Yet More Panzer Grenadier

I picked up a copy of Panzer Grenadier: Fall of France plus Kokoda Trail and the Elsenborn winter boards from an artist who did work for Avalanche Press.

He mentioned that he hadn't yet been paid for his work for Avalanche Press and had received a bunch of games instead, so he was selling them on eBay. Very said.

What I Did During KublaCon

KublaCon is over. I ran two events, neither of which were terribly successful in terms of number of participants.

On Sunday morning, I ran a "Learning Panzer Grenadier" event. Only one person showed up, but he seemed to enjoy himself. We played a 12 turn nighttime urban assault of Battles of the Bulge. Because it was a nighttime scenario, I decided to use my new counter sleds to hide what units of both sides were in each stack. Units were revealed only when they came within sighting range, which in a nighttime scenario is only one hex.

On Monday morning, I ran a "Commands & Colors Fest", which involved bringing all 4 of the current C&C games: Battle Cry, Memoir '44, BattleLore, and Commands & Colors: Ancients. Four people participated. Two people decided to play a game of Memoir '44 with the new Memoir '44 Breakthrough boards. I played games of Commands & Colors: Ancients with two other players. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I was disappointed that no one was interested in playing BattleLore. I'm starting to work on some feudal era scenarios for BattleLore, such as the Viking scenarios Clontarf and Brunanburh.

Counter Sleds

I finally decided to pick up some counter sleds from Rdoxx.



For those that haven't seen them, they are L-shaped pieces of wood that are big enough to hold a small number of counters vertically, with the counters facing the player and hidden from the opponent. In essence, this allows you to make any hex and counter wargame into a block game. The sleds come in a number of sizes: 0.5" square, 5/8" square, 3/4 wide x 1/2" tall, 1" wide x 1/2" tall, or 1" wide. I decided to order a set of 100 of the 5/8" square size ($12.95 for sets of 25). At this quantity, Rdoxx gave me a 10% discount.

My idea is to initially use them for Panzer Grenadier. Having played some PG night scenarios (where the sighting range is just a hex or two), it's way to easy to maneuver your forces towards enemies you really shouldn't be aware of. I thought with sleds you could simulate the uncertainty of war by giving extra sleds to each side so that players could maneuver dummy as well as real stacks. And of course, you wouldn't know what was in those stacks until they fire. Having bought 100 of them, I'm sure I'll have enough to use in other games. I've seen people paint their Sleds, but I thought it would be best to keep them in natural wood so that you didn't have to decide how many of each color.

The other product that Rdoxx makes is 2.1" wide hexes, which can be used for hills for the Commands & Colors games. I thought about these, but decided to make them out of brown 6mm "foamie" material at craft stores. For under $2 one of these sheets will make lots of hexes.

Boulder Games Continues to Take My Money

Boulder Games, my "go to" source for online Euros and especially wargames, is quitting business. Unfortunately, they are selling off games at extra low prices, and I can't resist a sale.

I purchased a bunch of Avalanche Press's Panzer Grenadier stuff. I also decided that I would give their Great War at Sea series a try by picking up a copy of Avalanche's Great War at Sea: Mediterranean. For some reason, I find the big ships with big guns of WWI more interesting than the carrier actions of WWII. (I feel the same way about "Star Trek" vs. "BattleStar Galactica".) That was order #1.

I noticed the other day that they were selling off GMT games at special prices. I managed to hold myself back from picking up a bunch of stuff, but I posted a note on BoardgameGeek on their "Hot Deals" forum. Apparently, some people referenced my post when they bought their stuff, because Jim, the owner of Boulder Games, sent me a $10 gift certificate. So, I decided to take the plunge and pick up a copy of GMT's War Galley. I've been thinking about doing some ancient naval stuff and thought this might be worth it. Perhaps it will keep me from buying a couple of fleets of 1/1200 scale ancient naval miniatures. Of course, if they're on sale...

KublaCon Games

For me, the nearest game convention is KublaCon, which is held in Burlingame, CA over the extended Memorial Day weekend (Friday afternoon through Monday morning). I try to run a few games each year, since volunteers get their admission fee refunded. This year I've signed up to run:

- Commands & Colors Fest: I ran this event at Conquest SF last year over the Labor Day holiday. It's an open gaming format. I bring multiple copies of all 4 Commands & Colors games (Battle Cry, Memoir '44, BattleLore, and Commands & Colors: Ancients), let people choose their own scenario, set up and play whatever they like. Players can come and go as they like while I can hover around to teach the rules, answer questions, or leave people alone as they prefer. This event worked really well when I ran it at Conquest on Monday morning, the convention's final day. The last day of a convention, in my experience, is always difficult for events, as people are packing up and getting ready to leave. Yet, many people may be in for a short game of some kind. The Commands & Colors games work well for this difficult time slot because they're easy to teach, play fast, and each game only requires 2 players.

- Learn Panzer Grenadier: I've been enjoying the Panzer Grenadier line of tactical WWII games. Unlike many tactical WWII games, PG units are platoons rather than a squads or individuals, so the game makes some abstractions that make the game easier to play (e.g., there is no concept of unit facing). In addition, the rules are only 16 pages in length, and there is a huge wealth of scenarios available. My goal in this event is to identify some low-counter-density scenarios that only last 8-12 turns or so that can be used for teaching and let people play them.

Free game day at local store

My local game store, Gator Games was holding a free game giveaway yesterday. I own a few RPG (mostly out of fond memories--I don't currently play them), so I picked up a few things of interest:

- Starsiege introductory book
- Field of Daisies Harn starter adventure
- Dart Wars game. My work buddies are going to love this one!

I had a frustrating experience with Gator Games during a "20% off Wargames" day. I was looking for some Panzer Grenadier material, and found that their PG material was scattered in 3 places: in the boardgame section near the PG boxed sets (where it belongs), in the miniatures section, and in the back of the store in the white "where games go to die" shelves.

The good news is that Gator Games is reworking their store: Jean, the owner, was telling me that RPG's aren't selling well, so she is going to move wargames into the RPG section. Now if only they would move the YuGiOh and Magic players to the back of the store so that you wouldn't have to crawl over them when you're looking for boardgames.

Boring Wargames Tasks

Is I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of Avalanche Press's World War II game, Panzer Grenadier. At the time of this writing, I own 7 of their full-sized games: Battle of the Bulge, Beyond Normandy, Afrika Korps, Desert Rats, Elsenborn Ridge, Road to Berlin, and East Front Deluxe.

Now to the boring part: rather than storing the games in an endless series of boxes, I'm attempting to combine them all. So, far, I've been able to store all the maps, rules, and scenarios in one large box, and I'm working on storing the counters in another large box. For counter storage, I'm using Chessex's 16 compartment counter trays. For some days now, I've been sorting through all my PG counters and combining them into trays by nationality.

I still have some more to do, but eventually, I should have a well organized PG set which is easy to carry and set up. See, told you it was boring...

Panzer Grenadier Project

Panzer Grenadier is currently my favorite WWII game. As opposed to Squad Leader, the rules are only 16 pages in length and each counter is a platoon rather than a squad, which makes the game less fiddly. Still, I find the longer scenarios (24 turns or so) to drag on a bit. My wargame buddy Craig and I have been testing out the Laskas Rock-n-Roll variant, which speeds the game up a lot by reducing the number of rolls. So far, the thing I like best about this variant is that it halves the number of game turns and doubles unit movement, and does away with the intermediate "demoralized" unit state.

I think the game models leadership very well. A unit can't advance into "harm's way" without being activated by a leader, and in addition, each activation is limited to a single hex, or a leader and all adjacent hexes. If the adjacent hexes contain a subordinate leader, that leader and his adjacent units can also activate. So, you can do assaults, but you really have to set them up.

Anyway, there is a project underway called PG-HQ which attempts to enter into a database all the scenarios in all the modules: how many counters, how many turns, what units, what maps, etc. I volunteered to help out. I've been assigned the West Wall and Siegfried Line "print and play" modules. I've managed to finish 4 of the West Wall scenarios. We'll see how long it takes me to get the rest done.