(P)review: With the Hammer

 

 

For those who have just joined us, I’ve been involved in the playtesting of a new game for a month or so. Because I’m attached (however loosely) to the project, I wouldn’t feel comfortable reviewing the finished product. But I’m going to try something new here; I don’t know if it’s a first in the field, but it’s a first for me. This will be a kind of review of the game as it stands. By the time it gets into the stores, there may be some subtle changes, but I think the current state of the whole thing is pretty stable and robust and the finished product will look a lot like it does now (except for the actual parts that don’t; I’ll explain this further along). So, without further ado, let me introduce…

A note on the release: For the Hammer was launched on the CSL web store a couple of days ago (and should be deliverable in a week or two – the processes used by the printer mean the maps take a couple of days to cure), just after I’d finished writing the bulk of this post. Rather than reworking the whole thing, I decided to leave it as it was. Apologies for any ensuing confusion.

 

A quick note on the photos. The parts you see are not indicative of the final product.
I MacGyvered a playtest set out of craft supplies and leftover parts from other
games. These are just to give you an idea of what will be in the box. For the
record, this picture is of an early version of the map. Some extra assisting
detail has since been added.

With The Hammer (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2025) isn’t available yet. It’s a game currently in the final stages of development, but based on CSL’s track record, its publication will be imminent, within days or weeks I would think (I’m hoping some folks get to read this before it’s published).

The game covers an episode of history hereto untouched by game design; the Peasants’ Revolt in 1520s Germany. Yup, before With the Hammer crossed my field of vision, I hadn’t heard of the German Peasant’s Revolt either. You probably have heard of Martin Luther and the rise of Protestantism in central and western Europe in the early- to mid-sixteenth century. You may have even played the Protestant faction in a game of Here I Stand (GMT Games, 2006). The spontaneous uprising of the peasants through a pamphlet written by Thomas Müntzer, a clergyman who was destined to become a thorn in Luther’s side. If you want the Cliff’s Notes, there’s a concise introduction to the German Peasants’ Revolt on Wikipedia.

At time of writing, With the Hammer is probably only weeks away from going to the printers, so, here’s a quick take on the game. I’d like to reiterate that this isn’t a review, per se; I feel that being involved, however remotely, in the gestation of the game disqualifies me from reviewing it objectively, so what follows shouldn’t be taken as a purely critical appraisal. But having said that, I do think the final game will be worthwhile, and I have enjoyed my plays of it through several stages of development.

 

Appearance

A quick reminder that the pictures included in this post are of a playtest set I printed at a copy-store and built using left over craft supplies. The final, professionally produced game will look much nicer.

With the Hammer is an asymmetric wargame about the aforementioned German Peasants’ War. One side plays the Peasant forces seeking a better situation, led by several heroes of the movement, and the other plays the Nobles who want to put the peasants in their place.

All the artwork for the game was prepared by Ilya Kudriashov. I’m a huge fan of Mr Kudriashov’s work, which can be found in multiple CSL games, but also in games released by Compass Games, Hollandspiele, GMT, and a host of others. The map evokes the style of cartographical representation prevalent around the time in which the game is set, while the illustrations used in the components are drawn from print materials from the era.

WTH cover art. I'm pretty certain this is final.

It may take a minute to decipher the gothic lettering used for the character and place names, but it adds a level of verisimilitude to the experience of play. Nothing here is gratuitous; everything works toward making the game run smoothly, from the inclusion on-board of the all-purpose track, to the little reminder illustrations of the starting locations for the Noble Armies.

The components will have a Euro-y feel about them, labelled wooden discs for the Peasant Bands, coloured pawns representing the individual Peasant Leaders. Larger wooden blocks that stand on edge represent the Noble Armies, well trained and equipped, but monolithic and ponderous. Where the Peasant bands and the Freelancers (who we’ll come back to) have fixed strength values, the Noble Armies have a rotating three-point increment strength step system, Like Columbia block games and others. They each begin the game at 6 points but can be built up to a formidable 12.

The bottom of Turn 3. Georg von Sachsen makes his debut in the next round.

Every other turn, two dice are rolled for a d66 result (one d6 treated as tens and the other as ones). On a roll of 11-56, a Freelancer counter will be drawn randomly and placed face-down at a random locale. The Freelancers are a mix of miners and Landsknechts (mercenary companies) that may be of benefit to either side. On a 61 to 66 result, one of the players will draw an event card from a small deck and the effects of that card will usually be felt for that round.

The game includes a sheet of counters, including the aforementioned Freelancers, a mix of Landsknecht troops and bands of Miners. Other markers include the Propaganda tokens that indicate a locale’s population has been swayed by Father Müntzer tract and teachings, Two-sided markers to show when a locale has been drained of its resources (Depleted) or stripped bare by a second bite of the cherry (Exhausted), and some individual markers for recording Victory Points, Artillery Points (for the Peasants) Siege preparedness for Heldrungen Castle (these are all tracked on a universal point rack on the map), and a Turn marker for the Turn Track. A fourteen-card Random Event deck and two six-sided dice round out the contents of the game

 

Play

The game plays out over eleven turns, in a straight-forward IGO/UGO format. Each turn, the Peasant player can activate their Peasant Leaders (there are four to choose from, but if playing one-on-one or solo, the rules recommend starting with two), which may commit up to two actions each. The initiative then turns to the Noble player; they may activate the Noble Army or armies on the board, committing them to one action each. The Noble player begins with one Army on the board, and gains another in turns 3 and 4. If a Peasant Leader and a Noble Army occupy the same locale, combat is inevitable.

Playtest cards. Again, the finished product will look much nicer.

In their turn, Peasant Leaders may move up to three adjacent locales, inspire adjacent Peasant Bands to join them, preach about the injustices of the ruling class (and in doing so, place a Propaganda marker on the location), raid an occupied location for arms and equipment ( in the form of Artillery Points, subject to a roll for success), or parley with a neighbouring Noble Army (essentially – if successful – immobilising it for that turn). If only one or two Peasant leaders are in play, they each get two actions per turn, and may duplicate some actions. If more

In the Noble forces’ turn, they may undertake a single action each. A Noble Army may muster (increase its strength – Noble Armies start at half strength (6) and can build their strength successively through 9 to 12 points over one or two musters respectively), supply themselves for movement (although this has an adverse effect on the locale, leaving it depleted after a single supply draw, or exhausted after a second attempt in that region, which will also earn the locale a Propaganda marker), move, provided they have  collected enough supplies to pay for the movement, negotiate with unaffiliated Peasant Armies or Freelance units to dissipate or (in the case of Landsknecht mercenaries, try to hire them to join the Army), preach (roll to try to remove a Propaganda marker), or they can raid, which doesn’t require a successful roll, but leaves one more town’s peasants hatting the nobility even more.

An early two-player game, using the first iteration of the board. 

Noble armies are hobbled by their own might. Slower to move and to react, they are truly reactionary in every sense. Formal armies have strength and discipline, but they also have inflexible administrative structures, tiers of command that decelerate communication, and a voracious appetite for supply. By contrast, the Peasant leaders and their attendant forces can live more easily off the land, or the generosity of the like-minded, but they are limited in where they can go by whether a locale is swayed by Propaganda. They can preach to an adjacent locale and place a Propaganda marker the, then move to that location, but that’s their two actions for the turn. Having two actions in a turn isn’t always the great advantage it may seem.

Combat occurs when a Noble Army and a Peasant leader occupy the same locale. Combat is relatively straightforward and simple to execute. The side whose piece has moved into a locale already occupied by an opposing force is deemed the Attacker, the resident force the Defender. The antagonists each calculate their own fighting strength, incorporating any freelance units they may have picked up, and one of two tables is consulted on the Player’s Aid Card.

The two sides compare strength, establish a ratio (rounding down), establish any die-roll modifiers at play roll a die and check the result against the appropriate column on the Combat Result Table (CRT). Combat can be brutal in With the Hammer. A good negative result is being forced to retreat. Worse is if your side is routed. There is a separate rout procedure comes into play for the Peasant Leaders and the Noble Armies. Both involve the bidding of Victory Points (swinging the pendulum in the opponent’s direction; A Peasant Leader or a Noble Army can bid up to five VP, then a die is rolled; if the result is higher than the number of VP bid, that’s the end of the game for that force. It gets a little more involved with Peasant Armies and freelancers, but a rout aways carries a cost for the routed party.

Just a word about the components (in case you missed the earlier posts). The Peasant
Bands will be attractive little wooden cylinders, not Scrabble pieces like I've used.
I believe the Peasant Leader tokens will be wooden pawns like you might find in
other games (not the repurposed and repainted meeples seen here, and the
Noble army blocks will be a little smaller than the Columbia Games
spares I've used here..

A higher weight of force is always better but other factors can come into play as well. When mounting an attack, a Peasant Leader may spend an Artillery Point to effect a +1 DRM to their roll. In the reverse situation, an attacking Noble Army will receive a +1 modifier if the target Peasant force doesn’t spend an Artillery Point. (This is a really simple, elegant feature that adds to the sense of the cost of engagement. It’s the kind of detail I really like to see in a game).

Victory is obtainable several ways by each side. The most straight-forward (and convincing) way to win is to swing the scoring pendulum all the way in your side’s favour (“0” for the Nobility, “20” for the Peasants. This is theoretically achievable before the end of the game, but it’s unlikely.

If the Peasants can place Propaganda markers on all the locales (with the exception of Heldrungen Castle, which can never be under the influence of Propaganda), they win an automatic victory. I haven’t seen this happen in my games, but it’s possible for the Noble Armies to contribute to their own demise by creating dissent through raiding locales (although this can be avoided by only raiding locales who are already dissenting). Conversely, the Nobility can win if they manage to reduce the number of locales under Propaganda to five or less. This may be achievable, but it will be a lot harder.

Finally, either side can win the old-fashioned way, by eliminating a majority of the other side’s forces, three of the four Peasant Leaders or two of the three Noble Armies. I did say some fighting as inevitable.

A quick tutorial in Combat, With the Hammer-style. Trouble is brewing in Schmalkalden.
After building his strength to its highest level Johann der Beständige has chosen to attack
Hans Sippel. Combat will ensue. As the new arrival in Schmalkalden, Johann is
considered the Attacker, and will roll on the Noble CRT. 

Herr Sippel hasn't been sitting on his hands. While Father Müntzer has been preaching
across the German principalities, Hans has been gathering forces (to be fair, he started
with the Werra band and a random Landsknecht troop. He has since convinced three
other bands and a team of miners to take up the cause under his auspices, for a
total strength of fourteen.

Twelve to Fourteen puts the ratio clearly in the 1:1 column. Sippel has paid his Artillery
Point to deny Johann a +1 to his roll, but it still doesn't look promising for the defender.

Johann rolls a 5. That's a bad result for everyone. Both sides are thrown into disarray.
The Peasants must rout, while the Noble army may take significant damage.

The Defenders rout first. Sippel must roll a die; if he rolls above his Leadership value (4),
he has been captured. Fortunately for Hans, he rolled a 3. His troops are next. Each rolls
one die, and if the result is above the unit's Strength value, they are disbanded. Sippel's
loyal Werra band and the one-strength Salza band survived the altercation.

Those contingents who didn't make their rout checks are relegated to the Disbanded
Units box at the end of the turn track. These will count toward the Nobles' VP total.
In turn, Johann holds the field but as a significant cost. In the case of an Exchange
result, the attacking (Noble) force takes damage equivalent to half of the Defenders
losses. His Army is reduced from 12 Strength points to six. 

Assessment

This has been a very quick-and-dirty look at (not even the actual) With the Hammer. I hope it’s conveyed some idea of how the game works and what you can more or less expect in the finished product. 

It’s been fascinating to watch the game evolve from its original state to an essentially finished, ready-to-go product. At its rawest, With the Hammer was an interesting game covering a nugget of history that deserved more sunlight. I wasn’t sure it would have the replayability that I’d look for in a game like this, but before I had a chance to express this opinion, we play-testers received word that Fred Serval would be working as developer on the game. Things started to move very quickly after that. I believe it was M. Serval’s idea to introduce the random event component to the game with the addition of the small card deck. There were successive changes to the rules and some tweaking of the CRT, but with each change the game has got incrementally better, with much richer replay value. All the parts of the game work well together; the 

After nearly two dozen plays – mostly solo, a couple with my brother-in-law – I think I can say that, while it might look like a "real" wargame to some, With the Hammer is a historical conflict game of deep strategy. The limits on just what either side can accomplish in a single turn makes every decision important, and every choice will have an impact on ensuing rounds. I found myself thinking for a day or two (or more) about how some of my games played out, how a different action may have made a difference for the victor or the vanquished. To my mind, any game that takes residence in your thoughts after the session has ended has something to offer. 

State of Play: First Cab off the Rank - Commands and Colors: Ancients (Akragas, 406 BC )

  

The first couple of weeks of the year are always tougher to squeeze a game into. But T and I managed to catch up last Monday night for a quick and dirty Battle of Akragas, 406 BC from the Commands & Colors: Ancients (GMT Games, 2006) core game. I’d suggested stickering up T’s copy of Commands & Colors: Medieval Expansion 1: Crusades - Mid-Eastern Battles 1 (GMT Games, 2024), but T’s wife would have none of it. We spent our last Monday game-night of the year filling and labelling sample bottles of gin for Christmas gratuities – Mrs T (Jess's eldest sister) said I deserved an actual game.

Set-up from the Carthaginian Left. Note the over-stacked Cavalry (four blocks instead
of three); The last C&C game we played was Medieval, which does have four-block
cavalry, so the oversight is forgivable, and I was two beat to notice.

So, T set up a quick, no terrain, five-banner game to start off our year, which suited me as we were both kind of beat from the Christmas season and everything that entails. The siege of Akragas, a Greek settlement on the south-west coast of Sicily, was conducted by the Carthaginians in retaliation for raids on Punic settlements. The historical battle took place between a relief force of Syracusans under Daphnaeus and part of the Carthaginian forces (mostly mercenaries) while the main force maintained the siege. The Syracusan attack was historically successful, but that wasn’t to be the case here.

About four rounds in; some losses on both sides, but no banners changing hands yet.

The game opened as to be expected. T (playing the Syracusans) brought his extreme units up to try to bedevil my flanks. This was probably an artefact of his hand; in the opening deal, we both seemed to get a preponderance of Left and Right flank manoeuvre cards. The Syracusan strength was all in his Center – a full four Heavy Infantry, which, if he could have mobilised them, would have torn into my mishmash of units like a wolverine.

I met T’s flanking moves with Slingers and Chariots. We both took our lumps, but it wasn’t until the fifth or sixth round that the first banner was taken, when the Medium Cavalry on T’s Right fell to my blooded Chariots. T countered with an attack on the same flank which whittled down my slingers to half-strength but cost his reduced Medium Cavalry on that flank – who should probably have had a better chance than the bones offered to finish off my reduced Chariots – and his second-in-command, Dionysius, to an unsuccessful single-die Leader saving throw.

First blood. Strictly, we should have been using the Roman eagle banner blocks,
but the roosters came to hand sooner.

With just two banners between the Carthaginians and a reversal of historical fortune, I brought up the line I’d built on my Right flank with an Inspired Leader order, giving everyone engaging one extra die in combat. I secured the final two banners needed in short order; history was rewritten as Himilco prevailed on the field, while Daphnaeus withdrew in good order with the fighting core of his troops intact. The whole action took about a dozen rounds.

A 5-0 result wasn’t an auspicious beginning for T, but over the years I’ve learnt not to dismiss him lightly, especially at Command & Colors. Next week will probably be C&C: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019), breaking in the new expansion, which I’ve been looking forward to since well before Christmas.

Final state, after the dust had settled. A fairly convincing win.

By the Numbers: The War Room Ten Game Challenge

  

 

The War Room's 2024 Challenge wrap-up is on Saturday, January 18
(about 7:30am Sunday, Adelaide time) on Roughie's channel.

As I’ve stated here recently, I thought I was done with setting myself challenges or goals with A Fast Game or regarding gaming generally. Two years in a row I stated a couple of seemingly achievable tasks or milestones only to fall short of my own expectations. To hell with it, I said to myself, I’ll just play games, review the ones I like, and have some fun with it.

Then I watched the War Room on Sunday (for the uninitiated, you can find some details about the War Room in this post). Each January, idjester sets a challenge for the show’s regular viewers (roughly half of which seem to also be YouTube content creators). Jester’s been doing this for at least four or five years (I’m not sure if he did it in their first year, but the guys will be hitting the show’s sixth anniversary in a just couple of weeks). It was one of these 10 Game Challenges that inspired me to attempt my own 6x6 Challenge in my first year of writing A Fast Game.

As I said in a previous post, despite my misgivings about goal-setting, I decided to participate in the War Room’s 10 Game Challenge this year. I ran through the rules for the 10 Game Challenge in the aforementioned post, but essentially you have to pick ten games you intend to play in 2025 (plus two substitute games, in case you’re for some reason not able to fulfil one or two plays, or you’re just not feeling it for an early choice – it happens), and post the list on the Tac UP group on Facebook (or alternatively, you can email the list to Jester – I think his contact details are on his YouTube channel).

Having decided to take on the Challenge, I wanted to nail down my list before I slipped into an endless cycle of swap-outs. The two guidelines I set myself were that I should pick games that can be played in a couple of hours, and that at least half of them should be games I can play solo (two-handed) if necessary. I wanted to stick to a shorter length because most of my face-to-face gaming happens on weeknights these days. The solo-able games are for when the weeknight games don’t come off.

Five of the games I’ve played before, the other five in the main list are relatively new (to me, at least). The two reserve games are 2025 releases that I don’t have yet, but that are due to be released in the first half of the year.

So, without further ado, may I present my maiden (annotated) 10 Game Challenge selection for 2025:

 

1.  Men of Iron Tri-pack (GMT Games, 2020)

I’m embarrassed to say, I haven’t yet completely punched my copy of the Men of Iron Tri-Pack, which contains (as the name would suggest) the first three volumes in the Men of Iron series; Men of Iron (GMT Games, 2005), Infidel (GMT Games, 2011), and Blood and Roses (GMT Games, 2014). The set also includes Agincourt (RBM Studio, 2009), which first appeared in C3i magazine. This is probably what we’ll play first. It’s on a half-sized map, with slightly larger counters (9/16” I think, as opposed to the half-inch counters throughout the rest of the game), and it’s a good excuse to recite the St Crispin’s Day speech.

2. Napoléon 1807 (Shakos,2020) (Battle of Eylau AAR)

Napoleon 1807 is the follow-on game from Denis Sauvage’s Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017 – link to review). It’s more of the same in a number of ways, with a bigger map and numerous scenarios. We’ve played this a couple of times, but only the battle scenarios, usually three or four turns. There are several campaign scenarios, including Eylau and Friedland, that run over ten or more turns, so I’m keen to try one of these.

3. Dawn's Early Light: The War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020) (AAR)

I have a soft spot for the War of 1812, and own several games covering various situations in the conflict, but this is the only one covering the whole war. It’s a Card-Driven Game with some novel aspects, and an interesting area movement/control mechanic. I’ve only played this double handed (always difficult with a CDG), so I’m looking forward to trying it out against a human opponent.

4. Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022) (unboxing)

This is my first Eagles of France game. I’m a big fan of Hexasim, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about the series, so I’m looking forward to diving into this one. The Mont-Saint-Jean scenario is a two-map affair, so probably impractical for our purposes, but the Fallen Eagles II also includes three smaller scenarios that should fit the bill.

5. Brothers at War, 1862 (Compass Games, 2022) (unboxing; AAR)

This is such a great game; really four games in one. Each covers as small engagement (like Valverde), or a portion of a larger action (Miller’s cornfield at Antietam), and features card-assisted play and a novel chit-draw system. The action is swift and tense. Brothers at War was the first game I picked for this list.

6. A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022)

This game and I have a history. I was going to back the original Kickstarter (I’ had form with Flying Pig Games by then) but backed off a couple of days before the campaign closed. When the Second Edition went to crowdfunding, Flying Pig was no longer supporting overseas pledges, and copies sold out pretty quickly from the usual purveyors of fine gaming merchandise. When the Second Edition went to Kickstarter, with access for overseas supporters, I practically put myself in hoc to secure a copy.

I’ve been circling around this game for months now. I’ve been meaning to write an unboxing article – I’ve got most of the photos, but a couple need re-taking – and start pushing some counters around to get a feel for it, but there’s always been something more pressing. Putting it on the list should give me the impetus to unbox and play it before Rock of Chickamauga (Flying Pig Games, 2025) arrives.

7. Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War (GMT Games. 2024) (unboxing)

This was hands-down my favourite game for 2024. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pull it out again and write something about it.

8. Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards – Sedan 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020)

Imperial Bayonets is a reimplementation of the Library of Napoleonic Battles system applied to the conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century, in the case of We Were Not Cowards, the Franco-Prussian War. I bought this along with some other CSL games before they stopped doing overseas shipping. This war represents a turning point in the way European countries would engage in battle. This might just get nudged closer to the front of the list.

9. Panzer Battles, 11^th Panzer on the Chir River (MMP/The Gamers, 2016) (unboxing)

The only WWII entry in the mix. I wanted to have one at least. Also, this will be my introduction to the Standard Combat Series (SCS). I’ve lived a sheltered life.

10. We Are Coming, Nineveh (Nuts! Publishing, 2023)

Another game I bought last year and had grand ambitions of getting it to the table, only to see it shunted to the back of the queue. Modern conflicts can be a tough sell to the folks I tend to game with. We Are Coming, Nineveh does have a solo option, but I’m going to try to hold out for a face-to-face game.

Substitute games

11. By Swords and Bayonets (GMT Games, 2025)

The latest instalment of the Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) series, I understand By Swords and Bayonets is now at the printer, so it will probably ship in the first half of this year. The game has respectable numbers, too, hitting just over 1,500 preorders on GMT’s P500 list.

12. Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing, 2025)

The story of this game feels like one of those stories about a dog that’s separated from his its family while visiting the Grand Canyon, but manages to finally find its way home years later, Drop Zone: Southern France began its existence on GMT’s P500 list in June 2020, but it languished in the low 300s from memory before it was pulled in December of that year. In 2021, Worthington Publishing listed Drop Zone in their intended print list for the year (on the back of designer Dan Fournie’s 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing 2020), but the game didn’t make the queue until its successful Kickstarter campaign last year. The most recent news is that the printed games are crossing the Pacific Ocean as I write, and fulfillment should begin in the next month or two.

-----

When I set out to do this list, I thought it would be easy. I’ve been working on reviews for a couple of the final picks and wanted to get an extra play or two in before finishing them. A couple of others I’ve played but didn’t feel like I’d spent enough time with them to write anything worthwhile about them. The rest are fairly new, but I’ve been keen to get them to the table. In short, I’m looking forward to all of them.

The other half of the tale is all the games that didn’t make the cut. But that will be a story for another post.

State of Play: A 2025 Wargaming Goal (in spite of myself)

 

  

Harlan Ellison Wrote a book called The Glass Teat, which was essentially a condemnation of everything that television stood for. A few years later, an interviewer asked Ellison why, if he hated TV so much, did he persist in writing for television programs. His response, “What can I say? I’m a f**king hypocrite.”

I started with this story because Mr Ellison was one of my favourite authors growing up, and the story seemed germane to what I’m going to go into here. I was watching the War Room on replay this afternoon. I caught about fifteen minutes of it this (Sunday) morning, but we went for a walk in the neighbourhood before it got too hot outside, and I ended up missing most of it. For the uninitiated, the War Room is a weekly show on YouTube presented by idjester, Rough Swordsman Wargamer, and Nate Landrum (half of the Board Game Bunker – three YouTube commentators – where the three discuss wargames and wargame-adjacent topics for two hours. It’s a lot of fun, and somewhat educational.

The gentlemen of The War Room.

Anyway, each year Jester proposes a challenge to the regular viewers, usually around playing ten different games – all declared at the beginning of the year – within a time frame, usually by the end of that year. It was a misunderstanding on my part of the parameters of this challenge that set me on a Quixotic errand to play six games in my first year of writing A Fast Game, which has, in turn, inspired others to pursue similar goals.

At the end of 2024 however, I was done with trying to meet targets for games player or reviewed. The last year was particularly hard on my wife and me, and its only in the last couple of weeks that we’ve been realising just how much of our everyday lives we’d put on hold. I’m a little more forgiving on myself for what I didn’t get done now, and so I think I’m ready to set myself one more doable challenge.

In today’s episode of the War Room, Jester laid out the parameters for this year’s ten-game challenge. The rules are a little laxer than in previous years. People complained it was too hard to make their lists. Jester is a harsh but fair tyrant. But any challenge must have some rules, or it isn’t really challenging.

One of the changes is the number of games. To participate in the challenge you have to post your list of games to the Tac UP Facebook group (or email it to Jester and he will upload it on your behalf). This list will be comprised of twelve games instead of ten. This gives the participant a little wriggle room. If you have a game you intended to play but for some reason you couldn’t do it, you have a back-up (two, actually). In the past, some folks had put games on their list that were supposed to be published that year but were delayed for some reason. This takes care of that.

The rules for the 10 Wargame Challenge for 2025.

Another change is the newness of the game. In the past there has been a requirement that only new-to-you games were allowed (this was of course on the honour system). This year, it can be a game you have played before, but not one you’ve already played this year. Also, to qualify, they have to be played after the January 19 cut-off date.

And to make it even easier for those inclined to bite off more than they can chew (averts gaze, shuffles feet), participants are required only to make a real effort at playing each game. If one of them is just too hard or too long to finish, so long as you have made an honest go of it, that effort will count as a play.

The proviso is that evidence of play must be uploaded to the Facebook group with each play completed. Jester the Benevolent is going to keep a spreadsheet (a man after my own heart) of all participants’ lists and mark off their progress. I’m not sure what will be considered adequate evidence; a lot of folks who participate are bloggers or YouTube content creators themselves, so they usually post something on their channel and link it on the FB group. If you’re interested in participating, contact the administrators of the Tac UP group on FB. You have until the 19^th of January to submit your list to the group.

I’m still settling on my list. It’s going to be a mix of games I’ve played in the past but not lately and ones I’ve been meaning to get to the table, and probably a mix of solo plays and face-to-face games. I’ll write up a session report for each play and post it on A Fast Game.

I really had no intention of putting myself through the process of setting goals and see them unmet again and had resigned myself to just plugging away at the blog for twelve months. But this seems like an achievable target, as it’s what I would be doing in the regular run of things anyway. And it will be nice to feel like I’m taking part in something bigger than myself. So, yes, I do feel a little bit like a hypocrite, but it also feels like the right thing to do.

There are a couple of games I know I want to put on the list, but I don’t want to rush into anything. I should have a list firmed up in a couple of days. As I play the games and write them up, I’ll sub-head all the posts that contribute to my challenge target, so anyone can follow along at home.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Panzer Battles: 11th Panzer on the Chir River

  

  

I've recently been on a second-hand game binge, and as I’ve raised elsewhere on this blog, it never ceases to amaze me how many of these have reentered the wargame /commerce ecosystem unpunched. Occasionally, they've still been shrouded in their original shrink (like the copy of Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022) that came with the one I’m looking at today), but a lot of the time somebody has received the game, taken everything out an examined it, maybe read though the rules, then boxed it up again, never to play it.

Panzer Battles: 11^th Panzer on the Chir River (Multi-Man Publishing/The Gamers, 2016) was another one like this. On the outside it looks a little more second-hand than some (the box lid looks pretty good, just a little dishing, but there’s a significant compression wrinkle running from the bottom corner for about four inches on the bucket-half; as I’ve said before, that doesn’t concern me too much, so long as the stuff inside is fine, which you’ll soon see, is the case).

This has been a month of firsts. Panzer Battles came in the same bundle as Somalia: Interventions (Schutze Games, 1998), which I unpacked here. That was my first Schutze game, and it was my first ever Blue Panther-produced game. This isn’t my first Multi-Man Publishing game (that appellation goes to Lincoln’s War (MMP, 2013)), but Panzer Battles is my first Standard Combat Series (SCS) game. This is a series with some longevity (Panzer Battles is the 19^th instalment). According to Boardgamegeek, there are 27 volumes in total, although several games making up this count are second editions covering the same situation, like Ardennes II (MMP/The Gamers, 2023). I don’t know if this was the best place to start, but this one was available, and the price was right.

Panzer Battles is also my first wargame designed by Dean Essig. Mr Essig passed away in 2024, and his loss was felt throughout the greater wargaming community. He laid the groundwork for not only the SCS series, but seven other series rules-sets as well. An extraordinarily prolific designer and artist 95 citations on BGG), Mr Essig was a CSR/Clauswitz Hall of Famer and earned a clutch of awards for both his design and artistic contributions to the hobby. I never corresponded with Mr Essig, but many people I respect in the hobby held a lot of respect for the designer and warmth for the man. He will be remembered fondly.

Panzer Battles cover art. The guy in front of the Panzer III looks
too short to be a Stormtrooper.

The cover leaves no doubt as to what you can expect here. German infantry on the move through a snowy plain, in support of a Panzer III in the middle ground, all heading toward the smoke. Some folks complained about what they thought was the use of AI art on the cover of Ardennes II. I don’t know for a fact, but to me this looks more like some Photoshop work from an original black and white photograph, circa ’41 or ’42. The image is clear and evocative. The cove also features the 11^th Panzer’s crest. I get the gratuitous use of some symbology of national socialism is anathema (and it is often gratuitous, used on the premise that any publicity is good publicity), but I really don’t have a problem with this kind of graphic use any more than I would the Desert Rat insignia, the LRDG's Scorpion stencil, or the Big Red One patch in a similar situation.

Box back.

I’m by no means an expert on the Eastern Front, so please forgive me if I overlook or ignore any crucial details here, but here’s a thumbnail of the situation. The 11^th Panzer was fresh to the Eastern Front and at full compliment when it was assigned to be part of the attempt to relive the encircled elements of Army Group South near Stalingrad. Running into a major Soviet advance, the division conducted “a text-book example of a mobile defense and counter attack which is studied to this day,” managing to “defeat the Soviet mechanized drive,” but at the cost of relieving the pressure on the trapped divisions, who succumbed to the overwhelming weight of the Russian impress.

The game description on the back of the box is written for someone with more of a background in this chapter of military history than I possess, but a Dean Essig game isn’t for the faint of heart.

The Series rules - A head-start on learning other SCS games.

I’m really impressed with the quality of the paper used for the rulebooks, it’s a stiff (I’m guessing about 100-120gsm), matte paper with a nice texture that will take pencil notations really well (not something I’d ever insist on in a game but appreciated nonetheless).

I need to spend some more time on this, but the series rules (version 1.8) seem to be quite straight forward and coherent (which, by the nineteenth game in a series, you’d kind of expect them to be), and tight; at a mere eight pages (with graphical examples). Even though the publisher rates the solitaire play at moderate, I can’t see any reason why Panzer battles shouldn’t run quite smoothly with two-handed play.

Let's get down to specifics: the Panzer Battles Exclusive rules.

The twelve-page Exclusive Rulebook for Panzer Battle breaks down into roughly four pages of exclusive rules and designer’s notes, Six pages covering the game’s four scenarios, and a page of notes on the two sides’ Orders of Battle (for chit-draw activation). The back cover fills the role of a Player Aid Card, providing the game’s Combat Results Table, Terrain Effects Chart, Kill Roll instructions and a reminder note covering the Artillery DG Roll rule. I’ll probably photocopy and sleeve this for ease of use at the table.

There’s a big distance between the two shorter one-map scenarios (“State Farm 79” and “I’ll Be Balck” both played on Map-B), at just two turns each, and the full Panzer Battles campaign (which is still only six turns. I may have missed it, but I’m not quite sure what the turn duration scale is. The six-turn campaign game covers fourteen calendar days of action. The Containment Battles scenario, reflecting six calendar days of action, also runs for six turns. So, I think the duration for a turn is a little abstract. I’ll be interested to investigate other SCS games to see how this is handled.

The breakdown of forces on each side is authoritative. MMP/The Gamers have a reputation for solid research on Orders of Battle, and it’s borne out here in the unit breakdown. As mentioned, the rules use a chit draw activation system which activates a large set of units (for the Germans, either the motivated and well-led 11^th Panzer division or all the other units not attached to the 11^th Panzer; for the soviets, either the 1^st Tank/5^th Mechanised division, All Infantry/Cavalry, “All Units”, or Air Support. The unit scale is primarily company-sized (some battalions among the Soviet units). I starting to see how a two-turn game could take more time to play out than I first anticipated.

A lot of ground to cover: the two adjoining maps. I always appreciate when the terrain
legend and turn track are both incorporated into the map-sheet.

Panzer Battles comes with two 22” by34” maps which meet on a long edge to make a 34” by 43” (you lose about three-quarters of an inch with the overlap) area for the two larger scenarios, the Campaign scenario of seven turns, and Containment Battles, which runs to six turns. The game also comes with two smaller, shorter scenarios which only require Map B, and run over two turns each.

The maps are nicely drafted and fit for purpose. The background colour is a creamed butter, or a couple of shades lighter (if you doubt me, compare one to the stark white verso of the other). I don’t know snow, having never lived anywhere snowy, but the action takes place in December, so this is an appropriate colour choice without going blindingly white. The roads, trails and rail tracks are clearly marked, and the few elevated points marked with red triangles noting the peak altitude points.

Flawless registration, not cleanliness, is next to Godliness.

The game come with a single full sheet of 1/2” (a touch above 12.5mm) counters, not my preferred size, but they are well laid out and mostly quite readable, although I’ll need reading glasses for the formation details (perpendicular to the unit symbol on the right, in about 3-pica).The colour variance is good between the formations; the German greys are easily differentiated, while the 11^th Panzer – the workhorses of the German activity, have an identifying horizontal stripe. The Soviet forces are equally clearly identified, with the traditional tan variations for regular army and red for Guards units. Both sides have high quotients (around a quarter of their overall unit counts each) with mechanised movement ratings (12 MPs to leg units’ 6), making for a more dynamic battlefield situation.

The counters are printed on a reasonable thickness white-core card-stock. The sheet is warping a little, but that could be from the environment the game had been stored in before it moved to Adelaide (decidedly less humid than, say, Brisbane). The registration of the counters is spot-on. I cannot trace any bleed either side where the counters’ background colour changes mid-row. This is rarely an issue these days with a lot of games I see being pre-rounded easy-punch boards with a clear delimitation between counters, but it’s tougher to get perfect with traditional die-cut sheets. Hats-off to the production team.

Dice and a kind note.

Finally, Panzer Battles comes with two six-sided dice, one white, one green, and a small, printed message exclusive to the game, but presumably common to all MMP products. The note explains that the company is committed to producing quality games, and should the purchaser have any issues with the product in their hands, they should contact MMP directly via the various means of communication listed on the note, along with a list of the components that should be present in the box.

I've received excellent service from a couple of game publishers when problems have arisen, but this is a proactive cut above the others, and the publisher should be applauded for their foresight and commitment to service.

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From the little time I’ve spent with Panzer Battles, it looks like it will make a good introduction to the SCS system, and as I've already mentioned, should be comfortably solo-able. It’s the very beginning of the year, and I haven’t made any plans for what to get to first (except for the Commands and Colors: Medieval - Crusades Expansion (GMT, 2024) that I want to review before the end of the month. If I can clear an afternoon, and the wife doesn’t need her sewing table, I’ll try to get one of the short scenarios done and write up an AAR. Better get clipping.