| Panzer Grenadier:
Tunisia 1943
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2026
Panzer Grenadier comes to North Africa, with the U.S. Army fighting the Nazis and Fascists in the parched, rough ground of Tunisia. This is where the Americans first saw large-scale action against the Germans, and though they won the campaign, they knew that they had been in a fight.
Tunisia 1943
An Army at Dawn
New Zealand Division
Dragon Rampant
La Campagne de Tunisie
Big Red One
Retail Price: $187.95
Package Price: $150
Gold Club Price: $120
Conquer Tunisia.
An Army at Dawn
 This is the centerpiece, a complete game of the American experience in Tunisia, focused on the actions of the U.S. 1st Armored Division. You get 40 scenarios in our story-arc format, from the initial landings through the fall of Tunis, with battle games to link them together. We also see the British and French fighting for the Allies and the Germans, Italians and the French fighting for the Axis (it was a confusing time to be a French soldier).
As with most Panzer Grenadier games, the scenarios have a wide scope. There are tank battles, like Kasserine Pass. There are close-quarters infantry fights, and combined arms clashes. Most of the scenarios are what I’d consider mid-sized; six of the 40 use one map, but only one uses all four. All of the rest use two or three.
Read a Preview Here.
 The American forces suffer from President Roosevelt’s decision to ship the very best new equipment to the British. So although the M4 Sherman tank had already seen combat with the British at Alamein by this point, the American 1st Armored Division went into action with the inferior M3 Lee. Other crapulent American weaponry includes the 37mm anti-tank gun (the 57mm gun, actually capable of knocking out German tanks, was available but not issued), the M6 tank destroyer (the useless 37mm gun mounted on a Dodge truck; the M10 tank destroyer with a potent 3-inch gun on a modified Sherman chassis had begun production in September), and the T12 half-track tank destroyer mounting a license-made French 75, a fine weapon when introduced in 1897.
 American infantry is well-armed, and their machine gun platoons are very potent, but these are very raw troops and their leadership, morale and initiative are seldom very good. The Germans hold a serious edge in armor quality, with not only the Tiger but the PzIVH and PzIVF2 with the long-barreled 75mm gun, and the PzIIIJ with the long-barreled 50mm gun.
It’s the Americans against the Germans, in the desert, with tank battles. This is why you play wargames.
Order An Army at Dawn Here.
Order An Army at Dawn (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.
An Army at Dawn Playbook Edition: Downloadable Upgrade
Includes Snowstorm of Steel Campaign Study
You can transform your old copy of An Army at Dawn (the boxed edition) into the splendid Panzer Grenadier: An Army at Dawn Playbook Edition, bundled with Big Red One. It’s $39.99, but if you’re a Gold Club member, you can download for $27.99 using your Gold Club link (That’s the only way to claim your Gold Club discount).
Big Red One
 Big Red One is a Campaign Study with eleven new scenarios for An Army at Dawn, all focused on the 1st Infantry Division. The action picks up in March 1943, after micro-managing corps commander Lloyd Fredendall had been banished to Memphis and Terry Allen was finally allowed to command his division.
As Allen took full control of his formation, his regiments and battalions became more and more combat-oriented. By the end of our story, 1st Infantry Division is (in Panzer Grenadier terms) wielding better initiative, morale, and leadership than its German and Italian opponents. And these are the essence of Panzer Grenadier.
Read a Preview Here.
By the third chapter, these are not the same Americans that British soldiers branded “Our Italians.” The Axis have been pushed back into a small bridgehead around Tunis and Bizerte in north-eastern Tunisia, but that of course also greatly shortens the line they need to hold. The American division is now a first-rate fighting unit; the Germans, not so much.
Big Red One is not, despite its title, a very big book. But it is a deep and intense one, with a tightly-focused story and a great scenario set that carries on the story from An Army at Dawn by focusing on one of the U.S. Army’s foremost divisions. You will like it.
Order Big Red One Here.
La Campagne de Tunisie
 When Allied forces invaded French North Africa in early November 1942, the French garrison of Tunisia numbered about 15,000 men. French and American officers hammered out an agreement by which these troops would be re-equipped and supplied by the Americans to fight alongside the Allies.
French troops from across the colonial empire gathered in Tunisia to fight under British command as the XIX Corps, initially fielding two divisions and later three. And it’s that campaign that’s the theme of La Campagne de Tunisie. The book draws on An Army at Dawn. You get 88 die-cut, silky-smooth playing pieces and a dozen new scenarios; the French Foreign Legion makes its Panzer Grenadier debut, and you get the even tougher Moroccan Goumiers.
Read a Preview Here.
 The French fight against the Americans, they fight the Germans, and they fight the Italians. All of the scenarios are based on actual battles between the French and, well, everyone. This is no alternative history; we’d never try to pass off anything quite this strange in our fiction.
It’s the sort of package we love to publish here at Avalanche Press: an expansion that draws on just one game (An Army at Dawn), is based on excellent history and deep research (real, primary-source research), a huge helping of gonzo units and really finely made playing pieces.
Order La Campagne de Tunisie Here.
New Zealand Division
 New Zealand Division is a Campaign Study, with 10 new scenarios and 88 pieces, adding the battles of the 2nd New Zealand Division in Tunisia to An Army at Dawn. The New Zealanders took the lead in Eighth Army’s breakthrough of the Mareth Line fortifications in southern Tunisia, and in the rest of the campaign up to the liberation of Tunis itself in May 1943.
The New Zealand Division was an infantry outfit, and that’s what the pieces reflect. New Zealand infantry is rated the same as other British Empire foot soldiers; they’re on the same Table of Organization, with relatively small platoons but a dozen of them per battalion rather than the nine platoons of almost everyone else’s battalions. Where they differ is in the soft factors: leadership, morale, and initiative are all at peak values. And they have a battalion of Maoris, who are anything but soft.
Read a Preview Here.
The scenarios include a brief intro at El Agheila, and then follow the division in the battles for the Mareth Line (Operations Pugilist and Supercharge, waged in March 1943) and the hard fighting at Enfidaville and Takrouna in April. The division by this point had just two infantry brigades, but considerable British tank support helped the Kiwis push through some rather stout German and Italian defenses.
The scenarios use the maps and pieces from Panzer Grenadier: An Army at Dawn, and a handful of scenarios draw some pieces (British Sherman tanks) from Liberation 1944. We have the usual historical background, and scenarios woven together to tell the story of this epic New Zealand achievement.
Order New Zealand Division Here.
Golden Journal No. 56:
Dragon Rampant
 In October 1940, before his troops had even seen combat, New Zealand Expeditionary Force commander Bernard Freyberg asked his government to add a tank brigade to the infantry division already deployed to the Middle East. The 1st New Zealand Army Tank Brigade would never see action, and with Golden Journal No. 56: Dragon Rampant, we
correct this oversight, at least in cardboard form. It’s in our usual Journal format, with 24 new pieces (all of them die-cut and silky-smooth) plus eight new Panzer Grenadier scenarios so you can play with them. And of course, the story of the 1st Army Tank Brigade, and of New Zealand’s armored formations in general.
When the Kiwis had tank support, it came from British brigades, and one such outfit (usually 8th Armoured Brigade) often replaced the missing infantry brigade in offensive operations. Freyberg believed that his division should have its own, organic tank component. He asked for 1st New Zealand Army Tank brigade in August 1942; Britain’s Churchill government did not agree.
Read a Preview Here.
 The Valentine and Stuart tanks with which the Kiwi tankers had trained remained in New Zealand, with a few seeing action in the Pacific theater with the 3rd New Zealand Division. Only a handful of Stuart tanks issued to the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry to replace their obsolete Mark VI light tanks would enter combat in Tunisia.
Dragon Rampant includes those Valentines and Stuarts, plus a Matilda close-support tank (the New Zealanders had thirty of these, modified in New Zealand). You get to use them in Tunisia, and at home in New Zealand. The New Zealanders, kept in the dark by their Allies, appear to have actually believed their home islands threatened by Japanese invasion, and so they also converted their six Mounted Rifles regiments of the Territorial Army to armored units, and using Saipan 1944 you can defend New Zealand.
 Like most of our Panzer Grenadier Golden Journal themes, Dragon Rampant indulges in some alternative history, but it’s a very plausible premise. The 1st New Zealand Army Tank Brigade existed, and New Zealand’s battlefield commander asked for it.
Order No. 56 Dragon Rampant Here.
Gold Club members can use their max discount.
Tunisia 1943
An Army at Dawn
New Zealand Division
Dragon Rampant
La Campagne de Tunisie
Big Red One
Retail Price: $187.95
Package Price: $150
Gold Club Price: $120
Conquer Tunisia.
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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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