PanzerBlitz PanzerBlitz? Am I kidding? No, actually. It, and it’s sibling Panzer Leader: Game of Tactical Warfare on the Western Frontwere two of the bestselling games in the history of the hobby. There are a ton of used copies out there still, and they are readily available for anyone who really wants one. But “why”, you may ask, “would I want one in the first place?” And you would do well to ask. After all, if I’m going to shell out a chunk of my limited gaming money, there are a lot of newer titles that 1) cover the same subject, 2) at the same scale, 3)that are almost all better looking and, 4) most importantly they are probably better games – aren’t they? In all honesty, yes, they probably are, but maybe not as much better as you might think, especially considering it’s been more than 40 years since PB was introduced.
PanzerBlitz was one of the first wargames I ever played - it was certainly the most complex game I’d played up to that time. My first gaming group owned three games: Richthofen's War, The Game of France, 1940: German Blitzkrieg in the West, and PanzerBlitz – not a bad cross section in 1973. I was most familiar with the France 1940 style operational mechanics, which seemed to be the most common wargame design mechanics of the day. PB was a major departure from this sort of design: the units were very small scale, they had no zones of control, they fired at different ranges – some at very long distances, and the counters were very busy by comparison. I loved the look of the game from the start, but unfortunately I was introduced to the game by someone who was more interested in clobbering a n00b than he was in teaching the game. I hated my first PanzerBlitz game experience. I disliked it so much that it was probably a year before another player talked me into playing again. This time my mentor took the time to explain what was going on. I still lost miserably (beginning a long tradition in my experience with tactical games), but this time I had fun, and I soon acquired a copy of my own. 52
It wasn’t long before I was setting up huge “use all the counters” scenarios of my own to play through the weekends. I was completely hooked. As the later games were published – Panzer Leader and The Arab-Israeli Wars: Tank Battles in the Mideast– I picked them up as well, and combined them into even larger battles. Even today, I own more than a dozen sets of PB/PL/AIW and have a long running campaign in progress. Except for a fallow period in the late ‘80s, when I was playing no wargames at all, I’ve played some PanzerBlitz at least once a month, since those early days.
Although PanzerBlitz was published by The Avalon Hill Game Co, it was actually designed by SPI (Simulations Publications, Inc.) <PERSON> was one of a number of games he designed that eventually became AH products. It first saw the light of day in the early Strategy & Tactics magazine as Tactical Game 3, where the familiar black silhouetted counters with the numbers in the corners were introduced. Tactical games, outside of miniatures, were uncommon at the time, and <PERSON>’s system was groundbreaking in many respects. Many elements found in today’s tactical armored combat games were first seen in PanzerBlitz: platoon size formations (companies for the Russians), units made up of a single homogeneous type (e.g., Riflemen, Engineers, Artillery pieces, Trucks, Tanks), targets have to be spotted by line of sight in order to be fired upon, it included multiple geomorphic map boards that fit together in a variety of configurations, and lots of scenarios (well, 12, but that was a lot for the day, and the rules encouraged you to design your own). Some miniatures based elements are incorporated into things like the weapons effectiveness chart and unit function tables, but they don’t overpower the game. Most of these elements, if not the actual implementations, are recognizable in contemporary tactical games.
But enough history; how does the game play?
The game is a simulation of small unit tactical engagements between the German and Russian forces on the Eastern Front during the middle years of WWII. The game scale is very small; each hex equals about 250 meters, each turn represents about six minutes of real time, units are Platoons and Companies. So four hexes is a kilometer, and a mile is about six hexes. The 12 Scenarios are generally 10-12 turns long, so about an hour of simulated battle time. 52