The 21st Panzer, the Lists and You

By Ian Birdwell

This year Battlefront found the perfect item to get my out of my finals-funk of grading and paper writing, the publication of the 21st Panzer booklet to supplement the D-Day German book. If you haven’t seen the overview Tom Burgess wrote, take a gander at it (.

This particular article is going to be more geared towards a discussion of the lists of your 21st panzer forces on the battlefield, going over the shining stars of the formations within the book, the one item to leave at home, and how to bring your V3 force up to speed with V4’s update to the 21st Panzer in Normandy. 

In terms of the lists to look at, Tom did a great examination of the benefits of the formations and the general role of the forces, this article plans ongoing slightly more in-depth regarding them. Initially, we’ll touch on the most important of the formations of the 21st Panzer, the Beute StuGs! The shining example of awesome within this formation remains the humble Beute StuG, who doesn’t love a tank destroyer with AT 12 to back up your Panzer Grenadiers?

This is where the formation shines in my eyes, being able to bring to force what amounts to the formation of Marders. Especially with the rise of heavy tanks like Churchills in gaming clubs across the globe, I suspect that this formation is going to be fairly popular- at least I know I’m in love with it.

Personally, my biggest disappointment with the formation lies in the Beute StuHs, they’ve been battered by the nerf hammer and made a compulsory choice for backing up your Beute StuGs. Reduced from four hulls to three, reduced rate of fire to one, and coming in at the same cost as their Pak 40 armed counterparts they’re not all that spectacular other than their ability to bombard and fire smoke.

The biggest boon this unit has is that it is a formation unit for the Beute StuGs and the formation has expanded by two united compared to the old Atlantic Wall formation, meaning the old Swiss army knife of the Beute StuHs will now instead be a fantastic unit to help keep the formation in good spirits. 

In terms of bringing your V3 Beute StuG formation up to speed, the only thing you’ll need to really do is either purchase two additional Beute StuHs (as you can now take two units of them if you’d like) or just leave one at home when you’re playing the formation. Other than that, you’re good to go out of the box they’ve been resting in. 

The Armored Panzergrenadiers are the other formation within the book, and my oh my they’re a sight for sore eyes. Coming in with as many halftracks as stands and all kinds of guns on halftracks, they’re packing as much heat as they can carry to complete their objectives.

The most significant change within this formation is, of course, the number of halftracks mandated for each infantry platoon to take, seven is a pretty big number and its something I think rather adds to the capabilities of each individual infantry platoon rather than detracts from it. Though the half-tracks are slower than their cousins in other formations and the infantry platoon lacks the ability to bring the much-desired Panzerschreck, the ability of this platoon to turn infantry into mulch is quite handy in a big way. 

A combined thirty-six machinegun shots in the shooting step or seven swings from a mounted assault the 21st panzer panzergrenadiers certainly make up for their ability to address armored vehicles through their anti-infantry capabilities. Coupled with the Pak 40 track which comes out a single point lower than a similar size platoon of four Marders, the formation is only slightly less mobile than other Armored Panzergrenadier formations while bringing a few more hulls to the field.

Unfortunately, the Reihenwerfer has fallen into a hard sell for me. It’s much more capable of knocking out emplaced infantry units with its salvo template and put its AA machine guns to work on infantry, but it comes with significant drawbacks. The Salvo Template it now fires means it costs twice as much as other armored mortars while fulfilling the same role literally any other artillery piece does at a more efficient point cost.

If they perform double the capability of those mortars then that’s awesome, otherwise, I feel like they’ll be a perfect unit to round out reserves or pin large segments of my opponents’ lines when the need is called for. Given my local meta has been focused on heavy tanks as of late, I think those points may be better spent on more Beute StuGs….

To bring your Armored Panzergrenadiers up to speed with V4, the biggest thing you’ll need to do is to bring in additional halftracks. In some cases quite a few of them. Personally, I usually ran my 21st Panzer without the additional halftracks in V3 but the switch to V4’s list will definitely have me pick up at least two more of them, if not an additional nine… But it does bring in a good deal more firepower to the force which is always a plus on battlefields experiencing rises in brit infantry, ARPs, and Strelkovy blobs. In recent games I found these extra tracks to be critical to turn the rather expensive infantry platoon into a well-rounded and capable reserve platoon to assist in quickly tackling enemy infantry thrusts or platoons defending objectives. 

Bringing it all together comes into setting up formations to take advantage of the benefits these formations bring to the table, as Tom explained in his piece, the key to the success of the 21st Panzer lies in coordination and finesse.

Their units are fragile and vulnerable to just about anything coming their way but capable in the right hands. Personally, I’m looking to update my force considerations to include be based much more closely around the two formations present in the booklet and shying away from Von Luck (despite his amazing synergy with the overall army). The list I’m considering is below: 

A Hotchkiss Assault Gun Company

Command Element

Two platoons of three 7.5cm Platoon

One platoon of three 10.5cm Platoon

21st Panzer Panzergrenadier Company

Command Element with Panzerfaust 

One full-strength infantry platoon with Panzerfaust and seven Halftracks

One full-strength infantry platoon with Panzerfaust 

One platoon of three S307(F) Tank Hunters

Support

One platoon of three Panzer IV

Command Cards

Lucky

It’s frail, it’s fragile, it’ll die to a stiff wind, but by golly, it feels like the 21st Panzer and that’s all I can ask for after all these months of playing with Fortress Europe forces to proxy them. Coordination will be the name of the game, and I even have a command card to blame dice twice for failing the critical shoot and scoot to protect my Beute StuGs from return fire! In short, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities offered by the 21st Panzer and hopeful for further booklet releases from Battlefront regarding other niche forces.