even have pimples yet, right? But we dig it because it's soooo historical and has a high realism factor (nostalgic sigh).

Anyone here old enough to remember the particulars?

What particulars do you want to remember?

I certainly remember Panzerblitz -- I got my first board wargame, "Afrika Korps", in 1971, and became an S&T subscriber in 1974. I found it curious that Panzerblitz was the best-selling wargame ever (a record that I think may have been taken from it by now, but I'm not sure). I never owned a copy, but I did dabble with "Tactical Game 3", the mini-game included in the S&T issue that had "Renaissance of Infantry" as the main feature.

The main innovation of "Panzerblitz" was its being the first boardgame to deal with minor tactics (platoon a counter). I don't think it succeeded in convincing anyone much about its "realism", even for those who believed in such things, especially if they had a miniatures wargaming background. There is no doubt that it provided an awful lot of gamers with a great deal of fun, though.

I think the platoon or company a counter level is probably the ideal one for players to be close enough to the detail of individual vehicles, yet still handle a large tactical force up to brigade or even division strength. Unfortunately, I think it's a level that has rarely, if ever, been done well.

"Panzerblitz" spawned a lot of other tactical armour games at the platoon/company a counter level. "Panzer Leader" (AH) and "Combat Command" (SPI) used much the same system, with improvements; "Red Star/White Star" (SPI) made the innovation of trying to simulate modern armoured combat, and so, a bit later did "Arab/Israeli Wars" (AH).

It became evident that some steps needed to be taken to model the command difficulties and confusion that are arguably decisive in tactics at this level. SPI attempted this with its SiMov/Panic system, an innovation in that the "soft" factors would be modelled separately, rather than used to whack up attack or defence factors arbitrarily. The family of second-generation PanzerBlitz games consisted of "Kampfpanzer", "Desert War", "Panzer '44" and "Mech War '77".

"October War" (SPI) then added the innovation of keeping track of individual vehicles and squads using strength-point markers. Then came a third generation of the Panzerblitz family, which included much more sophisticated morale and command control rules, and finally did away with the silliness of weapons effectiveness categories, instead doing the sensible thing and rating units ability to attack hard and soft targets separately. This third generation focused mainly on the modern period, with "Suez to Golan" and "Red Star/White Star 2" making up the "Mech War 2" package; "Panzer Battles", set in WW2, did not go down well, probably because of the very restricted number of scenarios in the magazine game format.

Frank Chadwick at GDW struck out in a different direction with the "Assault" series, which as well as "Assault" included "Boots and Saddles", "Chieftain" and "Bundeswehr". The approach taken to command control here was the use of command points, which TOCs could save up to use in one go.

GDW's second attempt at this level, again the brainchild of Frank Chadwick, was much simpler, and gave us the "First Battles" series. "Team Yankee" was the first (and to my mind the best) of these. As befits a book tie-in aimed at a wider audience than diehard wargamers, its mechanics were very simple. Command and control was acknowledged, but modelled very simply; the ability of players to engineer a turn flip-flop when they held the initiative could be a battle winner. Successive titles in the series were "Test of Arms", "Sands of War", Battlefield Europe" and "Blood and Thunder". An odd thing happened during the course of the development of this series; the declared scale went up from being one vehicle a squad a counter in "Team Yankee" and "Test of Arms" to being platoons in some the later games.

Victory Games' only effort in this area, "Panzer Commander", was set at the company-a-counter level, and focused specifically on battles around the Chir river in Russia. The sequence of play and command control system were to my mind the best ever done for this level, and worked very well. At last, it was possible for the Germans to out-maneouvre and out-fight Russians they neither out-gunned nor out-numbered. It is a shame the system has not been applied to other theatres, or, for that matter, the rest of the Russian one.

Finally, West End Games persuaded John Hill (designer of "Squad Leader") to design "East Front Tank Leader" for them. "West Front Tank Leader" and "Desert Tank Leader" followed. The key idea is a card-play system of command control, which, I regret to say, I have never been able to get to work satisfactorily.

That makes, I think, 27 games in the "Panzerblitz family"; if there are others, I'd like to hear about them. I own 16 of the titles mentioned above, covering all of the generations. Considerable ingenuity has been exercised over the years to model the way tactical command works, yet, to my mind, none of the methods tried entirely succeeds -- "Panzer Command" comes closest.

How many other people would be in the market for a WW2, platoon-a-counter, tactical armoured boardgame if a 28th attempt were to be published tomorrow?

Sorry it's a long post, but it's a hobby-horse of mine.

All the best,

John.

[Michael Emrys]

Sorry to disagree with you, John, but I always felt the platoon/counter scale was a bad compromise. It doesn't really give a feel for all the variables, such as facing, that enter into tactical combat as well as a single vehicle/counter simulation does. I would actually prefer to go the other direction and see a company/counter simulation with such things abstracted more convincingly.

Another thing, and I acknowledge that this is mostly a matter of personal taste, is that I find "monster games" where more than, say, a hundred counters per side are in play, an unsupportably laborious burden to "play". This is especially true of tactical games because the mechanics are usually quite a bit more complex.

BTW, I too own most of the games you mentioned and a few you did not. I got my copy of Afrika Korps in 1965.

Michael

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Sorry to disagree with you, John, but I always felt the platoon/counter scale was a bad compromise. It doesn't really give a feel for all the variables, such as facing, that enter into tactical combat as well as a single vehicle/counter simulation does. I would actually prefer to go the other direction and see a company/counter simulation with such things abstracted more convincingly.

Mr. Picky will now point out that several of the titles I listed -- the "Mech War 2", "Assault" and "First Battle" families -- do indeed include vehicle facing. In "Mech War 2" individual vehicles are accounted for, so this is little different from the technique used in "MBT" (Steve Peek, icky) where strength chits can be used to make one vehicle marker represent 2, 3 or more vehicles.

I tend to agree that company-a-counter is a more sensible scale, because a company is really the basic element of maneouvre that will tend to fight together and be more-or-less homgenously equipped. However, following John Hill's game design guidelines, one might prefer a unit-elimination platoon-a-counter game to a step-reduction company-a-counter game; and it certainly makes life easier for the designer to deal with the composition of infantry support companies, for example.

It is noticeable, though, that most of the platoon-a-counter scale games I've listed are ones I consider unsatisfactory, and my favourite two are "Panzer Commander" (company-a-counter) and "Team Yankee" (individual vehicle).

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Another thing, and I acknowledge that this is mostly a matter of personal taste, is that I find "monster games" where more than, say, a hundred counters per side are in play, an unsupportably laborious burden to "play". This is especially true of tactical games because the mechanics are usually quite a bit more complex.

Tactical games always seem to have a strong tendency towards complexity -- the "Kampfpanzer" sub-family of games had to be quite restricted in numbers of counters so that SiMov plotting was not too much of a chore -- but it needn't be so. Take a look at Courtney Allen's superb "Storm over Arnhem" and "Thunder at Cassino"; one is section-a-counter, one platoon-a-counter, and both can happily handle handfuls of counters on the map because the mechanics of the game are elegantly simple (I didn't include either game in the above survey because they are in no way related to Panzerblitz).

I share your horror of monster piles of counters, and this is perhaps another argument in favour of the company-a-counter scale; by cheating only mildly and treating arty battalions as companies (12-18 guns in a battalion, 10-22 tanks in a company, it doesn't seem too bad) I reckon you can represent an armoured division in around forty counters.

I'd dearly love to have a set of rules of DBA-like simplicity that let you fight encounters between brigades with 12-15 counters a side, or division battles if you fancied taking more than half an hour over the game.

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

BTW, I too own most of the games you mentioned and a few you did not. I got my copy of Afrika Korps in 1965.

Michael

I would have been five years old at that time, so still at the rolling-marbles-at-toy-soldiers stage of development. I think board wargaming was still pretty unusual in the UK in 1971; we've always been much more miniatures-based.

Oh, and I have got a couple of hundred games on my shelves apart from the ones listed.

All the best,

John.

[Michael Dorosh]

I owned West Front Tank Leader and MBT (in addition to ASL natch), but must admit - I never played them. I sold off MBT in mint condition just recently. West Front Tank Leader I still have if anyone is interested - but the point is, I think many games looked great on the store shelf but without internet sites to review them, many people bought more than they played.

John, your post looks like a 25th anniversary of SL piece published in S and T a few years back, I still have that issue kicking around. Lots of games I've never heard of, would be interesting to poke through your collection. Lot of history there.

I often wonder why Don Greenwood, James Dunnigan et al never show up on the CM board - or are they hidebound (or maybe simply - err, dead?) towards the cardboard monst....gloriousities they created?

Maybe they are all playing Avalon Hill's Squad Leader the computer game....

EDIT - I got my copy of Afrika Korps in about 1983, on sale at a toy store for I think 5 bucks.

[ August 14, 2002, 09:11 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Old Dog]

This nostalgic romp in tactical gaming wouldn't be complete without a nod to Yaquinto games and their (3) miniatures style games with the amazing little data cards on every counter in each game: Panzer, 88, and Armor.

Scale was 1 AFV or platoon per counter, movement was plotted and then simutaneously resolved. We played the crap out of those games when they came out (about 1980).

And wasn't Steve Peek the moving force behind Yaquinto?

- Old Dog

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Old Dog:

This nostalgic romp in tactical gaming wouldn't be complete without a nod to Yaquinto games and their (3) miniatures style games with the amazing little data cards on every counter in each game: Panzer, 88, and Armor.

Scale was 1 AFV or platoon per counter, movement was plotted and then simutaneously resolved. We played the crap out of those games when they came out (about 1980).

And wasn't Steve Peek the moving force behind Yaquinto?

- Old Dog

Steve Peek and S Craig Taylor were the folks behind initially Battleline, then Yaquinto. I don't know why, but I have never, ever been able to get on with any of their games, with one exception. This is odd, because the Battleline/Yaquinto/same people, different organisation games I've got in my collection are all about subjects I am very, very interested in -- "Air Force", "Submarine", "Commando Actions", "Mustangs", "Firepower", "MBT". All womderful subjects. All horrible games. The one exception, oddly, is "Machiavelli", a Battleline game entirely putside my normal area of historical interest, which I think is an absolute gem. I can't put my finger on what it is about Peek/Taylor games I can't stand. Part of it is probably to do with complexity, but "USN" was my first SPI game and "Air War" one of my favourites, so I don't think it's just that. More likely it's what I perceive as unnecessary or inappropriate complexity -- huge numbers of tables for cross-referencing huge numbers of factors smells of clunky design, and I cannot believe that, say, recording armament hits in "Airforce" or distinguishing between lots of different kinds of SMG in "Firepower" matters in the slightest.

I never played "Panzer", "88" or "Armour", as I learned to dislike Yaquinto games early on. However, as far as I'm aware, they aren't really part of the "Panzerblitz" family, which was all I was concentrating on. If I'd been discussing modern land tactical boardgames in general, you can be sure I'd have mentioned "Tank!", "Sniper!", "Patrol", "Firefight", "Tobruk", "Grunt", "Hue", "Raid!", "Platoon",... {drones on for ten minutes before falling into a light slumber}

All the best,

John.

[Shep]

I think I started playing Panzerblitz when I was 13 or so, 1973-ish. I discovered it after I found Gettysburg (squares, not hexes) in a Toys R Us store.

I regularly received a thrashing from older wargaming guys, but still like the idea and played somewhat regularly through high school... at least until Squad Leader came along...

Just for nostalgia's sake I'd like to see a PB scenario converted to CMBB.

We've come a long and good way since then.

I remember West Front Armor Leader in a negative light. The Assault series looked great, and I really wanted it to work, but I didn't like all the record keeping. I also mostly solo-played at the time, so that was a handicap on many of the games.

I was an ASL fanatic for a good while, but finally found got off the rules merry go round with the advent of CMBO. CMBO is like a 1 step program for ASL addicts.

[Runyan99]

My game had a JagdPanther on the box, and now that I reflect on it, I think I had Panzer Leader, not Panzer Blitz, although I understand they were very similar games. If I ever go home, I will see about digging it out of my parent's attic.