Panzer strike 1 Western front, by Forsage games

Recently we received a copy of Forsage’s Panzer strike 1 Western front. This article will be just the first impressions of the components, while the actual gameplay will be in a follow-up article. 

The game comes in a big box. Think an average two player miniature game starter size. The latter is easy, assemble the minis, store the extra bits, and chuck the box. This is a boardgame so you’re supposed to keep it to store the game. Now, this one is a bit trickier  as you have a fair bit of assembling to do (the terrain), but when done, you will have trouble fitting everything back in the box, and closing the lid.

As most gamers familiar with Forsage’s titles will know by now, the game box is full of components, and there will be a lot of assembling. This time the minis don’t require any extra work, but the dice still do, as well as all the buildings, and a few of the extra components. There is a good instruction manual included, with a visual guide.

                         

Let’s talk about the buildings first. There are a great many of them, and they represent most of what you might expect to find in a small town near the end of WWII. I point out “most” as there are expansions planed, as well as stand alone titles, that can be linked to the previous game boards. There is a “small” sneak-peak inside the game box itself, of some of the components and terrain from the follow-up game Panzer strike 2. There is even a small homage to a famous tv-show. See if you can spot it in some of the images.

Every building, or a set of buildings has its location marker underneath, which corresponds with the same alpha-numerical markings on the game boards. This does limit the variety every time you play, especially as the game boards must connect in a certain way, so you can’t make a different town each time you play. Would the game have more replayability if the game boards didn’t have large black markings for where the building go to, thus allowing the player to make a new board each time? Perhaps. But, here lies something very cool and unique. The game comes with an extra set of ruined buildings, which are meant to replace some of the buildings in the game. Not all of the buildings come with a ruin, but about 30% of them, and they do change the scenery a lot. I can’t wait to go through the rules to see how this interacts during the game. On the one hand, you have a fixed town, that looks the same each time you play, but on the other hand, you have ruins to replace some of the buildings where the heaviest fighting was going on earlier.

 

The game boards are large, and form a good looking playing surface being so full of details.

There are a few extra scenery bits included, such as walls, barricades, trams, trees, fountains, monuments and tank traps. Some have a prefixed place on the boards, like the fountains, and some can be fixed by the scenario, or allow the player to place them where he feels they would benefit him the most, like the high and low barricades.

 

The game is intended to come in two different “variants”, with the standard one having figures that we saw in Tank chess (those unfamiliar with that title I suggest to check it out), for more generic looking pieces. The deluxe variant will have proper miniatures, 6mm scale, for the Germans and the Western allies. To my knowledge no other difference is planed between the two variants.

Here lies a second surprise. The information cards for the minis have a few variants of their own. You can play the minis as generic pieces (like in Tank chess), which we feel would be easier on the younger audiences, and nation specific pieces. Not enough? There is another surprise. There are in fact TWO sets of rules included. The Core rules, and the Dynamic rules. And the stat cards for generic and nation historical for both sets. The point costs when building your forces are different depending if you are playing the core or the dynamic rules.

While on the subject of the historical units in the game, we had a little gripe with the game here. The game is set in a French town, so the year is 1944. However there are a few vehicles that first showed up later, even in 1945, and there are some that were obsolete by 1944, then some that barely saw any combat even before 1944. The allies feel like they could have been limited to the Us vehicles, than later expanded with a Uk set of vehicles of their own, thus allowing each set to feel unique with its own iconic pieces. I can't comment on the stats yet, i'll leave that for a future article.

All the pieces from the basic set are of good quality, and in fact feel like an updated sculpt of the Tank chess pieces. However the antitank guns and the howitzers are of significantly lower quality being 3d printed in low res. Both players get the same pieces, in different colors, and each can be easily identified by referencing the stat cards. The basic set doesn't include all the gun pieces the deluxe will have. 

 

The game is about tank combat, but there are a few instances where infantry appears, like with anti tank guns, and in scenarios where you have an abstract infantry squad or two, in transports, and they need to get somewhere in town, to occupy some building to achieve a goal set by the scenario. Some scenarios even have a sniper in a building, where you need to be extra careful with your squad. There is no infantry on infantry combat, so no vehicle has any stats for Mg fire.

Would the inclusion of different types of infantry, with its own weapons make for a better game? I don’t think so. Certainly not with 2 sets of rules, and a generic and historical set of stats. Just the idea of infantry holed up in some building with a stash of hand held antitank weapons would take away the World of tanks vibe this game already has. It would also break the “MCMD” motto Forsage is well known for.

There is an expansion in the works, along with Panzer strike 2. The expansion will add optional rules, new control panels, and new markers. The rules will add different speeds, engine heat, moving targets to lower the chance to hit, target size, overwatch, optics quality, different shell damage, and new ammo types, shell loading time, crew experience etc..

There are two different sets of dice included. One for the Core set of rules, and the other for the Dynamic set. Apart from the essential d6’s there is a plethora of other 6 sided dice. The dynamic rules set has just numbered dice, while the core has a ton of details, all of which will be covered in the rules article. 

 

We love the fact that there is several types of vehicle damage in the game, with even more to come in the advanced upgrade set. 

The scenario book comes with 10 scenarios, 5 are generic, with marked deployment zones on the map, and a few obstacles, while the players choose their own forces, with no specific goal, and the other 5 are more narrative in nature, each with a story behind it, and a set of goals for each side, again the players get to choose their own forces, but here the scenarios will specify if one side must take something specific, like a truck or a light tank. The rulebook also has a few scenarios of its own.

The remaining components are a pair of reference cards, always welcome, artillery or parabolic fire templates, to check if the vehicle can fire over a certain piece of terrain, and a few others, such as timer cubes, damage markers, turn marker, the rulers etc..

We can't wait to go through both rule sets, and play a few games. Then, in a follow-up article we will cover how both sets work, the differences between them, and how we feel about the game.