Panzer Grenadier:
Under the Hood, Part 2
By Matt Foster
June 2008

Continued from Part 1.

Panzer Grenadier scenarios that don’t include lots of AFVs and transport — and even some of them that do — have some signature characteristics that players need to understand in order to be successful.

In the previous entry, I discussed the game’s pace, its morale-centric combat system, leadership, and the importance of mastering the art of assault. The next thing players need to consider is the game’s use of space.

Frequently, a scenario will give you a deceptively large amount of space to play. It’s deceptive in that once you give the victory conditions a good going-over, you’ll often figure out that most of the action is going to be concentrated in a fairly small portion of the map. All of that space may give you a number of initial options for deployment and maneuver, but once the shooting starts the area of the game map that’s really important can narrow down very quickly.

My example scenario, Eastern Front Deluxe: "Fontana Alba," is a case in point. Two maps present a huge amount of territory for the number of units involved. But the victory conditions make it pretty clear that the four town hexes are going to be the focus of the game.

(Granted, if the Romanian player wants to play for a draw from the outset he might decide instead to occupy the woods to the south of town, but our Romanians here are playing to win, and thus have to capture and hold the town. What kind of weenie starts the game looking for a draw?)

How does all of this come together in the game? Let’s take a look as "Fontana Alba" plays out.

The Romanians have a few maneuver options — they have to decide on a direction to approach the town — but their goal is pretty straightforward. They have to move on the town, soften up the Soviet defense, and then assault to clear out the defenders. They have some time to accomplish this, but not tons of time. The scenario is 30 turns in length, but from the 13th turn (0900) out there is an increasing chance that a Soviet counter-attack will arrive.

In this case, the Romanians approach the town quickly from the west and cross the river. Their cavalry draws up three hexes from the town. This is inside of the range of the Soviet machine-gun platoons, but outside of the two-hex range of the rifle platoons. The three-hex range allows the Romanians to spot enemy units in the town and begin the process of trying to soften up the defense.

The “softening up” involves bombardment fire from the Romanian off-board artillery (two concentrations of 12-strength fire), direct fire from their two 8-strength machine-gun platoons (stacked to allow combined fire), and “Hail Mary” bombardment from their 5-strength 60mm mortar platoon.

The Russians respond with bombardment fire from their own mortar platoon, which is located in the woods south of town. There is an occasional head-game as the two sides trade activations and “passes,”, but the Soviet machine-gun platoons in the town generally don’t respond with direct fire. They elect instead to hold their fire and await a chance to use opportunity fire at a closer range.

Ill-timed direct fire from the Russian defenders could essentially give the Romanians a “free pass” to an assault. As long as the defense remains in pretty good order (not a lot of disruption or demoralization results), the prospect of taking opportunity fire with a +3 column shift will generally persuade the Romanians that an assault is a bad idea.

Softening up a defense can take time, though. In this game, the morale boost of the Soviet captain keeps the defense steadfast until the 0800 turn, when the Romanian artillery finally has an effect on the units in hex 1004. The machine-gun platoon in the hex takes a disruption result and the rifle platoon is demoralized, which at last gives the Romanians an opening to assault without having to absorb a huge amount of opportunity fire.

After their artillery strikes home, the Romanians use follow-on activations to execute a two-hex charge assault with some of their cavalry. Opportunity fire from 1003 inflicts a step loss on one cavalry platoon (which then disrupts) and causes the Romanian 9-morale locotenant to demoralize, but they have enough troops that they can get a couple of platoons into assault.

As I mentioned in the previous piece, in Panzer Grenadier assault is usually a multi-turn process, and the attack on Fontana Alba is no exception. The demoralized Soviet rifle platoon fails to recover and flees to 1003, but the Red captain feeds one of his reserve platoons into 1004 to bolster the machine-gun platoon.

In the 0815 and 0830 turns, the Romanians work more troops into the assault, and also manage to send in an assault on 1003.

Results can snowball pretty quickly in assault. One or two bad morale rolls, or one or two good enemy morale rolls, can cause the situation in an assault hex to get out of control in short order.

The Romanians and Soviets trade assault results for several turns. Superior Romanian morale and more numerous leadership help them overcome the defensive bonus of the town and they force a number of morale checks. One unfortunate Soviet rifle platoon consistently flunks its morale checks and ends up eliminated after multiple failures result in two step losses. But the Red machine-gun platoons in particular prove impossible to shake (both pass a couple of difficult “M2” checks).

In the 0830 and 0845 turns, the Soviets suffer a total of three step losses in assault and inflict two on the Romanians (giving each side three step losses total). The Soviets feed some reinforcements into the assault hexes, though, and keep fighting while the Romanians maneuver to bring support fires to bear on the two hexes of the town that aren’t under assault.

The wheels start to come off the Romanian effort, though, in the 0900 turn. The Romanians in 1004 totally whiff on their assault result, while the Soviet defenders score a “1” against them in return. Both sides score “M2” results in assault in 1003, and the Romanians consistently flub their morale checks while the Soviets pass more than their share.

The additional step loss drops Romanian initiative to “1” in the 0915 turn and they lose the initiative roll. The Soviet captain defending the town then personally leads a counter-attack into 1003, which contains (at the start of the turn) a disrupted Romanian leader, a disrupted Romanian cavalry platoon, and two demoralized full-strength cavalry platoons.

The Soviets score a “1” result and the Romanians elect to reduce one of the demoralized platoons. The Romanian leader passes his morale check, but all three combat units fail. This results in two additional step losses from the two demoralized units (who both failed their checks by three or more) and the disruption of the third platoon as well.

Figuring in the results from the assault in 1004, by the end of the 0915 turn the Romanians have lost seven steps against the Russians’ four. They have no good-order units remaining in 1003, which is held only by a disrupted leader and one disrupted platoon after all of the recovery rolls.

The Reds begin rolling for their counter-attack on turn 13 (0900). They have to roll a “6” on a single die to receive their reinforcements. Each hour (four turns), the score needed to trigger the reinforcments increases by one. In this case, they roll a “5” on turn 19 and the counterattack sweeps onto the board.

By the time the counter-attack goes in, the Romanians have managed to contest three of the four hexes of Fontana Alba with assaulting units. The Soviet task at this point largely consists of trying to winkle the Romanians out of those assault hexes.

Sweeping away the few Romanian units that remain outside of the town isn’t a terribly difficult task. The stack of two Romanian machine-gun platoons close to the river bridge gets pounded to dust by the Soviet off-board artillery (3 x 10-point concentrations) and by the three Soviet on-map mortar platoons, before falling victim to a company-sized assault in fairly short order.

The remainder of the game then boils down to the Soviets managing their assaults against the three town hexes while the Romanians can do little more than hunker down and try to hang on by their fingernails.

The northernmost town hex is cleared in a couple of turns, as the two reduced cavalry platoons there lack any stamina at all in the face of a company-sized assault. Romanians in the other two town hexes cling grimly to their positions, but without reinforcements and with no place else to hide, they can only do so much.

It’s a close-run thing, but the Soviets finally manage to clear out the last of the Romanians with one turn remaining in the game.

Had the Romanians suffered slightly lighter casualties in their initial attacks on the town — say, two fewer step losses — they likely would have had sufficient strength to hang on in at least one of the assault hexes and force a draw. As it played out, however, the large Soviet counter-attack — aided considerably by good Soviet leadership draws — was simply too much for the Romanians.

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