Marianas 1944:
Publisher’s Preview
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
May 2026

We like to publish games that you’ll keep playing for a very long time: a core game, playabale by itself, and expansions, that add more to the core game: pieces, maps, scenarios. You should come back to your games and play them, not stick them on some auction site after a single play left you cold.

The core-expansion method also keeps us on our toes: it’s hard to expand a game that sucks. We we want to be bringing you more ways to play, not falling back on “fix it in the living rules” and pumping out more eBay fodder.

Anyway, Panzer Grenadier: Marianas 1944 is a model of the sort of expansion we want to publish, and that you want to play (really, you do - keep reading). Jay Townsend designed the 30 scenarios as an expansion set for Saipan 1944. That’s the only game needed to play these scenarios – no pieces or maps from any other Panzer Grenadier game are required.

Marianas 1944 picks up exactly where Saipan 1944 left off, taking the fighting to the other major islands of the Marianas chain, Tinian and Guam. It turns Saipan 1944 from a pretty substantial game on the conquest of one island into a large-scale study of tactical combat throughout the Marianas chain.

The scenario set is similar to that of Saipan 1944: fighting on the beaches, fighting in the jungles, and fighting amidst the cliffs and caves. Both sides have tanks, though the Japanese machines are terrifically outclassed by the American Shermans and even by their Stuarts. There are also the ubiquitous banzai charges launched by the Japanese on all three islands once they’d reached the end of their tether.

Ten of the scenarios are set on Tinian, the smallest of the three islands but ultimately the most important – it would be from here that American B-29 bombers took off to devastate Japan, including the planes that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nineteen come from the invasion of Guam, an important target for the Americans not only for its strategic import, but because of its pre-war status as American territory that needed liberation from the Japanese.

The remaining scenario is easily the most awesome of all 70 in the combined game: the 1941 Japanese invasion of Guam. I like scenarios with weirdness within them, and in this one the weirdness abounds. On the American side are a handful of poorly-armed Marines (equipped on the peacetime establishment) and the entire Army of Guam – all seven pieces’ worth. Officially they’re the Guam Insular Force Guard, the territorial equivalent of the National Guard, but I like the sound of “Army of Guam.” Each side also has a gunboat, and this allows what I believe is the first opportunity for a Panzer Grenadier naval battle.

Many of those 30 new scenarios make use of two new maps, done by Guy Riessen in the same style as those from the Saipan 1944 game. They bring the Panzer Grenadier family of maps into the triple digits, carrying the numbers 100 and 101.

The “Tinian Map,” numbered 101, is a beach map with a new water-bound terrain feature, reefs (they stop landing craft, making the Americans go around them). The land portion of the map is taken up by canefields. Many, many canefields. The Japanese like their sugar. Map 100, the “Guam Map,” may be the most attractive of the six (counting Saipan 1944’s maps): it’s a hill map, and in a twist for Panzer Grenadier is features a stream crossing the board’s short axis.

And then there are new pieces, all die-cut and silky-smooth. There are 24 of them, featuring Japanese armed with submachine guns, a captured Sherman tank in Japanese colors, some more Japanese heavy artillery, Japanese and American gunboats, a flame-throwing Marine Sherman, Japanese truck-mounted anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, some pre-war Marines and, best of all, the entire Army of Guam.

That makes the second armed service shown in Panzer Grenadier in its entirety (following the appearance of Luxembourg’s entire army in a long-out-of-print Golden Journal). I’m sure it won’t be the last. The Guamanians are some of the best-looking pieces in the series, sporting their unique Guam coat of arms. The pieces themselves are die-cut and silky-smooth just like those in Saipan 1944.

This is a great expansion: almost doubling your fun for the fraction of the price of a new game. You already know how to play it, and you already know that you like it.

Order Marianas 1944 Here.

Pacific Island Battles
Fight for Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Leyte, Luzon, and Mindanao: six maps, 671 pieces, 151 scenarios. One hundred and fifty-one scenarios. 
• Saipan 1944
• Pacific Armor
• Mindanao 1945
• Leyte 1944
• Marianas 1944
Retail Price: $211.95
Package Price: $180
Gold Price: $144

Storm the Beaches.

Order Saipan 1944 Here.

Order Saipan 1944 (Anarchy) Here.
No rules! You’ll need the Fourth Edition rules from another Panzer Grenadier game. Earlier edition rules will not work with this game.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children.

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