The introduction of Panzerblitz into the world of operational and strategic wargames came as a proverbial bombshell. Gamers loved it on two accounts: complexity and diversity. True, other titles were equally as complex as far as sheer bulk was concerned, as veterans of 1914 or the first edition of Anzio could attest.

But the Panzerblitz rules offered a different quality to the complexity. Until its appearance, combat meant simply moving adjacent to the enemy; a single die roll summed up a week or so of fighting. Now combat took on intricacies - weapon and target relationships, ranges, terrain analysis, and so on - that previously had been completely abstracted. Success in battle required a proper combination of fire and manuever with highly differentiated units. This diversity was appealing in its own right. No longer was an armored division merely a single counter rated as meaner and faster infantry. Homogeneity dissolved into a dazzling variety of vehicle silhouettes and artillery calibers.

In brief, tactical games rapidly gained a widespread following, and so the list of titles began to swell. Only long-term S&T subscribers recall that SPI actually published a sneak preview of Panzerblitz as a mini-game, during the gestation period of the Avalon Hill version. The counters looked the same, but the map was the size of a postcard in comparison to three geomorphic mapboards, and the rules were much cruder - no overruns or close assaults, for example.

The first title to try to exploit the success of Panzerblitz was Combat Command. SPI resisted the temptation to publish identical rules with West Front counters . . . and the result left many gamers disappointed. In particular, the scale ballooned from 250 to 750 meters per hex, with turns expanded proportionally in time to keep the movement factors the same.

Thus, the vast majority of the units had ranges of one or two hexes. This in itself did not degrade the design too seriously, but when coupled to zone of control and defensive fire rules, the game became a disaster.

The major criticism of Panzerblitz was the ability of enemy units to move past the muzzles of friendly guns without risk. Combat Command strove to alleviate this difficulty by allowing unlimited defensive fire at enemy units moving through zones of control. This nicely reduced the potency of overruns, but seriously weakened direct fire - in most cases a unit had to close to a one hex range to have a decent chance of inflicting damage, thereby exposing itself to a hail of defensive fire as it gained position.

Worse, the enlarged hex scale, which allowed dual occupancy (friendly and enemy) of a hex, restricted spotting to the same hex rather than adjacent ones. Thus a unit in covering terrain, which could blaze away all day with invisibility, could blast each and every unit crossing its zone of control in the attempt to enter that hex for spotting, Combat Command deservedly earned early obscurity.

Appearing next was Red Star/White Star, and, at first, it followed in the footsteps of combat command. Though the scale shrank back to 300 meters per hex, zones of control were retained along with some of the worst aspects of the Combat Command rules, such as allowing TOW units to fire indirectly, simply because their range was greater than seven. But the sheer novelty of a modern period tactical game allowed RS/WS to survive until the combat rules could be cleaned up. In some respects, the revised game was simpler than Panzerblitz: lines of sight could now be traced into covering terrain, thus manuever was no longer dictated by the needs of spotting, and all transport was "organic", so truck counters ceased to clutter the map. Furthermore, guns and infantry could move without the need to mount or dismount.

The combat results table introduced a new idea, levels of disruption, but it followed the structure of the Combat Command CRT in that very high odds (10-1 or greater) were needed to cause a more serious result than disruption. This is where RS/WS ultimately fell short in its appeal. Two Russian mech infantry battalions in a town hex enjoyed a total defense strength of 540, which made 10-1 odds somewhat difficult to obtain. In general, the defense was so highly favored that playing the attacking side was usually an exercise in frustration.

Tactical games also covered ancient history (pre-WWII). The range spanned Bibical times (Armageddon) to early World War I (Soldiers). None ever seemed to catch on, even when refurbished in the "PRESTAGS" project. Perhaps this was due to the somewhat esoteric scenarios provided or perhaps to the fact that they were all cast from the same mold and had little to distinguish one from another.

Simultaneous Movement

The next design innovations were introduced in Kampfpanzer and Desert War. Simultaneous movement, panic, and differential combat results tables all made their appearances. Enthusiasm for simultaneous movement grew swiftly. In response, a trio of super-tactical games appeared: Sniper!, Tank!, and Patrol. Their popularity continued longer than any of the titles mentioned so far, and with justification. The man-to-man level of Sniper! and Patrol encouraged an astonishing degree of identification between the player and his pieces. In my own experience, a limited-intelligence, refereed game of any of the three is the closest a sleazy civilian can come to the feel of participating in actual combat.

The interest in simultaneous movement peaked quickly. Kampfpanzer and Desert War turned out to be unfortunate choices for presenting the concept, because of several reasons. The armored vehicles in these games, from the early days of WWII, were mostly small and fast. With 100 meter hexes, the tank platoons had plenty of movement points - too many to plot conveniently.

Furthermore, the combat system soon revealed a shortcoming. As long as the minimum differential could be met, the target was certain to be pinned. Thus, manuever was discouraged. Players ended up simply ordering their forces to move within range of each other and then fire continuously until the ammunition ran out. In most cases, the first casualty was the players I patience, and they turned to new games.

When Combat Command and RS/WS were reincarnated as Panzer 44 and Mech War 77, an improved version of the differential CRT was featured. Pins were de-emphasized, and the intriguing delayed panic result was introduced. Plotting remained, but strict simultaneity was gone. Movement reverted to sequential, ordered by a simple "MV" notation, and was executed as the player saw fit. Plotting was certainly hastened in consequence, but few liked the system. By locking all of the first player's units in position before the second player moved, the latter enjoyed too great an advantage. In retreat, the second player had precise knowledge of where the safe routes lay; in the attack, he could mass fire against a selected portion of the enemy force. In my own experience, these good games can be turned into great games by returning to full plotting for movement.

The smaller movement allowances (due to slower tanks and a 200 meter hex scale) and heavier terrain combine to make plotting far less tedious than for the earlier titles. One adjustment is necessary: vehicles should move before infantry so that overruns are possible.

Coinciding with the appearance of Panzer 44, Avalon Hill finally published Panzer Leader. As far as design was concerned, the system was only a cleaned-up version of Panzerblitz, with new spotting and opportunity fire rules to tone down the worst excesses of the older game. On paper, Panzer Leader should have been far inferior to Panzer 44, however, in practice, it was far more fun. There were engineers blowing up bridges, Panthers and Shermans overrunning one another into stacks of wrecks, P-47's strafing trucks, infantry assaulting the beaches . . all in all, a most dynamic game.

The scenarios were also more interesting, even though half of them seemed to require one side to destroy the other in Grancelles.

Avalon Hill soon thereafter released Tobruk. Tobruk presented a completely different approach to armored warfare. It was depicted in a profusion of detail that some called rich and others called excruciating. Either way, the colorless, all-or-nothing combat system of Tank! suffered in comparison. Tobruk failed to excite the majority of gamers. The featureless mapboard deterred some; the endless dice rolling deterred others. But at base, it suffered the same malady as Desert War: tank battles required little more than clanking into range and slugging it out. However faithful this may be to history, it makes for an unappealing game.

Similarly, SPI offered a different approach in Firefight. The traditional aspects of panic, movement, and differential CRT were absent. Instead, the game featured a thorough and sophisticated range attenuation combat system; with the lethality of modern munitions, a miss versus total destruction approach to combat resolution was acceptable.

The most compelling aspect of the game was not the system, which allowed TOW's and Saggers to smash the other to junk at 60 hex ranges, but the magnificent artillery rules. Variable delay times and radii of destruction were amoung the many details of artillery fire that gave players an appreciation of a highly technical subject.

Unfortunately, the scenarios were so unbalanced or dull that many were put off from delving into the game more deeply. Only when the full range of rules were used with scenarios published elsewhere did players obtain the full measure of enjoyment.

The game had appeal in two ways. First, the interactive nature of the system, namely alternating direct fire and liberal opportunity fire, tended to permit both players to feel moments of triumph in the same turn. Second, the diversity of options made correct tactics difficult to discern.

Firefight spawned Raid! but the birth was premature. The offspring suffered from a terminal case of gaps in the rules and went to an early grave.

The development of October War advanced the state of the art with the first use of step reduction in a tactical game. Partial elimination reflected the continuing attrition of a battle more accurately than wiping out whole platoons. The ingenious combat system was able to handle step reduction without strain. Panic also reached a fresh restatement. Strength level and the attempted task of a unit became the determining factors for panic, rather than the crude method of randomly chosen hex numbers. Indirect fire, ineffectual in the Panzer 44 series, was useful, even though it was hard to believe that hard targets could be as invulnerable to indirect fire as the game depicts.

In actual play, however, October War choked. Stacking was an annoyance. At first, players were relieved to discover that three units could be present in a hex instead of the customary one. But, they were soon dismayed to see stacks assume skyscraper proportions as units were covered with counters denoting suppression, step losses, panic, and so on.

Overall, the major difficulty was the movement system. To avoid the obections raised to sequential movement SPI turned to the alternating movement in Firefight. In theory, this not only allowed each player to exploit the moves of the other in the same turn, but also allowed plotting to be reduced to a bare minimum. This approach worked for Firefight, but only because movement was insignifiacrit compared to weapon ranges.

With swift units in a confined area, the approach failed. All too often, a safe move turned to disaster when the enemy instantly responded with a countermove. The problem became even more acute when one side ran out of units to move. Play slowed down considerably as players pondered how to avoid risky moves or as each player moved inconsequential units while waiting for the other to commit himself.

The Arab-Israeli Wars proved to be the ultimate development of the Panzerblitz system. At long last the terrain anomalies were resolved, and an updated sequence of play coupled with morale considerations made opportunity fire worthwhile. Weapon effectiveness became more rational.

The major criticism of the game centered on the attack and defense values of the tank units. In most tank battles, an Israeli attack would commonly be just a few points short of the desired odds. Such criticism was not dissatisfied with the use of juggled factors as a internal form of command control. However, this system was not vulnerable to unlucky die rolls present in more explicit panic systems, and it guided the Arab player to employ mass in an intelligent manner.

Grand-Tactical Games

Following this, tactical games made a detour into the realm of grand-tactical monoliths. However, a chip off the old block was Stonewall, a scaled-down, cleaned-up version of Terrible Swift Sword. It gathered praise, but seemingly on account of its older brother rather than for any intrinsic merit. Basically, Stonewall was a frustrating game for both sides.

The Confederates had insufficient strength to conduct a battle in the open, and the Union had considerable restrictions upon the movement of its brigades. It was possible for the Confederates to sustain heavy casualties on the battlefield and then win the game by running away. As for the design, the old problem of Panzerblitz was revived: enemy units could march past friendly formations without a shot being fired, as long as they refrained from entering a zone of control. Circling behind a unit to melee without risk became a standard procedure, a problem rarely encountered in the shoulder-to-shoulder battlelines in TSS.

With Squad Leader, we come full circle. Panzerblitz was a milestone in its treatment of hard data, becoming the standard by which later titles were measured. Squad Leader is a milestone in its treatment of soft data, namely morale considerations, which lie at the heart of its system. Because this requires a greater reliance on value judgements, the game is more open to design criticisms.

Nevertheless, gamers love it for the same reasons they loved Panzerblitz: complexity and diversity. The complexity lies in the frequent dice rolling. Even a statistical whiz would be daunted by calculations of the probabilities for a series of fire attacks, morale checks, and so forth. Precise analysis thus yields more intuitive styles of play, more in keeping with the confusion inherent in tactical warfare.

The diversity lies (in part) in the wonderful assortment of hardware the squads can haul around - bazookas, machine guns, satchel charges, flamethrowers, etc. Players make direct use of equipment usually abstracted into an attack factor. Few will argue that Squad Leader will become the standard by which all future tactical titles will be measured.