Panzer Battles 2 - The Official Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Hi everyone,

There seems to be less and less comments each week when I post here, hopefully it's still of interest to you all as it takes a fair while to prep these reports. If not, I'll pull back their frequency and focus on finishing the game  

We continue to finalise scenarios and test some of the latest material. We have a couple of long awaited scenarios delivered this week and also some adjustments to existing work. For example, based upon play testing we have significantly shortened the full Cherbourg scenario from 88 turns to 42. This still covers multiple days, but with a revised day length and other tweaks. We also added a version against the German AI that can be played in 30 turns and fits into the large but relatively short category.

Some more mundane items such as documentation and 'shrunk' graphics are also being worked on and one of these days I'll count how many counters are in game - it's not a small number and every one of them have been done by hand. All in all we're making good progress - despite everyone having day jobs.

For this week's scenario listing we are going to be Commonwealth centric again. Montgomery's forces near Caen were viewed as more likely to breakout than US in the West and the bulk of German forces faced the British. This results in a lot of fighting in that area. All these situations are during the month of July, 1944.

Our theme photo for this weeks scenarios is as follows;






Here is the list of scenarios for this week;






The first scenario is another special from Jeff Conner. As mentioned last week, Jeff has done a heap of work on the British offensives after the landings and Operation Goodwood/Operation Atlantic is his next series after Operation Epsom. Of note, Glenn Saunders and Dave Blackman did some original scenarios here, but we have completely reworked both their Epsom and Goodwood work. Jeff has combined both Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic that commenced after the Canadians had finally cleared Caen. The attack by the British was preceded by the use of RAF heavy bombers  to disrupt the defenders. This proved to be reasonably successful allowing the British to advance on their left flank;






Here you can see the German front line - every highlighted German unit is disrupted due to the pre-battle bombing;






The next three Goodwood scenarios were created by Saunders and Blackie and were adjusted by Jeff. These cover segments of the Goodwood battle and are quick little scenarios.

3rd Royal Tank Regiment Part 1, is a 12 turn scenario covering the advance of the British left flank.






The Fifes and 23rd Hussars covers the follow on forces that pass through the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and continue south. This 10 turn scenario covers the situation the Regiment found itself in when the Germans caught the British in the flank due to the forces in the destroyed village of Cagny. This image shows what the top down graphics included in game look like;






The third small Goodwood scenario is 3rd Royal Tank Regiment Part 2. This short 6 turn scenario covers the regiments efforts after crossing the raised rail line and the push towards Hubert-Folie;






A week after Goodwood petered out, The Canadians attempted to clear Verrieres Ridge. This scenario has been well covered by JC's after action report. We have tweaked a few things since that scenario was shown to you all;






Moving away from the Caen sector, #0726 Percy covers the second day of the US attack of Operation Cobra. VII Corps had committed it's armour to penetrate deep into the German rear after the US carpet bombing smashed up Panzer Lehr. The Percy scenario is interesting due to the length of the map and the expected speed the 2nd Armored Division was expected to advance. This is quite a different scenario;






Three days after Percy, Notre-Dame covers the ambush of a kampfgruppe from Das Reich as it attempted to get back to German lines. This 6 turn scenario see the Germans trying to overrun the American blocking forces;






Last but not least in our Cobra trilogy, St-Martin & Roncey covers a similar action where the retreating Germans have to push through Allied pickets. This is another short 8 turn scenario starting at 4am.

 



As you can see there are some real variations in scenario length as well as different situations. These have all been fun to play test.

Thanks for reading,

David