Pieces of Edelweiss
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
September 2011

The second supplement we ever made for Panzer Grenadier, Edelweiss originated when Dave Powell turned in his manifest for his Chickamauga & Chattanooga game. A "manifest" is a list of all the playing pieces in a game, and experienced designers like Dave are usually given a budget with which to work: They can have X number of playing pieces in the game, in this case, three sheets' worth.

Dave's manifest came up short, and he insisted that everything he wanted in the game was already in the game. There were 70 "square" pieces and four "long" pieces left over. Opportunity had arrived. And so Edelweiss was born. Two of the four long pieces went to two versions of the giant German siege mortar "Karl," provided as an extra for hard-core Panzer Grenadier players (it's pretty much useless at the scale of this game). The other two went to Soviet river monitors, a theme we'll see again in 2009 on a much grander scale.

I used the other 70 for both German Army and Waffen SS mountain troops, and then wrote 20 scenarios using them. And thus we had a new product, Edelweiss, that at first we sold only directly to our customers. It wasn't really suited for shelf sales, as we just gave it the same saddle-stitched white-paper scenario book that went inside boxed games.

That was in 2003. In 2007 we re-issued Edelweiss with 32 scenarios and a comb-bound book, to allow for shelf sales. And in 2008 we ran out of pieces, ending its run since Chickamauga is unlikely to get a full reprint any time soon (we have plenty of pieces for it in storage).

But late that year, we introduced a new line of print-and-play games that customers can download right off the site and begin playing right away. We've released unusual supplements like War on the Equator that were highly unlikely to ever see print, and it seemed like a good way to get Edelweiss available again. The mountain troops show up in scenarios from a number of other supplements, like White Eagles or First Axis, and it seemed like a good idea to make sure the pieces would be available to new players. And going to the new format allowed an expansion to a full sheet of pieces rather than the very cramped set provided before.

And so we come to the third iteration of Edelweiss. The scenarios are almost identical to those of the comb-bound edition, with a handful of fixes and some changes to reflect the new sheet of playing pieces. It's always all about the toys — so what about the new pieces?

Foot Soldiers

German mountain organizations emphasized small-unit flexibility, and as a result the regular Army mountain platoon has slightly greater firepower than the corresponding infantry unit. During the initial mobilization, many Gebirgsjäger carried the Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher bolt-action rifle, a straight-pull weapon that could take a great deal of punishment and remain operable. As the war went on these Bundesheer hand-me-downs gave way to the Mauser 98 carried by regular infantry and some mountain troops, and then by later versions of the Mauser like the Gewehr 43.

Waffen SS mountain troops, on the other hand, performed very poorly in action and their low ratings reflect this fact. We chronicled their incompetence in some detail in our Sinister Forces [link] book; like most SS formations the mountain troops proved themselves much more eager to massacre unarmed civilians than to face enemy soldiers who shot back at them.

In the Army mountain formations, machine gun platoons were smaller than the infantry's support platoons with an emphasis on mobility. Thus they have lower firepower ratings but have the same movement allowance as the infantry, allowing them to keep up with advancing troops.

Special Forces

In place of the cavalry, motorcycle or motorized platoons found in the reconnaissance battalions of regular infantry divisions, mountain divisions usually had a bicycle battalion. These troops did not fight from their machines, but tossed them aside when fighting broke out. Equipped with a tough, folding bike these troops proved surprisingly effective and much more mobile than foot soldiers.

Considering the bicycle a backward anachronism, SS leaders preferred that their formations keep their motorcycles whether they suited the mission or not. As with Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany worked hard to project a modern image, and that included its armed forces as well.

Most mountain divisions formed ski units of varying sizes, though these never appeared on the official tables of organization. The men came from the bicycle battalion or from experienced skiers drawn from the other battalions.

Mountain divisions had a comparatively large engineer establishment, in view of the anticipated need to build bridges and other conveyances to haul heavy weapons and supplies through rough terrain based on Austrian experience in the Great War. In action they also provided to hard edge to assaults against fortifications or in urban environments.

Heavy Weapons

The Austrian army had first issued specialized mountain artillery pieces in the early 1860s, and by the time of the Great War Austria's mountain troops had pieces designed to be broken down for ease of transport in rough terrain. The German army at first issued a variant of the standard 75mm infantry gun, one that could be broken into six to 10 pack loads for use by mountain troops. But in the mid-1930s they ordered a specialized mountain howitzer that began to reach the troops in 1938. This was a much more effective weapon, and appeared both as a battalion support weapon and in the mountain artillery regiments.

Like other German units, mountain troops discarded their worthless 37mm anti-tank guns when they had the chance to incorporate the much more capable Soviet 76.2mm field gun in its place. Supplementing field captures, the Army also officially issued the weapon after re-chambering it to take standard 75mm rounds. Those used by mountain troops in Lapland in 1941 were taken on the field, using ammunition from captured dumps.

All told it's a fine set of pieces. With such an expanded canvas on which to work, we'll doubtlessly have to return to the topic with more scenarios someday.

Edelweiss is available for instant download now — just print and play!