Cold Steel
Tactical Combat in the 19th Century
A First Look
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
August 2026

Panzer Grenadier is at its heart a game of battle management. Underneath the shiny parts (armor/penetration interaction, artillery functions, etc.) it’s fairly simple, built as a study of how humans react in stressful situations.

That’s made it work with very little adjustment to address battles taking place a generation later, in Panzer Grenadier (Modern), and a generation earlier, in Infantry Attacks. You still need leaders to activate and move your troops, you still depend on initiative to move ahead of the other guy, your troops’ morale remains vital to success. And most of all, you have to execute combined-arms tactics.

Our newest entry into our family of tactical games, Cold Steel, is set in the mid-19th Century; we’re aiming at topics taking place between 1848 and 1878. Cold Steel moves back two generations from Infantry Attacks, so the engine needs somewhat more modification. There is no off-board artillery of any sort, no armor and no motorized vehicles. It’s all about infantry, cavalry and artillery.

The system’s designed to cleave as closely as possible to Infantry Attacks, so that players can pick it up quickly. This is supposed to be fun, not an exercise in memorization skills. Fire combat is up close and personal, and assault combat is still there, too (hence the “Cold Steel” series title). You still need leaders to move forward, initiative to activate ahead of the other guy, and if anything, morale is ever more central to success. Artillery is right there on the map, much like the field guns of Infantry Attacks.

What differs comes from the lingering aspects of linear warfare. You’re going to have to worry about your flanks, just like a real general, and formations now actually matter (we skirt around this in the 20th Century series, but it’s now unavoidable). Stacking is much more limited. Leaders are even more crucial, yet more vulnerable. But you’ll still recognize the basic game engine, and if we’ve done this right, you’ll be playing quickly after cracking the rulebook.

Units are battalions and half-battalions (a common maneuver unit during this period) and scale is 200 meters across each hex (maps will be interchangeable with the sister series). Cavalry squadrons, artillery batteries, and a few elite light infantry companies. Like its sisters, Cold Steel is designed to be a robust system capable of re-creating many different theaters.

While Cold Steel is derived from its 20th Century sisters, we are delving into a different age of warfare. You can start to see how technology will change the battlefield, as weapons that were brand-new just a few years before become outdated. Yet there are still aspects from an earlier age, in part due to institutional inertia, in part because that technology is still closer to 1814 than 1914. And not to be overlooked, mass literacy is just starting to become a reality; the rank-and-file are not quite ready for individual initiative.

One key difference is that few units deploy in what would become known as “open order,” where individual men or small groups move and operate independently. Light infantry sometimes did, as they had for the past century. But line infantry was just that: infantry that deployed in lines, to better make use of their firepower, and compensate for the relatively lengthy re-loading process of a muzzle-loading rifle (that had to be done while standing up).

Formations (brigades, divisions, corps) had great importance. Ad hoc cross-attachments happened, but rarely. Small task forces might be formed (the Austrians loved to do this), but bolstering one brigade with a battalion or two from another happened rarely (the Austrians did it at Trautenau; the Prussians and Italians even more rarely).

In Cold Steel, the units are battalions for the most part. An Austrian brigade in 1866 had six line infantry battalions (usually in two three-battalion regiments), one light infantry battalion, one cavalry squadron and one artillery battery. In Cold Steel, all the units of that brigade would be noted by a colored stripe, as are their leaders (the number of them varying by formation quality, as in the sister series).

Activation is by brigade. You activate a brigade, and the sub-units can move and fight (much like Panzer Grenadier/Infantry Attacks). Much more so than the 20th Century series, in Cold Steel it’s the brigade that’s the maneuver unit – you just have nine pieces to represent it. That also makes the game flow faster.

Unlike the 20th Century games, there’s also a chain of command above the brigadier, if the scenario’s large enough. An Austrian brigade can’t activate unless its corps commander is also activated and tells it to (the Prussians and Italians have a division commander in between). That allows the flow of the game to dictate at least some attention to linear tactics, since you can’t count on dressing your flanks with a later activation.

It all fits into the same chain of logic as Panzer Grenadier/Infantry Attacks. You’ll pick it up right away, if you’ve played either of those. The pieces are designed to be instantly familiar, just like in the other series: movement in the top right, direct fire (firepower-range) in the lower left. There is no anti-tank fire, of course, and no indirect fire. Morale isn’t shown on the pieces, and can vary by formation and scenario; this is even more important in Cold Steel than in Infantry attacks or Panzer Grenadier. Infantry and cavalry pieces are two sided, with reduced strength on the flip side. Artillery have limbered and unlimbered sides. Wagons endure, exactly the same as in Panzer Grenadier and Infantry Attacks.

Leaders are rated on the same scale as Infantry Attacks or Panzer Grenadier: morale, firepower modifier, rally modifier. They’re also usually bound within their own formation, but there are sometimes special leaders that can rally and lead anyone on their side (this is where royal personages earn their pay and spill their blue blood).

Once upon a time, a wargame artiste told me that game rules don’t matter, that players just care about what the game looks like. They’ll figure out how to play the game if it looks good enough to interest them. I still hold that the rules are the essence of the game, to the extent that I really try to avoid issuing new editions of rules for existing games. There are plenty of other designers and publishers who offer up a new way to play each time out; I want Avalanche Press to be the place for “the game you already know how to play.” And so, like our other series, Cold Steel games have a common series rulebook. One rulebook to rule them all. You learn one, you’ve learned them all, and can start play right away.

Cold Steel also follows the same mapboard conventions as the other series. They’re divided into hexagons to regulate fire and movement, and they’re geomorphic, meaning that you place the maps together as directed by the scenario instructions. Each hexagon is 200 meters across, and each turn is 15 minutes of real time (just like the other series). Most of the terrain features are the same as those in other games (roads, towns and so on).

We’ll kick off the series with three games:

Custoza 1866
In June 1866, the Royal Italian Army invaded Austrian-ruled Venetia. The huge Austrian border fortresses channeled their march into a killing zone, and there the badly-outnumbered Austrian South Army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Italians at Custoza. With four maps, 429 pieces (die-cut and silky-smooth!) and 36 scenarios.

North Army 1866
The Seven Weeks’ War of 1866 would be decided in Bohemia, where three Prussian armies converged on the large and powerful Austrian North Army. The Austrians dug in at Königgrätz, a peacetime training ground, and had things going their way – until multiple corps commanders ignored their orders and attacked the oncoming Prussians in the open.

This is the major campaign of the 1866 war, featuring the famous battles of the bayonet charge vs. the needle gun. We’ll cover the main event at Königgrätz in this game, and come back later for the others. With six maps, 605 pieces (die-cut and silky-smooth!) and 48 scenarios.

The Pope’s Divisions
Pope Pius IX (Pio Nino) was a rather belligerent pontiff. And he had an army, and he used it. The Pope’s Divisions has scenarios from three papal wars: 1848, against the Austrians (at Vicenza and Treviso), 1860, against the Royal Italian Army (Castelfidardo), and 1867, against Garibaldi’s Red Shirts (Mentana – the pope’s men actually won that one). I could spin an explanation that told you the new series needs a lower-priced title to serve as an intro. And that this is a topic never seen in a wargame. Both of these would be true, but they would not be accurate. We’re making this game because I want to. Two maps, 341 pieces, 24 scenarios. We may add a special urban board for Vicenza.

We’ll look to give Cold Steel the same type of support as Panzer Grenadier and Infantry Attacks: expansion books, Golden Journals, Campaign Studies, Historical Studies. The game is just the beginning.

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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 an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children.

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