Well, here we are again. As promised we'll take a comprehensive look at Panzer General III Scorched Earth. This is a great game! It is 3-D and loaded with stuff that can keep you busy for months. I've been playing it for four solid months and am still finding new twists, My only complaint is that it's a little temperamental which manifests itself by messing up the sound tract from time to time and booting you out to the desk-top without warning more frequently than I'd like. Fortunately there is a Last Turn device on the Load Game screen so you never lose more than one turn. The game ran better on my Pentium III 550 than it is now on my new Pentium III 850 and we're not sure why. Oh well, that's computers for you. The graphics and sound are very good. You can tell the type of tank or other vehicle better on this game than on Panzer General III Assault. You will love it when the weather changes. You get thunder and lightning when it rains and snow when it snows. excellent effects especially the stormy weather. Now, if they come up with a way to make your room cold or hot, you'd really have something. They also solved the problem of slots by changing it to give you a set number of units without regard to ho" man~ stars thev have. This really improves the game play as you can deploy 12 to 20 units and not be penalized if you have some 10 star units. This was a problem in PG III Assault as a few 10 star units really restricted the number of units you could deploy. I usually try to build one artillery unit (tracked self propelled is best as thev can move cross country whereas towed howitzers need to stay on roads for best mobility) and two or more bomber units to the 10 star level and leave other units, usually armor, at 5 or 6 stars, Build a fighter unit to 10 stars if you are dealt a 5 or 6 star fighter leader at the start as the out of the sun ability which you get at 10* is yen powerful which means you need less fighter units. Anti-aircraft units are also good to build to 5-10* level. I have found it of little value to build infantry beyond 4 stars. Recon units seem to be best at 4-6 stars. I personally only use anti-tank units when they're armored. The German Elephant looks good but it's too slow to be really valuable except to garrison your home base with a 2 or 3 star leader, the same goes for the Russian KVII although you may need it for power in the early battles. The Jagdpanther is the only one I think is really worth using along with the Russian SU152 and the JSU units. Let me know if you have a different experience. There are four campaigns and they are all good! Guderian and Zhukov both start at the beginning of their respective campaigns and go through until victory is achieved. Konev is a shorter version of Zhukov and is a good one to start with. Manstein starts in late summer 1943 after the Battle of Kursk and goes until victory is accomplished although why they didn't start earlier in his career I can't imagine except perhaps it would make the units too strong. I think operation Winter Storm (the attempt to break through to the Stalingrad pocket), or the conquest of Sevastopol might have been a better choice or even the battles of his panzer korps with Army Group North. Oh well, What do I know? One of the four campaigns must first be selected. You then select advantages/disadvantages from a start screen apd begin. Select all the advantages until you learn how to play and then try harder campaigns. There are five levels of difficulty and the 5* level with no advantages is very challenging! I usually select bombers as my first choice and tanks as the second choice for most frequent leader type. The game then takes you to a map of the entire Eastern Front screen which displays one or more battle icon choices, You must click on one and it will describe the scenario. You must then hit the start checkmark in the lower right hand comer to start the scenario. This takes you to a screen to organize your forces. I like to dump most of the units into the leader pile at the beginning, make my promotions and then select the best leaders and unit types. Some scenarios have some units already deployed which you cannot dump into the leader pile. Do not waste promotions on these as you will not keep them as permanent units in your army. You are now ready to deploy your forces. There is an autodeploy button which I don't use. I like to get my artillery up front on the main road if it is towed with my best anti-aircraft unit right behind followed by the best recon unit if it's not tracked (the Russian T-40,T-60 and T-70 are tracked recon units with good cross country ability and thus don't need to be road bound) with armor and engineers on the flanks. You must keep your forces together so the AA units can cover them especially your soft units. Use your fighters to protect your bombers first and then the ground forces if possible. Guderian Guderian starts with the invasion of Poland. The first map screen displays two scenario icons. The northern one is an attack through Pomererania to cut the Polish Corridor. The southern icon is an offensive to Krakow to advance on Warsaw from the south, The southern choice yields the better armv and is the Keeper. Both scenarios lead to the assault on Warsaw as the sole choice for the second scenario. The difference is the approach direction. The northern first scenario leads to an assault on Warsaw from the northwest edge of the second scenario battlefield. The southern first scenario leads to an assault on Warsaw from the southwest edge of the second scenario map. Play all four scenarios as they're fun! The Guderian campaign now shifts to the invasion of the Soviet Union-Operation Barbarossa. Use the southern army from the Polish campaign to continue as this should be the strongest of the two annies from Poland. The initial map screen of Barbarossa displays three scenario icons. These icons represent Army Group North. Army Group Center and Army Group South. Play all three of these and then get out a notebook to record what these are and to help you with all the choices you will have after the initial three are played. If you don't keep notes from here on you will get confused unless you have a photographic memormy. For example, after you complete the first scenario of AGSouth you will get two choices to proceed, an attack towards Kiev or an attack towards Uman--both August scenarios. Then each of these two August scenarios will present you with two more September scenarios (four battles and so on until the number of choices becomes almost over whelming. Thus the necessity for keeping notes By the way, these early battles are about the only time that anti-tank guns are really useful! The Russian tanks, especially the KVI, KVII and T-34, are better than your Panzers and the 88mm Anti-tank gun with a range of two is about the only way other than Stukas you can defeat them! Plus the 88mm AA gun can do double duty although it only gets one shot against ground targets but it can help if you have a 5-7* unit. Hit the Russian armor with bombers and 88s and finish them off with Panzer IIIs to use the overrun ability which saves action points. The various scenarios are not all set up to capture only geographic objectives. This makes the game more fun because you must concentrate on fulfilling the victory conditions and not get bogged down taking secondary objectives or killing enemy forces willy nilly. Some scenarios will want you to exit a certain number of units from special exit hexes, usually two, with or without geographic objectives. Other battles may require the destruction of a number of elite enemy units which are not always easy to find in addition o geographic goats or exit hexes. These variations give the game a type of flow that simulates blitzkrieg by forcing you to bypass some Russian units in order to accomplish the great encirclements of the early years. It also allows the first Russian turns to simulate escaping from encirclements and later the Russkies get to reverse the process as they conduct the great offensives of 1943-1945. You win the game by capturing Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. There are many great battles in store for you, The Russians must capture Berlin and they are really fun to play. The air war is tough and pretty even. I really learned a lot about the Red Air Force which can compete with the Luftwaffe and is historically accurate. The historical aspects seem quite accurate even though I still don't know what the Russian T-43 is, can't find it anywhere in my huge reference library. I especially enjoyed playing Zitadelle from the north and south edges of the salient as well as playing Koney's Steppe Front attack at Prokharovka. All in a, five stars for this really great game. Enjoy!! Back to MWAN #111 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com