by: Michael Barnes

As far as I’m concerned, SSI’s classic PC game PANZER GENERAL remains one of the best examples of how tabletop wargaming concepts can be enriched and made more accessible in the electronic medium. It was in many ways an old-school hex-and-counter wargame but it introduced a fun, RPG-like system whereby players would earn Prestige Points with which to upgrade or reinforce units that remained persistent over the course of a campaign. It was also easy to play despite the level of detail that included an emphasis on combined arms, air support, artillery, terrain, weather, command, and other factors. Many a one-on-one game night in the mid to late 1990s was spent not around the gaming table but playing hotseat games of PANZER GENERAL. So I was pretty excited to see that a new version of the game was not only available on Xbox Live but also as a printed, physical boardgame published by newcomer Petroglyph Games.

PANZER GENERAL: ALLIED ASSAULT is interesting because it comes to us in a different era of hobby and video gaming. Hobby gaming today is something very different than it was in the mid 90s and “pop” wargaming is more popular than the more simulationist strands of the genre. The new game reflects current trends by emerging as a hybrid design that combines qualities of simplified tactical board games, collectible card games, and card-driven wargames. Prestige Points are still there, but the idea of persistent experience has become a card unlocking/deck building mechanic in the video game and an unfortunate casualty in the print edition. What remains though is an easy to play and accessible scenario-based tactical wargame that values fun over historicity without sacrificing PANZER GENERAL’s level of detail and strategic gameplay.

The board is a grid of rectangular terrain tiles with varying Prestige Point values provided to the owner and terrain types that affect incoming and outgoing fire. Player units are represented by cards and in classic PG fashion the cards are either “soft” or “hard” targets and have combat values against both types. That enables an anti-tank weapon to pack a little more punch against a Sherman than a bunch of dug-in infantry. On each turn, players can spend Prestige Points to place new units on the board as well as move and/or shoot with the ones already there. Scenarios generally feature control points and standardized victory conditions.

Combat is essentially a mini-duel between two cards. In combat, various factors and modifiers are totaled up to provide combat values for the attacker and defender. Units such as long-range artillery can provide decisive support to attacking units. The idea is to get your combat value higher than your opponents, and that includes the play of action cards or the sacrifice of cards to try to get better numbers.

It’s very much a punch-counterpunch thing with both players jockeying to outdo each other. In turns where several battles could happen, the pressure to budget Prestige Points in order to have enough to play cards in future combats is intense. Finally, a die roll (or card flip in the tabletop game) adds a small positive or negative modifer. Once the numbers are in, the differential is determined and that number provides a morality loss value with the net loser being forced to retreat. It’s a fun system, but it is strangely complicated given the simplicity of the rest of the game.

I think the Xbox Live game is very well done, albeit a little slow given all the combat and die rolling animations, and I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit even though it really is kind of a different direction for the franchise. I think the distillation of unit-to-unit combat to what amounts to a card duel requiring card management and Prestige Point budgeting works well and there are certain Chess-like elements in terms of how units are able to support each other that make for some interesting strategic positioning. Action cards abound, so there’s always a surprise upset or a skin-of-the-teeth victory. The AI is competent and it offers online play for friends. For $10, it’s a great value and I think it stands as one of the best board games the service has to offer.

Putting aside the video game and assessing the physical edition, I found myself almost reluctant to bring it out for tabletop sessions. I can’t help but question why a consumer would choose to purchase it given that it costs almost five times as much as the Xbox Live game, it requires a fairly long amount of setup time in sorting out card decks and terrain tiles, and it puts some of its more egregious mechanics like the 16-step combat resolution phase that must be run through twice in each battle in the foreground. I’m not into tabletop gaming because I like to add and subtract numbers or keep track of face-down cards and piles of chits so those discreet charms were also somewhat lost on me- I’m more than happy to let the CPU do all the heavy lifting in terms of tallying up terrain, morale, and combat card modifiers. I think it’s also a harder sell in the tabletop market where it is competing against simpler games like MEMOIR ’44, peers like TIDE OF IRON, and more complex games such as COMBAT COMMANDER.

However, I’ve actually really enjoyed my games of PG:AA at the table and I think it’s a relatively simple, fun WWII-themed game that has a little more meat on its bones than it initially appears and despite its clumsiness, the card-based movement and combat is pretty fun in a face-to-face setting. It plays almost exactly the same as its digital counterpart on a mechanical level but there are a few minor tweaks such as the elimination of die rolling in favor of flipping a card for a number and one major one- without the deckbuilding element, players do not assemble custom decks and action cards are drawn from a common deck rather than an individual one. But where it all matters most, the game is fundamentally the same. There are a number of included scenarios and options for solo play, but if you’re playing it by yourself then I’d advise you to stick to the XBLA edition.