informal history of pb

7/27/2019 Informal History of PB

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article is ahistory of the developmentof the game PanzerBlitz,

starting back in the late s. Mysource material stems from many

period gaming magazines from thelate Sixties to the early Seventies.

A few, like Te GeneralVol. , No. and Strategy & acticsNo. , haveoffered great designers notes andD-ElimVol. , No. even printeda genealogy of the successive gamedesigns that led to PanzerBlitz.Many others only offered little tid-bits of information, usually in theirrespective gaming news sections

which, when taken individually, sayvery little, but when taken all to-gether, really round out the infor-mation supplied by the other majorarticles.

HIGHWAY

I that thefirst design that led to PanzerBlitzwas a test game called Highway. In early , James Dunniganwas riding high on the popular-ity of his Jutland game that hadbeen released the year before by

Avalon Hill. In that game he suc-cessfully converted naval miniaturesto a semi-boardgame state. Havingdone that, he decided to see if hecould do it again, this time with ar-

mored fighting vehicles. Indeed, ithad been something he had wantedto do for a few years but, at thattime, collecting hard data on sand their guns was a difficult thing

to do. Hard data just was not veryavailable and he had to rely on in-formation gleaned f rom the variousarmor miniature rules that were inexistence at the time, such as Schw-erpunkt and the recently released

Angriff.From these he devised a sim-

ple little game which he eventu-ally called Highway . Here, eachplayer was provided with a number

of large by inch counters of dif-ferent types of s. Te time period

was , using the available tanksof the time. As the setting was theEastern Front, these s were Ger-man and Russian. For the Germans

he used s, Panthers, igers(both and ), Nashorns, s,and halftracks. For the Russians heused -cs, -/s, -s, -s, -s, -s, and Lend-Lease

Shermans and halftracks. Eachcounter contained a top view of the

vehicle in question, its name or des-ignation, the Movement Factor onthe upper area of the counter, andthree numbers along the side, giv-ing the maximum armor thicknessof the front, side ,and rear of the

vehicle. Tere was no infantry or ar-tillery, just s, at first.

Play was simple. Tere was no

board. Highway was played onthe floor or a very large table, justlike Jutland. Te game turn had twophases: movement and fire. Duringthe movement phase the players

would first write down the plannedmovement of their counters on apiece of paper and then all players

would move their units simultane-ously, following the directions oftheir orders. Te number on thecounter was the number of inchesit could move in a turn. It cost oneinch of movement to turn up to degrees and two inches of move-ment to turn from to de-grees. Physically, the counters weremoved using a straightedge ruler.Movement was voluntary; a playercould move some, all, or none of his

ANINFORMALHISTORYOFTHEDEVELOPMENTOF

PANZERBLITZBY

ALANR. ARVOLD


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I S H PB

counters as he pleased. In the fir-ing phase, players would determinethe range between their countersand their intended targets using a

yard stick or a tape measure. Ve-

hicles with turrets could fire in anydirection, while vehicles with hull-mounted guns could only fire inthe forward arc radiating from thefront side of the counter. Players

would then consult the firing tablesprovided in the game. Each table

was for a certain type of gun carriedby the s, thus more than one ve-hicle could use the same table. Tey

were divided into four columns: the

first was for the range in inches be-tween the firing unit and the target;the second was the dice roll to seeif the firing unit hit without havingmoved in the previous movementphase; the third was the dice rollto see if the firing unit hit and hadmoved in the previous movementphase; and fourth was the armorpenetration at the given range. Te

players would first roll to see if theyhit the target vehicles. Tose thatdid would go to penetration col-umn to see if they pierced the target

vehicles armor or not, depending

on where it was hit (front, side, orrear). If the tank was penetrated, itwas flipped over to its other side tosignify that it was a wreck. Other-

wise the tank was still in the game.Line of sight/fire was very simple asthere was no terrain; vehicles and

wrecks were the only things thatcould block /. Visibility wasunlimited; the guns could all reachthe maximum ranges on their re-

spective firing charts.Te game proved popular amongthe playtest crowd at Poultron Press;in fact, several of them brought

woods and buildings from regularminiatures tables in an effort to in-troduce terrain into the system, butall they proved to be were places tohide behind. One early complaintconcerned the halftracks, the ma-

chine guns on which could not pen-etrate any tank: they thus becamemere targets. Dunnigan solved thatproblem by giving them anti-tankguns to transport. Te guns were

on one inch square counters with atop view of the gun in question andthe gun caliber printed in millime-ters. Te Russians got the .mmgun and the Germans received themm and a few mm guns aswell. Simple rules for transportingand loading/unloading were de-

vised. Te anti-tank guns fired inthe same direction as the assaultguns with the mm being able to

fire in all directions by virtue of itsanti-aircraft mounting. In this state,the game proved to be so popularthat Dunnigan started to devise a

version of it for the North Africantheatre, but no hard copy was ever

made for play testing.

STATEFAR M

I of one

of the playtesters, Edi Birsan, madea boardgame version of Highway .He presented it to James Dunniganwho, as was his wont, polished it upa bit and gave it a new title: StateFarm . Because the game wasplayed on a hexboard, terrain couldnow be fully added, which entailedthe formulation of new sightingrules. Te counters were shrunkdown to one-half inch size with the

same pictures and values on themas previously. Te firing charts wereeasy to convert by merely changingthe distance in inches to hexes. Temovement factors on the countersdid not change but now becamemovement points with each type ofterrain hex requiring a certain num-ber of them to enter. As playtestingcontinued through the summer,


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more features were added to thegame. Infantry appeared in squadsand, of course, a whole set of newrules and firing tables to accompanythem. By the fall artillery was intro-duced, first as on-board counters

with more anti-tank guns, infantryguns, and mortars, then later in the

form of off-board units for the biggerartillery pieces. Tat same Autumnmore rules came into into play, suchas minefields, fortifications, weather,morale, and command and control,to name a few. Dozens of vehicles

were added to reflect the differenttime periods on the Eastern Front.By the end of the year the playtestrulebook had become several inchesthick and the game had become ex-

cessively realistic to the point thatit was almost impossible to play. Inmany ways State Farm was the

Advanced Squad Leader of its day,the difference being that advancesin game design made was play-able in when it came out in ,

whereas in State Farm wasnot. It was never published beyonda few playtest copies.

It is interesting to note that sev-eral aspects of State Farm had alasting effect in the future designsof tactical games in the series. Forexample, units that were in cover-

ing terrain, or out of the if inopen terrain, were not placed onthe board until they were spotted.In open terrain that was easy: ifthe unit was within the maximumsighting distance it was automati-cally seen and placed on the board.Units in covering terrain (woodsand buildings) had to be spotted.Spotting occurred either if you hada friendly unit in a hex adjacent to

the hidden unit, or if the hiddenunit fired. Spotting was automaticwhen adjacent, whereas spotting afiring unit was based on the resultsfrom a spotting table: the fartheraway the spotting units were, theless chance they had of seeing thefiring unit by its muzzle flashes. Techances of spotting were based on asliding scale and by the time you gotout to a real life distance of me-

ters, the chances were already lessthan per cent. Tis would havean impact on the spotting rules ofPanzerBlitz later on.

Another interesting feature wasthe devastating firepower of the off-board artillery. Te indirect fire rules

were extensive, but it was the effectsof scoring a hit in the target hexthat was so devastating: artillery ofthe mm variety had a two-thirds

chance of killing the unit in the hex,artillery of the mm variety hada five-sixths chance, and artilleryof the mm variety had an auto-matic kill on their effects tables. Ofcourse die roll modifiers for terrainand fortifications in the target hexcould alter the results to no effect,even with a mm piece. Te re-sults were based on the bursting ra-

dius of the round in question (eachartillery unit would fire one roundper attack) and the odds of the saidunit being within that radius. Tearea in the hexes was quite small

and only one unit be it vehicle,gun, or infantry squad could bein a hex at a time (there was nostacking). Te combat results in thegame were still either no effect or

destroyed. Even armored vehiclescould be killed, based on the prem-ise that a round that either scored adirect hit (a rarity) or that landednearby (most likely), would damagethe tank enough to get a mobility

kill and thus take it out of the game.Of course artillery of a lesser caliber(mostly the on-board artillery units)had less of a chance of scoring a kill.

All this would have a profound ef-fect when Dunnigan would figureout the attack factors of the big ar-tillery units in PanzerBlitz that wenow know so well.

Yet another interesting featurewas Dunnigans attempt at Com-

mand and Control. Each player hadto assign his units to task forces of


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up to six units each (these were es-sentially platoons as players tendedto assign the same type of units toeach group). Each task force was as-signed an order (Move, Direct Fire,Indirect Fire, etc.), which it then hadto perform for a period of six turns.During that time the players couldnot change the orders that they hadgiven to their groups, which had tocarry them out regardless of whathappened elsewhere in the game.

At the end of the six-turn period,players could assign new orders totheir groups for the next six turns.

During subsequent revisions ofthe game, the German players weregiven the option of changing theorders for any or all of their taskforces if they passed an initiativecheck on yet another of the innu-merable charts. For the last revisionof the game, this whole Commandand Control procedure was droppedas it had become too cumbersomeand slowed play to a crawl. How-ever, Dunnigan saved and modifiedthe procedure and it would be seenagain in the Simultaneous Move-ment actical Games introduced by in the mid-Seventies.

State Farm proved to be even

more popular with the playtestersat Poultron Press than Highway, even if it did eventually becameunplayable. It was modified severaltimes, although all of its versionstended to be rather similar to oneanother. It should be noted that inthe last version, Dunnigan gave thecounters attack, range, and defensefactors in order to do away with the

need for firing charts. While not al-together successful, this would proveto be a step in the right directionand it can be said that this innova-tion gave birth to the now-famous

Dunnigan System of counter valuedetermination. While State Farm wasnt really playable, it did showthat tactical level combat couldbe simulated in a board game andfrom this system came the acti-cal Game Series in , in whichDunnigan started a whole new se-ries of experimental land games tocover different periods throughouthistory. Tese were certainly suc-

cessful: actical Game becameGrenadier; actical Game led toGrunt; actical Game becameCenturion; actical Game be-came Renaissance of Infantry; ac-tical Game became Dark Ages;

actical Game became Phalanx;actical Game eventually ledto Soldiers; and last, but not least,good old actical Game became

PanzerBlitz.

TACT ICALGAME

A , Dun-nigan started on a redesign of StateFarm . He decided that the tac-tical level of single vehicles, squads,and artillery pieces was too complexto be put into a playable format ina boardgame, so he raised the levelto platoon-size elements, seeing asthe platoon was the basic tacticalunit in Western armies. However,

for the Russians he had to go to thecompany level as this was the basictactical unit in their army. o ac-commodate units of these sizes, thescale of the board would have to in-

crease. He chose a scale of me-ters per hex. Te board could nowhave small towns in hexes instead ofindividual buildings, forests insteadof small clumps of trees, and hills

would occupy a smaller area on theboard, greatly easing line of sightcomplications. Also with hexesof this size, multiple platoons andeven companies could fit into themand thus stacking was introduced

into the game.It was at this time that the Dun-nigan system of determining coun-ter values developed fully, largelythrough trial and error. For example,Dunnigan first based his anti-armorvalues on the penetration values of rounds at , meters, butquickly found that this did not workfor smaller guns whose penetration

values were too low at that range.

Given that the majority of the ar-mor battles occurred at metersor less during the war, he loweredthe determination range to thatdistance. Tis brought the of thesmaller guns up to a more accept-able level while the bigger guns didnot increase that much. Te rangefactors were based on the maximumranges of the penetration tablesthat he was using, which is why

the tanks and anti-tank guns hada longer range factor than they doin PanzerBlitz. Te defense factor

was based on the maximum armorthickness of the vehicle in question


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I S H PBand the movement factor was sim-ply the maximum speed of the ve-hicle divided by three. Te countersstarted to show the more familiar

Z pattern of the factors but with

the factors in different positionsthan what would be customary lateron. Te vehicle picture was a crudedrawing of the top view of the tanksor tank destroyers or a side view ofthe transportation vehicles.

Te rules, while very simple, wereambiguous in some places andcontradictory in others. Te turnsequence was also simple: the Rus-sians moved their units, then both

sides fired, removing destroyed ve-hicles at the end of the phase; thenthe Germans moved their units, andboth sides fired again, removing de-stroyed units at the end of the phase.Infantry was represented by rifleand engineer unit-counters. Artil-lery units were also represented, butonly the on-board variety (mortars, guns, infantry guns) from StateFarm ; there was no off-board ar-

tillery. Te factors for infantry andartillery were there but the attackand defense factors for mortars andfield guns tended to be more pow-erful than they would be in theirfinal form in PanzerBlitz. Line ofsight and visibility rules were vir-tually non-existent: you could seeinto a covering terrain (town and

woods) hex but not throughit. Tecombat results table still only had

two results: No Effect or Destroyed.Te Overrun attack made its firstappearance in a crude form. Tere

were six hypothetical situationsprovided in the game.

Tere were many faults with ac-tical Game but it must be remem-bered that it was not an end productbut rather a test bed for further de-

velopment. It proved to be popular

as was seen in its initial sales. Afterits release in the summer of , itsold over copies to outside buy-ers, besides the copies that went tothe playtesters. And Avalon Hill,

always with an eye open for a goodselling title, kept a more than casualwatch on the development of the

game.

REVISEDTACTICALGAMEB Dunniganhad received enough feedback on

actical Game to see where thebugs in the game were and he be-gan to work them out. About thistime the Dispersed and DoubleDispersed results appeared on the and the criteria worked out asto what each result represented in

real life. Te Close Assault attackalso made its appearance about thistime. Te Dunnigan System contin-ued to evolve as modifiers began toappear which altered the attack anddefense factors of a lot of vehiclesto account for the overall tacticsthat a unit used. Te range factor ofmost units with anti-tank guns wasreduced to reflect their maximumeffective ranges, which were usu-

ally less than the maximum rangeslisted on the penetration charts. Teattack factors of the on-board artil-lery were refigured and frequently

were substantially reduced to reflectadditional factors not previouslyconsidered before. Te off-board ar-tillery of State Farm was finallyintroduced in counter from. Weap-ons classes were at last established

for the different main weapons ofthe various types of units. Te evo-lution of the game system was con-tinuing.

As mentioned previously, Avalon

Hill was keeping an eye on the de-velopment process. Tey had justreleased the game Kriegspiel in thespring of and were looking fora game for their fall release beforeChristmas. While they had severalcandidates such as Luftwaffe andOrigins of World War wo, theywanted to delay those for anotheryear; they wanted a sure seller inthe fall as Kriegspiel was not selling

all that well. Representatives fromAvalon Hill approached the peopleat Poultron Press, now renamed (Simulations Publications Inc.), atthe Stationary Show in New

York and negotiated a deal whereby would develop the game to

Avalon Hills specifications, turningit over to them when they were fin-ished, with a September dead-line. needed the money, as they

had recently purchased the maga-zine Strategy & actics. While buy-ing the magazine was a bargain (itonly cost them one dollar), puttingit out was another matter.

During the summer of thedevelopment of the game systemfollowed two lines. Te first wasPanzerBlitz, which was a simplifiedversion of the revised actical Game system. Te biggest difference be-

tween them was that in the former,a unit could only fire once in a turn,

whereas in the latter, a unit couldfire several times. Tis made the

situations very bloody; the stan-dard -turn scenario rarely lastedpast urn . Avalon Hill wantedthis part toned down so that a situ-ation could last the duration of theturns allotted to it. Te other line of


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I S H PBdevelopment would become acti-cal Game , which was their West-ern Front version of the system.

Te revised rules and counterswere largely done by the summer

of , so emphasis was placed onthe development of new scenarios.However, to give players a tasteof what was to come in the newPanzerBlitz game, a small versionwas inserted in Strategy & acticsmagazine No. in the summer of. Te rules were close to theirfinal form (only a few rough spotswere left to smooth out and blockshad yet to added to the game) and

the counters were largely done too(enough were supplied to play asimple scenario on the game map inthe magazine). At first a single biggameboard was considered but withmultiple scenarios it was decidedthat it would be better to go withgeomorphic gameboards which canbe set up in a multitude of ways.

Work on the scenarios was headedup by Robert Champer; Redmond

Simonsen did all of the artwork forthe game. By September of thegame was finished and turned over

to Avalon Hill.

PANZ ERBLITZ

A , PanzerBlitzwas published in October of .Within months of its release, AvalonHill was being flooded with rules

questions and complaints about un-balanced scenarios. o handle therules questions, Avalon Hill used itsown game experts to answer themin the Question Box in Te GeneralMagazine. Some of these answers,however, were at odds with the in-terpretations by the people at

who originally worked on the game.Te two main points of conten-

tion were the ability of CommandPosts to perform their indirect firefunction while mounted and thequestion of whether a transportunit with movement points left

over after unloading its passengermight continue moving. AvalonHills answers were that a maynot perform its indirect fire func-tion while mounted in a transportunit and that transport units maycontinue moving after droppingoff a passenger units if they havemovement points left over. sinterpretations, however, were thata may employ its indirect fire

function while mounted, providingthe transport unit does not move onthe turn that it is doing so, and thattransport units may not move anyfurther after their passengers havedismounted.

argued that since they werethe original designers of the game,they had the sole right to answerany game questions; Avalon Hillcountered by saying that since

they had bought the game, ruledecisions were theirs to make. Tiscaused considerable rancor between

the two companies, but is was soonsmoothed over when Avalon Hillasked to correct the faults in thePanzerBlitz scenarios, acknowledg-ing that they were in a better posi-

tion to fix what they had designedin the first place.Tere were problems in seven of

the twelve scenarios. In four of them(Situations , , , and ) therewere typo errors and four of thescenarios were unbalanced in favorof one side either because of the setup instructions (Situations , , and) or because of the victory condi-tions (Situation ). In yet another

scenario, neither side could win be-cause both players would inevitablyspend the whole game jockeying forposition in middle of the board and

waiting for the other side to attack,thus there was little or no combatand the game would usually end upin a draw (Situation ). Dunniganlooked at the situations in questionand came up with a list of correc-tions which he sent back to Avalon

Hill. For the most part Avalon Hillfollowed these but in a few of thescenarios added corrections of their


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I S H PBown. Again this caused some fric-tion between the two companies,

which only cooled down whenAvalon Hill bought another title,France , which they published

in the spring of .One might wonder how, if a com-pany spent an entire summer de-signing scenarios for a game, there

would still be flaws in them oncethe game was published. o answerthis, one must realize that playtest-ers usually run a given scenario tosee if the operation that is beingsimulated can indeed be carriedout during the course of the sce-

nario. Tey are not looking for anygame-winning strategies. A case inpoint is Situation . In the original

version, the Germans had six minesand eight blocks. During the play-testing, the German players woulduse the blocks on the road throughBoards and and use the mines intheir final stand position on Board, which would be the appropriateuse of mines and blocks in a de-

laying action. However, once thegame was published, gamers look-ing for the game winning strategyin the scenario quickly found thatthe mines and blocks set up in a lineacross a clear area on Board be-came a line that the Russians sim-ply could not crack, and thus, theyhad no chance of winning the sce-nario. In answer to this Dunniganremoved the blocks and mines from

the German order of battle and, loand behold, the scenario becameone of the most balanced situationsin the PanzerBlitz game.

In September of Avalon Hillstarted its second print run of Pan-zerBlitz, which included the cor-rected scenario cards. Even then,there were still a few errors in twoSituations ( and ) that cropped up

within a few months but AvalonHill deftly handled these in theirQ&A Boxes in Te General maga-zine. From there Avalon Hill wenton to sell over , copies of the

game in years.

THEOFFSHOOTS

from the actical Game /Panzer-Blitz system that were produced by. Teir relation to PanzerBlitz israther tenuous in that they are notdirect evolutionary descendants ofthe game but instead, being side

ventures, are based on the generaltheme.

Te first one was -, which was

published in issue of Strategy &actics in . It was a miniaturesgame based more on actical Game

than PanzerBlitz. It was createdby Arnold Hendricks and was doneto settle the debate on whether tac-tical boardgames and miniatures

were the same or not. Te game hada simple set of rules, a single pageof tables showing the firing and

defense strengths of various units,along with a combat results table(which was based on the one from

ac-), and two colored sheets ofcut-out paper stands representinginfantry, anti-tank guns, mortars,tanks, tank destroyers, and half-tracks. Te stands were for players

to try out the system without hav-ing to buy miniatures. Te game wasnot popular as players who were al-ready into miniatures thought of itas too basic and players who wereinto boardgames really were notinterested in miniatures. It is un-known if the game caused anyoneto go from one game form to theother. It remains to this day a curi-osity piece.

Te other offshoot was acticalGame , Lost Battles, which waspublished in issue of Strategy &actics. Tis was an operational levelgame and one might wonder whatrelationship it had with PanzerBlitz.

Well, Dunnigan wanted to takesome of the basic precepts of Pan-zerBlitz and put them into an op-erational level game. Tis included


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I S H PBscenarios for specific types of oper-ations, generic counters represent-ing a type of battalion, regiment,or brigade, and ranged combat, atleast for the field artillery units. Te

game included a mounted coun-ter sheet and a mapsheet with thescenarios printed on it. Te gamemight have been successful if somemore developmental work had beendone on it, but alas this was not tobe. Some of the counters were miss-ing their road movement numbersand never bothered to explain

what these were supposed to be. Tecounters were not numbered, thus

making play-by-mail next to im-possible. Te different rules in thegame did not mesh well togetherand two of the six scenarios that thegame was supposed to have weremissing (these were later publishedin another independent magazine).One principal aspect Dunniganmissed was that, at the tactical level,generic counters representing thedifferent platoons and companies

work well for building up higherlevel formations, but at the opera-tional level the battalions, regiments,and brigades take on their own in-dividual unit identities. While thescenarios only represented specificoperational problems and not anyspecific battles, players found themdull and unexciting. Te game was afailure but Dunnigan did not seemto mind as it was only an experi-

ment that made it into a magazine.After this he would only make op-erational games based on real bat-

tles, not hypothetical situations.

THEAFTERMATH

PB spawned many evo-lutionary lines of game developmentin tactical armored warfare. o de-

scribe them all would easily doublethe length of this article, so I willconcentrate on the two main onesthat the game directly influenced inthe immediate years following its

introduction.

SPI EVOLUTION AR Y

BRANCH

A , therewere many people at , especiallyDunnigan, who thought that Pan-zerBlitz represented a fork in theroad of tactical armored warfare

game development. One path was tocontinue to develop the system thatspawned PanzerBlitz. Tis was theprimary direction that was fol-lowing in . Te next game inthe developmental evolution of thesystem was actical Game , which

was published as Combat Com-mand in Strategy & acticsNo. .

Combat Command was s ver-sion of PanzerBlitz for the Western

Front. It is easy to see that the sys-tem had indeed evolved when onelooks at the new rules here. Te

standard game turn had becomemore complex, especially in light ofincluding phases for overruns, closeassaults, airstrikes, and most impor-tantly, defensive fire. Defensive fire

solved the problem of enemy unitsmoving freely in their turn withouta worry of being fired on. A friendlyunit could defensively fire if an en-emy unit attempted to move out ofa hex in its zone of control (the sixhexes surrounding the hex that thefriendly unit was in) and it couldfire in the defensive fire phase at theend of the enemy players turn. Teproblem was that a friendly unit

could fire defensively as many timesas the conditions warranted it in asingle turn. Tus a unit could fireat four enemy units each that at-tempted to move around it throughthree hexes of its zone of control fora total of twelve times during theenemy movement phase and thenfire a thirteenth time during theensuing defensive fire phase, eachtime at full strength and at no det-

riment to its offensive fire in its ownplayer turn. Not surprisingly, thismade defensive fire altogether too


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I S H PBpowerful and the player who wasthe defender in any given scenarioalmost always won.

Another aspect about CombatCommand was the artillery units for

the Americans. Tey were platoon-size, with corresponding lower at-tack strengths for them. Tis was agreat way to show the sophisticationof American artillery as they couldnow apply only as much firepoweras needed to bring an attack up toodds, whereas the Germans wouldhave to use their whole battery-sizepieces, regardless of how many fac-tors were needed. Due to a misun-

derstanding between the designerand the developer, the designerthought a battery of American artil-lery meant three platoons. Te de-

veloper thought that each platoonwas actually a battery so that in thescenarios, the Americans only had athird of the artillery that they wereentitled to. Another negative aspectfor the Americans was that whentheir infantry units were dispersed

in combat, they would remain so forthe rest of the game. Tis reflectedthe poor American infantry tacti-

cal abilities during the war, at leastwhen set against the Germans, butthe result was to make the Ameri-can infantry units one-shot deals ina scenario. It was also an inaccurate

simulation, as not all American in-fantry units acted so poorly in thewar.

Another good idea was to allowthree platoons of the same type tocombine into a company-size unitof less stacking value. Unfortu-nately, the defense strength of thecompany-size counter so formed

was only marginally stronger thana platoon-size unit of the same type,

the reason being that if all three pla-toons were operating close togetherin company formation, it would beeasier to destroy them than if they

were spread out into three smallerunits. Tus company-size units be-came prime targets in defensive firesituations, making the defendingplayer even more powerful.

But the worst aspect about Com-bat Command was its scale, me-

ters per hex. In the planning stages,there was not enough room on themapsheet for the terrain because

tables and playing aids had to beincluded as well. Accordingly, Dun-nigan increased the scale to get themap to fit. Tis caused some weirdsituations that demanded new rules

to cover opposing units occupyingthe same hex and was really thebiggest turn-off in the game. All inall, Combat Command was anotherexperiment which introduced somenew ideas into the system but failedas a simulation.

Not to be discouraged, Dunnigancontinued the development of thesystem into another title, this timebeing Red Star/White Star, a mod-

ern tactical armored warfare gamethat proved to be very popular;many of the new ideas introducedinto Combat Command came tofruition here. Te devastating de-fensive fire was toned down, so thata unit could only fire once duringan attackers turn. Players could stillexchange their platoon stacks forcompany counters (or battalion-size counters for the Russians), but

this time the defense strength ofthese counters was commensurate

with their size. Te American artil-lery was still in platoon-size coun-ters but at least there was the rightamount of it to accompany the ma-neuver units in question (a batterysupporting a battalion, a battalionsupporting a brigade). Te scale ofthe mapsheet was brought down to

meters per hex.

If Red Star/White Star had afault, it was that the Russians wereportrayed as they were in the s,not in the s, which the gamepurported to simulate. Tis was be-cause the data that Dunnigan wasgiven by the Army was heavilylaced with misinformation so theRussians could not find out whatwe really knew about them through


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I S H PBthe game (such was the Federalgovernments Cold War mental-ity of the times). Perhaps the bestexample of this was that Russiantank companies were made weaker

than tank platoons. With sucha handicap, it was no wonder thatRussians had a difficult, if not im-possible, task to win any scenario.It was only through the variant ar-ticles by sympathetic Army officersthat the Russian tank counters weregiven their correct values, along

with some other units, and now thegame was pretty much balanced.But in the end Dunnigan had had

it with the game system and ceasedany further development of it, so itsevolutionary design branch came toan end.

As mentioned before, Dunniganhad decided that PanzerBlitz was afork in the road in terms of designdevelopment and so in the summerof decided to take the otherbranch and start with a new tacticalarmor game system. Tis was the

infamous Simultaneous MovementSystem. Work on this system reallygot started back when Highway

was being developed. In that game,as I said above, players would writedown their planned movementsand then execute them simultane-ously. Tis system was brought for-

ward into State Farm , with thewriting-down of commands forplatoons being introduced there.

All of this was set aside when acti-cal Game was being created. Dun-nigan resurrected them when heended the development of the othertactical game system.

Very little, if anything, wasbrought forward from PanzerBlitzinto this new system, except the ex-perimental rule of Impulse Move-ment & Return Fire, which had

provided the original basis of whatwould eventually become a full si-multaneous movement system.

By Dunnigan had what hethought was the perfect tactical ar-

mor game system and introducedit in the games Desert War andKampfpanzer, and later in lower-level tactical games such as ank,Sniper, and Patrol. However, thereaction to simultaneous movement

was mixed, the biggest complaintbeing that one could not play bigscenarios with it. Tis led to a moremodified version called Simultane-ous-Sequential Play System, which

was introduced in the games Panzer and Mech War and proved tobe Dunnigans long sought answer

(at least for the time being).

AVALON HILL

EVOLUTI ONAR YBRANCH

A to the scenarios and periodic entries

in the Question Box in Te Generalmagazine, the people at Avalon Hilldecided to sit back and let Panzer-Blitz run its course, despite pleasfrom players for a Western Front

version of it. Since they knew that was already working on their

Western Front version (CombatCommand), it was felt best to waitand see how it did when it was re-leased. After Combat Commandbecame a confirmed failure, Avalon

Hill decided to commit to makingtheir version of a Western Front-style PanzerBlitz, which they wouldeventually name Panzer Leader.Following their policy for new titlesat the time, they went to an out-side source for the game. SpartanInternational Inc., a national gam-ing club that Avalon Hill had closeties with, volunteered to design anddevelop it. Tis was in late or

early . A publication date of thefall of was decided on in orderto give Spartan plenty of time to dothe job right.

Spartan International appointeda committee of veteran gamers todesign and develop Panzer Leader.

Work proceeded at a slow pace asthere was plenty of time. Te com-mittee was close to finishing it whenin August of Spartan Interna-

tional Inc. underwent a change inleadership. Te new regime did notsupport the project not that itmade that much difference, as mostof the members on the committeeleft Spartan after the change. Teydid not like the new administra-


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I S H PBtion and took their work with them.

Avalon Hill kept a wary eye onwhat was happening at Spartan asthe new regime kept telling AvalonHill that the game was still in theworks and that it would arrive ontime the next month. However, inSeptember of , three days be-fore the game was due for publica-tion, Spartan announced that thecommittee for the game had beendisbanded and that there would beno Panzer Leader. In truth there

was no one left on the committeeand the new leadership at Spartanhad got tired of maintaining the fic-

tion that there was one.Randall Reed at Avalon Hill sawthis coming (he had sources insideSpartan), so he was ready for theworst-case scenario. When he gotthe news he put his plan into action.

Te story that he designed and de-veloped Panzer Leader in three days,however, is a myth. In three days he

got the first rough draft of rulesdone for playtesting by his team atthe Hill and by Interest Group Bal-timore, the companys chief outsideplaytest group. Te development of

the main components of the gamewas also started at this time. It tookover a month to put Panzer Leadertogether as the publication date waspushed back six weeks.

Because of the short time avail-able, Reed thought that the best op-tion was to develop Panzer Leaderdirectly out of PanzerBlitz. Tere-fore any new rules were to be takenfrom variants which were either

published in Te Generalmagazineor other publications, or from arti-cles on file at Avalon Hill. However,the new rules were heavily rewordedto avoid accusations of plagiarism.

Tis was wise as most of the theserules had had their origins in theNorman Beveridge series of Pan-zerBlitz variant articles published

in Te SpartanJournal. Te counterswere another problem as Reed didnot want use Dunnigans systemin total in figuring out the factorsfor the counters as he did not agree

with all of the facets of the originalDunnigan System. However, due toshortness of time, it was felt best toleave the German counters essen-tially alone (except for some minorchanges in the range factors of theinfantry and the four vehicle tankplatoons) and concentrate on the

Allied counters.It was here that Reed greatly

added to the Dunnigan System,

making it would eventually becomein the end. Te scenarios were thelast items to be done as they requiredthe most playtesting in a monthstime but there were still some errorsthat were missed and would only becorrected after the game was pub-lished. Te rules, which would seemto be a patchwork job based on the


12/12

I S H PB

above description, actually workedtogether rather well. Panzer Leader

was released in the late fall of ,first as a mail order item, then asa general distribution item. It did

well, with over , copies sold.Because PanzerBlitz and PanzerLeader were closely related, it waseasy to reverse engineer the rulesof Panzer Leader back into Pan-zerBlitz. Avalon Hill then settledback for a few years before starting

work on the next game in the series,

Arab-Israeli Wars.In it was decided that the

next game would be based in thedesert. Tis was logical as the bat-tles in North Africa were a popularsubject. But the Arab-Israeli wars

were even more popular, given therecently concluded one in , soit was decided to bring the Panzer-Blitz/Panzer Leader system into

that theatre. By this time AvalonHill was finally assembling its own

design and development staff al-though they still used a numberof outside designs. Tey also hadplenty of more time to work on thegame. Randall Reed again headedup the development team, along

with Seth Carus and Robert Ham-blen, with Russell Vane assisting inscenario development.

Arab-Israeli Wars game broughtthe PanzerBlitz game system into

the modern era and many changeshad to be made to show this. Forone thing, all vehicle units wereslowed down dramatically, havingtheir top speed divided by five in-stead of three to get the movementfactors. Tis reflected the fact that

vehicles, especially armored ones, al-most never move at their top speedexcept to get out of danger, and so

on the average, move at a slower topspeed that is easier on the engines.

Another change was that artilleryunits now had an attack factor that

would be applied to each unit in atarget hex, regardless of how manyunits were there. Tere were otherchanges, too many to list here, butneedless to say, the PanzerBlitzsystem finally reached its pinnacleof development in the Arab-Israeli

Wars game. However, when it wasreleased in the fall of , it met

with a lukewarm response. It seemsthat players were getting bored withthe PanzerBlitz system and weregetting excited about a new tacti-cal system that Avalon Hill hadalso released also that year: SquadLeader. So Avalon Hill ended itsevolutionary line of development of

the PanzerBlitz system here.

informal history of pb

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