Voici une nouvelle série de captures d’écrans pour le futur troisième volet de la série Panzer Battles sur le thème de l’Afrique du nord en 1941. Le jeu est encore en chantier mes les développeurs annoncent avoir bien progressé ces derniers mois. Plusieurs scénarios semblent terminés, et a priori il ne resterait plus qu’à achever une campagne, et d’autres scénarios (au final il y en aura 76 et non pas 45 comme annoncé initialement). Puis probablement à ajuster différents mécanismes des règles, particulièrement certaines nouvelles variations (par exemple pour les points de victoire).
Voilà en tous cas qui se présente comme une très belle et détaillée simulation de différentes opérations majeures de cette partie du conflit. Jeu pour lequel la date de sortie n’est toujours pas connue, dont ces images ne représentent donc pas encore la version définitive, et dont la sortie pourrait avoir lieu, si tout va bien, vers la fin de l’année.
Pour quelques précisions supplémentaires sur Panzer Battles – North Africa 1941, voyez cette annonce sur le blog du studio.
A lire également sur cette série notre article Premiers pas dans Panzer Battles : coup de boutoir à Hannut, la première partie de cet AAR se trouvant par ici. Et la seconde ici. Et la troisième par là.
Communiqué
Wargame Design Studio – 2018 Half Yearly Report (Part One)
Hi there,
It’s crazy to think that half the year has gone already. We set lofty goals of what can be achieved each year, but the pace always seems to stay the same.
The plan is to publish an update on our current projects over the next couple of blog posts. You can expect updates on Panzer Campaigns, the Civil War Battles series and for this first entry; Panzer Battles.
Three months ago, in March we provided our latest update on North Africa 1941. That update covered off the included campaigns (and scenarios already completed), examples of some of the order of battles, a showcase of the maps and introduction of the new variable victory points.
With the first round of Civil War Battles updates released in June and all the Eastern Front Panzer Campaigns out by March, we have been able to double down on materially moving North Africa forward.
I’m happy to say that we have got a lot of work done in the last couple of months. Back in March we showed you a listing forty-five playable scenarios. As of today, we now have seventy-six scenarios completed. The full listing is below;
Operation Crusader has an additional five scenarios expanding the available situations to eighteen. Tobruk has a further two, with eight scenarios now complete. Operation Brevity & Crete are currently unchanged. Sonnenblume has a single additional scenario, but the Mersa Brega quartet have been completely redone based upon the Julian Shales book that we highlighted in our June 2017 blog posts. Players who have the demo will notice the difference with the latest versions.
Operation Battleaxe has just been started and the master three-day scenario is close to completion. I expect there will be four to six scenarios for this operation. Finally, there has been sixteen scenarios added for Operation Compass. Compass was a theatre wide battle covering two months and unlike Brevity and Battleaxe (two and three days respectively), covers four different battles in total.
The Operation Compass battles have turned out (surprisingly) well. The four engagements covered are the initial melee in Egypt, called the Battle of the Camps, the assault on Bardia, the attack on Tobruk and the destruction of the Italian 10th Army at Beda Fomm. These are all very different situations and the Panzer Battles system seems to handle the variability.
For Beda Fomm, a new map was created, that stretches from just south of Benghazi to just north of Agedabia. The jump map will give you some idea of scale. (All screens can be clicked for full size)
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The new variable victory points help here and a new ‘hidden value’ feature has been added. When fog of war is on, players can only see the value that pertains to their own side. There is no way to see what value the other side is receiving. Below you can see the different iterations for Sollum, from a British perspective and then the value the German player sees. This hidden approach allows us to ‘hide’ what decision a player has made by ensuring the other player can’t see the various changes in weightings.
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We are now coming into the home stretch for North Africa. What’s left to do? We still have to finish Battleaxe and Crusader, decide whether we will do any more variable scenarios (and possibly a campaign), finish the scenario testing and get all documentation completed. That said, a lot has been done in the last couple of months and I’m hopeful we can maintain the pace. Future Panzer Battles titles are not being discussed until we get North Africa 1941 out.
From my perspective, the Panzer Battles system works extremely well in the desert environment. The testing has shown some solid historical alignments and that there were some pretty similar match-ups. My latest testing has been of 88’s at Halfaya Pass in Operation Battleaxe. It’s not pretty for the Matilda’s and as was historical, their ‘Queen of the Desert’ moniker was short lived…
