"panzer leader/blitz" Topic

Back in the dark ages of the 70s loved these 2 games. But I have not played either of them for about 30 years or more. So a couple of questions.

how do they stack up today? Are they still playable or are they to dated? Worth getting on ebay or amazon?

I see aftermarket counters out there for north africa, always my favorite theatre. If the game is good, are the counters worth getting? How bout desert game boards, are there any of them out there? And, are there any special rules?

I am sure I am not the only person on here who might be interested even if they are not strictly minatures games.

Owen

Wow, 3 identical posts on 3 topics, looks like I really like this game

Very very dated. I think if you can snag a copy 2nd hand for a few quid why not – but you will only play it a few times. There are better options out there. Try on VASSAL first maybe – though you would need to find the rules somehow.

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I still have both se4ts.
Nothing dated about them.

If anything,. I think they are based on experience as much as stats.

Have them both, and still love them.

Agreed!

Check out the official rewrite Panzerblitz "Hill of Death"
There are also some fan produced commercial sets out there "Old School tactical" I think.

FWIW, I bought Panzerblitz, Panzerleader, and Arab Israeli Wars because I wanted them on my bookshelf thinking I would play a microarmor version of them. I've done that literally twice in 6 years but, like I said, they're good to have.

Desert game boards. Am I missing something, or would ASL desert boards do? There seems to be a steady trade in them.

Though you know, just in terms of technology, it ought to be possible to get the local Kinko's to print out full-size color hex boards on decent paper, assuming someone has PDF files.

They were all great for their time and I still have them. But the mechanics, rules, etc., IMO, and as noted, are a bit "dated" …

We played Arab-Israeli Wars a couple of years ago. The basic rules allowed for very gamey play – i.e. no opportunity fire, so you bounded forward from cover to cover and then popped and and capped the target.

I think if you use all the rules, the game will shold up well.

I see no reason why they wouldn't still provide for very good games.

I owned PB back in the day.

Looked at PL, but never purchased it. Wish I had.

I did note that the stats seemed to be redone, so wasn't sure they were really compatible with one another.

I have copies of both and they are not dated. However, I agree with . . .

Try on VASSAL first

The last game I played about a month ago was on Vassal.

Duane

I have always thought Pico armors stuff on a hex mat would work well for those games.

Some aspects of the design hold up well, especially shoot then move, and the high level of mobility possible, but other things creak a great deal, especially the strange treatment of artillery where it is benefit to bunch up and the complete lack of any sort of C3 rules.

Of the three in the series, I still prefer Panzerblitz for its chess like feel of fire and manouvre, 'Panzerbush' and all, as the opp fire introduced in PL and AIW just slowed the game to a crawl and added little value as you just 'panzerbushed' in smaller increments.

Panzerblitz/leader are fine games. I always object to the dated comments. They are just different not worse because of age. I have not played Panzer, Panzergrenadier, etc. They may be better, maybe not. I have seen way too many games that were redone as better systems only to find that they were really no better than their predecessors and in some cases worse. Try the games. You can certainly pick up an inexpensive copy.

They are still excellent games. I just recently got Panzerblitz from eBay. The previously mentioned games that have attempted to be more updated trade in added complexity without much benefit to my eyes. Maybe the nostalgia factor is too strong for me. There have been a few attempts to solve the glaring complaints about the original rules. here is a link that sums them up well:
link

Others have just opted to use the Panzer Leader rules with Panzerblitz, which is also a fine solution. YMMV.

As far as maps and nicer counters etc if you want to "roll your own" or just expand the scope, these two sites have everything you need:
gregpanzerblitz.com
link

maps for desert scenarios aplenty:
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I am playing the rules with microarmor as well as with new larger counters and maps that I have found at the above sites and really am enjoying it.

I found playing PB/PL using the Arab/Israeli War rules works much better. Especially fighting in a built up area. Artillery rules fixed to better punish big stacks of men and equipment.

> We played Arab-Israeli Wars a couple of years ago. The basic rules allowed for very gamey play

The standard rules in AIW have Opfire. The first four scenarios or so using the basic rules are the only ones without it.

As for how the game stack up, certainly very dated but still a lot of fun.

I'm not sure what "dated" means in this context.

The Panzerblitz rules are extremely simple. You can probably learn them in about 10 minutes and teach them to someone else in 5. There was a lot of thought put into the design, and if you spend time reading the author's design notes and the Campaign Analysis (and various magazine articles) you start to see there is some nice elegance built into various mechanics.

The use of odds ratios has fallen out of favor and seems rather too "mathy" for today's players. The "panzerbush" problem (mentioned above) and the complete absence of C3 rules are also now glaring deficiencies. I have no opinion about the op-fire rules added in Panzerleader (never played them), but more elegant house rules may be possible, and I've been convinced for about 20 years that a fun C3 system could be grafted onto the core Panzerblitz mechanics with no trouble at all. In fact, PB is probably an excellent framework for testing out your own experimental C3 rules, if you are in the mood to try various ideas.

The biggest problems converting the system to miniatures would be the unique factors for each unit type, and if you decide not to use hexes, the varying unit footprints that are abstracted by the stacking limits.

- Ix

On the subject of "dated" mechanics – several years ago a friend introduced me to White Star Rising, which in many ways felt to me like a clean-sheet update of the Panzerblitz concepts (simple, fast, modular, geomorphic, platoon-sized units with unique stats, simple abstraction of the differentiation between hard/soft/armored targets, etc.), using more popular current-style board game mechanics, and a perhaps few borrowed from miniatures gaming.

White Star Rising is itself now out of print (to be replaced by a 2nd edition), but the original rules were expanded into a modular system called Nations At War, with the core rules available as a free PDF download.

- Ix

I used to play PL with miniatures, one of the hardest things to translate is the terrain, as like much of the game design, there is Los of subtlety built in. Those apparently open game boards are full of choke points, the the closed ones have lots of routes through.

Even after 30 years, I still ponder how to model Woods on the tabletop the same way PL did, in a workable manner.

Many thanks to all, PL bid on and won. Cheap enough compared to a lot of things I have ordered over the years, if I play 3 games I am OK

If you want to expand your Panzerblitz collection, also shop around the Board Game Geek market:
Panzerblitz: link
Panzer Leader: link
The Arab-Israeli Wars: link

- Ix

I've only played Panzerleader, not Blitz but we enjoyed it when I played it with the kid.

It can feel fiddly since a lot of the scenarios have a ton of different units on the map and armoured combat never quite felt right to us.

But considering the age, the game was incredibly foresighted and the basic design is very solid.

Back in the mid 80's I took my Panzerblitz, Panzer Leader and Arab-Israeli Wars boards doubled them in size and used them for 1/285th gaming. They worked great. I even did some of the scenarios from the original games on the enlarged boards.

Well worth the visit for anyone into panzerblitz/leader

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just to be an old crank and throw my 2 cents in, one of the reasons PB is such a great game is because of the tank profiles image on the counters instead of the top down view.

Like any game, some of the mechanical conventions are not a particular model of reality. Due to time and changing practices in boardgame design, some of those mechanical conventions jump out more strongly these days.

What has endured is that these are still very fun games to play!

These games were so much fun, that they launched me into collecting ROCO tanks and building up Series 78 standard units from Wargamers' DIgest, even though I found all of the miniatures rules from the 70's to be horribly un-fun to play for my tastes. When Command Decision eventually came along, and I finally started playing big battle miniatures games.

I also love the profile views ^,^ WHile I don't get to play the boardgames as often as I would like (and still want to play the Megagame scenario!), I use the counters regularly to mark hidden deployment when setting up Blitzkrieg Commander scenarios.

If you can find a copy of the old 'Wargamer's Guide to Panzerblitz' it has an article on double-blind rules.

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