PzB North Africa 1941 - Feedback

[Strela]

Like Dukemat, I wish there were some longer Crusader scenarios. I cannot get enough of this battle. But I really cannot agree about the smaller Crusader scenarios being a waste of time. People should really give these a go as they contain a number of interesting and challenging situations. I have been working my way through them and they represent some of the most entertaining gaming I have ever had. And I recommend playing them blind - there are some great surprises!

Thanks Green, I agree!

Rick did a great job with these and there is a range of very different situations to try.

There are some bigger scenarios included with the game with the three day, 90 turn Battleaxe being the longest. That was 'easy' to do as the units were essentially in contact the whole time and had very little in the way of refit. There is also a two day, 56 turn Crete scenario(s) included as well as a 48 turn Brevity and 42 turn Beda Fomm. Dependent on whether there is any night action these are usually longer than a day.

As Rick mentions he is building a larger, hypothetical assault scenario on Tobruk assuming Crusader did not launch. This attack had been planned but the British assault impacted the planned operation.

The longest scenario we have done for any Panzer Battles game is the Operation Bluecoat ‐ Baffing up the Charlie Love which is 144 turns long - essentially 5 days. This scenario was the reason we built the variable VP's into North Africa as we learned from that scenario that static VP's didn't work the way we wanted.

I'm really hopeful I will build my dream version of Operation Bluecoat with variable VP's for the next Normandy patch. That scenario has been some of my best playing experience for a long time and would be even better with a mix of variable VP's pushing the Allies to drive to the hills to the south and for the Germans to be rewarded on holding the line for as long as feasible. The best thing is that you can prevent the Allies from getting a heap of points for just clearing the front lines.

One final comment - not that we want to go back and redo scenarios too often, but we have realised that we have some formations in the wrong place in Brevity and more importantly, some amazing new information on Battleaxe. This battle is actually very hard to get really in-depth information on, but we have been working with an author who has written the most amazing history based upon primary sources. I plan to validate our setups based upon that once we get all the information.

David