Avalanche Press
Presents
Ode to Tanks Even before there was an 119694_avalanche Press, the Panzer Grenadier series was intended to spawn a vast number of supplements in various forms. Many wargames in the past have covered tactical-level combat but used “generic” pieces to represent “minor” nationalities or specialist units. From the beginning, we wanted Panzer Grenadier to be different. And add-ons just seem, well, cool. It took a while for this plan to actually come to fruition. The first planned supplement, called Armata Romana internally, would have added the Romanian Army to Panzer Grenadier: Eastern Front. This project ran into a number of difficulties, mostly due to packaging and production. Most of its scenarios actually received playtesting, and it appeared briefly on our solicitation sheets to dealers with stock code and everything. We eventually decided to roll it into the new, deluxe edition of Eastern Front.
Soon after, we began work on a second supplement, initially called Northern Front. This one would add Finnish forces to Eastern Front and Heroes of the Soviet Union. Like its sister, it appeared on solicitation sheets and artwork and scenario design had become well-advanced. At that point, the very large Wizards of the Coast retail chain told us they would not carry any boardgame products not actually packaged in a box. Apparently they had had a bad experience with supplements from other publishers packed in plastic bags. This presented a problem; at the time, this was our packaging intention and we had no backup plan. Both projects went on hold. The Northern Front project then went through its first metamorphosis. Game counters are very expensive to produce, and we hit on a stopgap solution. We would use the work done for Northern Front to product a special, limited-run item available only from us, for free. If you bought two or three games, you could have a copy of this new “Lions of Finland” set at no additional charge.
It did well. In fact, it did too well. Problem was we had to print the stupid things on the high-end office printer, on sticky-backed paper. They ate gallons of ink, they took forever to print on the “quality” setting and we had requests for many times the number we’d expected. It was an easy decision to never, ever do that again. Soon after this debacle, Panzer Grenadier: Afrika Korps finished its development cycle. It came in with fewer counters than anticipated, and we had an extra half sheet available. We decided to use that to re-do the Finns as “real” counters, and Arctic Front was born. Arctic Front is a much enlarged product, with more counters and twice as many scenarios. I’d always had a fascination with Finnish accomplishments at war, having heard from my grandfather of his own experiences in Finland during World War II. While still in high school I’d written a Finnish variant for the ancient Avalon Hill game Panzerblitz, adding Finns to the mix. It appeared in an amateur fanzine and later in a slightly less amateur professional rag. Both versions suffered from the problem of not being very good. By the time I worked on Arctic Front, though, I had actual professional training in historical research and had designed many, many wargames. The scenarios this time cover a wide variety of actions and the new pieces have such odd vehicles as the Finnish BT-42 assault gun. Overall I’m very pleased with Arctic Front and it certainly sold well, outstripping some of our “real” wargames in sales.
With Arctic Front a success, now we looked for another similar project. I’m not exactly sure why we passed over the Romanians, but we settled on German mountain troops instead. This would have a broader appeal, and would tie in with more games in the series. The mountain troops got their chance when Chickamauga & Chattanooga came in under its counter allotment. Edelweiss used the leftover counters from this game, which included four double-sized long pieces. The mountain troops have the proper Tirolean green-on-gray color scheme, and carry the Edelweiss symbol. In addition to mountain infantry, we also included bicycle troops, captured 76.2mm guns and a handful of French-built tanks in German service.
German mountain troops fought all over the place, and we gave them scenarios from all over. There’s also a short sequence of scenarios from the German assault on Cephalonia in September, 1943, after which 5,200 Italian prisoners were massacred. I had reservations about doing them, but finally rationalized it. Italian General Antonio Gandin of the 26th “Acqui” Division and his men should not be forgotten.
While the German mountain troops in the scenarios are usually of very high quality (in several, we issue the highest morale ratings yet in the series, plus special rules assuring high quality leadership), Edelweiss also includes one of the worst outfits to see combat in World War II, the Waffen SS “mountain” troops. Two divisions of these men are covered in some detail, the 6th SS “Nord” which collapsed during the fighting in Finland, and the 7th SS “Prinz Eugen,” known by its own men as “the trash division.” The trash division gets trashed by both Soviet and Italian forces in the Edelweiss scenarios. The four “long” counters represented an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. We used two of them for the huge “Karl” 600mm motorized mortars. We put them in as curiosities, but of course players want to use them. We’ll include some rules and scenarios in the upcoming Secret Weapons book.
The other two went to Soviet river monitors. We had a generic one on a standard counter in the original Eastern Front, but the double-sized counter was just too good to pass up. These actually do get used in Edelweiss scenarios. Like Arctic Front, Edelweiss sold very well; in fact, it’s outsold Chickamauga & Chattanooga, the game with which it was printed as an extra. I’m not sure why it took us so long to come around to books as a form of boardgame supplement. We’d done several role-playing supplements before we did our first wargame book, Great White Fleet. It sold very well, but we let over a year go by before coming back with another, Tank Battles. Tank Battles had its title well before we’d decided on contents. The centerpiece was a huge set of scenarios written by Michael Perryman, all taken from “Operation Mars,” the Soviet 1942 offensive near Rzhev. These were very well done, but we didn’t know quite what to do with them. They became the centerpiece of the book. Dave Friedrichs, who’d worked with Dave Powell on Chickamauga & Chattanooga, contributed a set of Italian-Soviet scenarios from the late 1942 Soviet offensive on the Don River. We’d given over the back of the book to extra game pieces, something we’d tried with Great White Fleet. Since none of the other scenarios called for new game pieces, I added a pair of articles that did, one on German helicopter development, the other on the Austrian Army of 1938.
Both of the articles were popular, the cut-and-paste pieces less so. We’ll likely provide real, die-cut counters for both in the upcoming Secret Weapons and Phantom Armies books. The fourth Panzer Grenadier supplement, Jungle Fighting, came about with far less planning. Brian Knipple designed Semper Fi: Guadalcanal around Marine operations on the island. He never intended to include Army units, but became intrigued by scenarios involving the Army while working on the game. Brian has long studied the campaign and had written a lengthy background piece on it, back in the foggy days when he worked for me at a game company now best forgotten. In a sudden fit of game design intensity (these things happen to game designers; I’m not sure if the mania’s ever been analyzed but it’s called “hypergraphia” when writers do it), Brian designed over 40 more Guadalcanal scenarios. After they’d been playtested, we suddenly had an unexpected new product. This came in handy when some of our boardgames faced equally unexpected delays, and we brought it out in the late summer of 2004. It’s a fine addition to the game and fitting completion to the campaign. There are no new pieces with the book; instead we used the back cover for a small map of Makin Atoll. Our Great War at Sea: Dreadnoughts book with a counter sheet included was so popular that we’ve abandoned cut-and-paste counters forever, and future supplements will meld the book and extra-counter formats. Mike Bennighof Now
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