Issue #3 of Panzerschreck contained the Barbarossa game, with the player as the Germans. Given the small physical size of the game, this is going to be a fairly broad-brush treatment. However, the main problem with it is, as has been noted elsewhere (by Elias Nordling?), that it is far too easy for the Germans to win. Frankly, the imbalance is such that I wonder how much playtesting was done of the final version. To take just one issue, various cities (Leningrad, Sevastpol, etc) become fortresses through random events, which is not a problem in itself, but the benefits are trivial, making these places far to easy for the German to take. It looks as if the fortress rules might have been changed late in the day, since as things stand, they barely seem worth the counters used to denote them.

A minor point, but one small complaint I had about the Reichstag game was the lack of unit designations, which I feel add to flavour, even if not essential. It may seem unfair to turn round and criticise Minden (the publishers of the magazine) for using such designations in this game (the Germans are given corps designations, the Russians armies), but while in the earlier game some at least of the units involved were equivalent to historical formations, this is not the case with Barbarossa, where the German units are somewhere between a corps and an army, and the Russians between an army and a front. I do not mind this kind of fudging myself, but would prefer when this is the case not to have the fudge highlighted by the use of what I consider to be inappropriate designations.

It is true that the game can be fairly easily tweaked to make life for the Germans much more difficult. The basic mechanics of the game include changes to the balance of advantage on the Eastern Front which will, if the Soviets survive, gradually tip things against the Germans, and eventually lead to their wholesale retreat. By altering the speed with which these effects kick in, the game can be superficially balanced fairly easily, especially with a few other changes, like beefing up the effects of fortresses. However, this leads to my mind to another set of problems. I would hope that any game on this conflict as a whole would at least stand a reasonable chance of recreating the broad flow of historical events: a big initial German advance in 41, a limited retreat during the subsequent winter, a renewed offensive, but with waning effectiveness in 42, etc, etc. Not asking for this to happen every time – just that it is a reasonable possibility. The problem I had with my attempts to tweak the Panzerschreck Barbarossa was that they tended to make anything approaching the historical German advance in 41 far too difficult: lessening the effects of the tweaks led back to the old problem of too many German victories. I was just getting into the process of ever more complicated changes to address these issues when I realized that life was too short, and that I have other as yet unplayed games clamouring for attention.

So, IMHO the Panzerschreck Barbarossa is a flawed game. It has some interesting ideas – the combat system, the rules for armour advantage, Russian production, and so forth – but these don’t outweigh its problems where I am concerned.

With thanks to Greg Schloesser for arranging publication rights, www.consimworld.com for permission, and David Buckland as author.