PanzerBlitz

Box art

PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of tank, artillery, and infantry combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The hex-grid map comes in several pieces to be fit together for various scenarios. As the board edges are mutually compatible, the three sections can be placed in 48 distinct arrangements. Different scenario cards gave the players specific missions to carry out in order to achieve victory.

PanzerBlitz was designed to simulate a clash between two division-sized forces with units that represented companies of infantry and squads of tanks. This scale of simulation had never been done before. Nearly all previous war games had focused on larger units such as brigades, regiments, and divisions. PanzerBlitz was published by Avalon Hill in 1970. The game was originally designed by Jim Dunnigan, and was originally published in Strategy & Tactics magazine in 1969 under the title Tactical Game 3. As such, PanzerBlitz is the very first tactical wargame in the history of modern board wargaming.

Much of the strategy in PanzerBlitz derives from the rule allowing units to shoot or move, but not both, in a single turn. Additionally, the difficulty of outright destruction of units encourages players to use combined arms rather than a simple concentration of one unit type to defeat the opponent.

The level of detailed information in PanzerBlitz was astonishing at the time it was published. The game included technical information on the weight, speed, gun size, and crew complement of every major tank used on the Russian front. Additionally the battles - which were tactical fights - featured the detailed organizations of fairly small units, all the way from mortar teams to the trucks and wagons needed to give the units strategic flexibility. Much of this information had never been published before, outside of Army field manuals and partially classified intelligence reports.

As of 2005, the rights to PanzerBlitz are held by Multi-Man Publishing, which is, as of this writing, developing PanzerBlitz II, but there is plenty of interest in the classic version. New units and scenarios continue to appear in such venues as The Boardgamer, VAIPA, and Old Soldiers magazine, primarily through the efforts of Alan Arvold. There are even new maps and counters, created by Ward McBurney.

PanzerBlitz was followed by two companion games; one called Panzer Leader, which focused on the Western Front, and a game called The Arab-Israeli Wars which covered the 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars in the Middle East.

The Game

One of many situation cards that tell players how to arrange board and which game pieces to use

PanzerBlitz introduced a number of innovations to board wargames:

1. Isomorphic mapboards which could be arranged in various combinations to create different battlefields. This became a hallmark of Avalon Hill tactical games such as Squad Leader.

2. Armor units were represented by vehicle silhouettes rather than standard military symbols. As a result, the game was visually striking and reminiscent of miniatures games. Combined with beautiful bookcase-style packaging (which made it an ornament as well as a game), it advanced Avalon Hill's reputation for superb physical quality.

3. The game was not limited to the 12 scenarios provided with it, but included instructions for making a Design-Your-Own (DYO) scenario, or "Situation 13". The Designer's Notes even showed players how many counters it would take to make up a complete Soviet Tank Corps, though this would require purchasing additional counter sets from Avalon Hill. (Players were advised against such extravagance, however, and urged to keep "counter density" low.) This open-ended approach made PanzerBlitz an infinitely replayable game system, and was widely copied by subsequent games.

4. The wealth of technical detail was unprecedented, as was the detailed description of how this technical data was incorporated into the game. The Designer's Notes stated, "A glance at the PANZERBLITZ game components gives you the impression that you can pick up a considerable amount of historical data by just studying the game, much less actually playing it ... Unfortunately, you cannot take this data, as modified in the game design, at face value. Instead you must understand some of the decisions that were made about this game data before it was incorporated into the game."

5. In spite of the heavy technical payload, PanzerBlitz was easy to learn and play. The basic system was quite simple and it was up to the players to complicate it with additional rules if they chose. PanzerBlitz was a perfect expression of Avalon Hill's design philosophy. Playability and elegance were prized above exactitude. The game mechanics were abstract and aimed at giving a realistic "feel" for armored combat rather than a completely accurate simulation. It was free of pedantic detail, which Avalon Hill dismissively called "dirt in the system". This masterpiece was designed by James F. Dunnigan who later founded SPI, a competing company noted for its emphasis on highly detailed simulations.

"Panzerbush"

Although the abstract simplicity of PanzerBlitz attracted a wide following, certain unrealistic aspects were heavily criticized. Units in towns and wooded hexes were invisible unless an enemy unit was directly adjacent to them, even though those units may have moved to that position in full view of the enemy, and fired from it as well. This ability of units to hop from one woods hex to another without being seen or fired upon was called "Panzerbush Syndrome", and Panzerbush became a scornful nickname for the game itself. The game provided a cumbersome optional rule to overcome this, but the later versions of the system (Panzer Leader and The Arab-Israeli Wars ) provided much better solutions, such as "opportunity fire" and more realistic rules for spotting and visibility.

Panzerkinder

Besides the Avalon Hill sequels, there were several PanzerBlitz-style games that Dunnigan designed for SPI: Combat Command, Panzer '44, and Mech War '77.

External links

• PanzerBlitz at BoardGameGeek
• Panzerblitz, et al, Community Forums and Files from the owner of the old AOL PB website.