From the beaches around the Alligator Creek estuary in the Solomons, through the troop- and fuel-eating expanses of the Ukraine, the unforgiving sands of the desert in Lybia and all the way to the bucolic pastures and crops west of Brussels (what a beautiful place to fight in a tank!), you will get a chance of leading Allied or Axis troops in WWII battles.
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| Hannut, South East of Brussels: May 13th, 1940. A beautiful scenario in which you command a German tank brigade. Don't get fooled, the French have more than that tankette seen at the edge of Lens St. Remy. |
The Panzer Battles series is one of the flagships from John Tiller Software. With two released titles,
Kursk-Southern Flank and
Battles of Normandy (one more coming out pretty soon), the unique scale of the engine hits a perfect balance of playability and grand tactical/operational command.
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| Mersa el Brega, Western Cyrenaica, Libya: March 31st, 1941. Welcome to Africa, Rommel. This scenario has a map so massive that even a full zoom out can't cover it in my screen. |
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| From the same scenario, a Panzer battalion ignores a British observation post and pushes forward. Until they find a minefield. Engineers are called up. |
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| Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands: 21st August, 1942. The Japanese have chosen right flank hook maneuver against the US Marines. Losses are many, but bearable. Will they prevail? |
With seven scenarios (each including at least one variant) plus a getting started skirmish, this demo has a lot of content. From early to mid WWII, you will be able to command armor, reconnaissance troops, foot and motorized infantry, heavy weapons, artillery, air support. You get the idea: a wide spectrum of WWII operations. I've payed for full games with less content than this free demo and my steel helmet goes off to the Wargame Design Studio and John Tiller Software for this.
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| Bogodukhov, Ukraine: 9th August, 1943. The "Flanking Kharkov" scenario. A bit obvious, but here it goes nonetheless, the functionality of settings and options is 100%. |
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| The same scenario, zoomed out. This scenario is one of two from our very own Chris Maiorana (http://thesharpendgaming.blogspot.com/) and at 32 turns it scores as the longest one in the demo. |
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| North of Ol'shany, Ukraine: 21st August, 1943. The second scenario by Chris, in this image showing the III Battalion of the Panzer Grenadiers Regiment Der Fuhrer. Lots of room to maneuver, fall into anti tank traps and other malaises of the Eastern Front. |
And now for the necessary disclaimers. These images are from an advanced beta version of the demo, which will be released very soon.
Coming soon as a digital download. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
5 comments:
Hi JC. Thanks for the link and mention! The demo is an amazing showcase for the engine and the game. Kudos to Wargame Design Studio and JTS for having the vision to release it.
Nice, i am waiting the demo to test Pacific scen and see how works with the reduced scale... even when i wait to PzB3 something outside Europe/Africa is wellcome (and PzB3 looks great with Krete+Crusader/pre-crusader... cant wait it).
Ummm a little question, demo has 4 battles covered (Hannut,Mersa el Brega, Ukranie post Kursk and Tennaru) but you talk about 7 scens with 1 variant for them at least... do you refer to 4 battles + 4 variants or 7 scens + 7 variants???
Here i am curious to about north Africa title... remember me a wha if scenario created for Tobruk 41 called "Enter Rommel" with italian troops to... is the scen based on this???
Expect we have demo soon... early march much better than later hehee.
Thanks.
Hi Chris, thanks for the scenarios actually. :)
Anon: Thanks for your comment and for reading the post. The Ukraine post Kursk has more than one scenario, 2 from Chris and an additional one.
Unfortunately, I have never played Tobruk 41 (you got me curious, I admit). The demo scenario is authored by David Freer. The briefing reads:
Mersa el Brega, Western Cyrenaica, Libya: March 31st, 1941. (Scenario Size: Brigade. Head to Head or German Human vs Allied AI) Reports of the German forces landing in Tripoli preceded their appearance on the front lines near Aghéila. Both sides had significant impediments. The German forces were struggling to acclimatise; insufficient filtering impacted the worthiness of vehicle engines while the troops were struggling to cope with the extremes of temperature in the desert. The British had stripped forces in Cyrenaica, with the current demands of the campaign in Greece and the need to pull back the remaining tanks to the Nile valley for refit after Operation Compass. Mersa el Brega was a logical position to defend. The extensive salt flats were impassable to all vehicles and the sands of the Sahara were barely fifteen kilometres to the south, preventing any grandiose flanking manoeuvres. The British 2nd Armoured Division's Support group held the forward positions built around the Tower Hamlets Regiment. Made up of toughs from the East End the Hamlets were to prove a difficult opponent for the advancing Germans.
Remember, work in progress. So don't make a meal out of it.
Cheers,
Thanks for the reply and info, i am going to post it in a forum about wargames where there is a section for HPS/JT titles, the demo generates a good interest specially in guys that dont buy the previous PzB titles (but PzB3 attract interest thanks toe the content hehehe).
The PzC titles based in North AFrica are... special, Tobruk41 and Tunis43 are titles with units that could split at platoon level (in the Tobruk scens the polish could do it and in Tunis the british airborne/commando units) and El-Alamein has a very good mod from Volcanoman that cover the Italian VS British combats in 1940 (i never like a lot El-Alamein because combat is like Kursk to much based in minewarfare but has interesting scens), maybe my problem with PzC Africa titles is the scale, i allways find Tobruk41 needed a smaller scale to help has mortars at battalion level be usefull and split more units in desert (recon and armored units can do this relative well but not infantry that finish to massed helping a lot isolated them) but in the other 2 titles is less problematic because you have "bigger" battles.
My fault, the Tobruk41 what if scen title is "Rommel delayed" autor is Peter Hickman and this is the scen description
"[Hypothetical] This scenario supposes both that Rommel's initial advance was delayed and that Cyrenica Command was able to move forces available for the defense of Tobruk forward in order to further delay Rommel's advance."
You can see here the unit deployment and OOB... is a little of everything even french troops hehehe
http://i.imgur.com/GNkuurV.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ap4lPp4.jpg
Again thanks for the info and expect we can enjoy demo "soon".
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