The Competition & Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Panzer Battles does fall between them but is probably closer to Squad Battles with the added bonus that armour & other arms are well represented. The scale keeps it playable and it will be a great series for tournaments and PBEM's. There is also enough PzC DNA in the game for it to feel familiar but also enough innovations that there is some different twists in playing it.

David,

Granted I don't own it yet, but I see way more PzC in PB then SB from what I see (graphics) and have read so far. The combining and breaking down of units is completely new to me. I have read about PzC but I own at the SB titles, so the talk about Arty & air power usage are over my head since I don't play PzC or whatever the WWI game is.

Here's one for you. How is ammo handled? Example: Does an infantry platoon have unlimited Panzerfausts? In SB I can have a few and need to old fire/ conceal a unit till a T-34 drives by to fire off my one or two Panzerfausts and hope for a kill?

Also, how does PB handle Panzerfaust equipped platoons? The game is 250m per hex, yet the Panzerfaust has ranges of 30, 60, 80 and 50meters? I am guessing that the tank platoon would have to enter into my hex and then a type of abstract calculations would be performed? Some type of melee type combat?

Richie,

Sorry, let me clarify. When I say its closer to SqB I am referring to 'focus'. What do I mean? The tasks are simpler than PzC in that it is based on a daily engagement and will usually be something of the order of clear that hill, cross that river, capture that town etc. PzC has a different feel as it is usually a number of days strung together with an 'operational' feel with larger units, more complex logistics etc. The game system is definitely based on PzC with some features as mentioned from SqB. A lot of the play testers are from here at the Blitz and they'll confirm that it has a different feel to PzC's though.

As far as ammo, there has been some simplification from PzC. Units can be setup in a low ammo state in the scenario but will not go low ammo during the game. At a grand tactical scale of platoon/company and up to a day its assumed that units that don't start low ammo have a standard combat load. This was initially bought in because of the way isolation worked and the logic decided based on the battle covered in this first title. I expect we will do more work on this aspect in future title where supply issues are more of a central issue.

Referring to your Panzerfaust questions, Panzerfausts are built into the hard attack value and given a range of 1. It could be argued that with a 250 meter hex that is too long, but the unit one hex away is anywhere from 0 - 250 meters away. It could have been in the assault value (in hex melee value) but that means it has an effect on all units (including infantry) and that's not correct. It's worked ok in play testing.

David