Panzer Korps Review
Recently Manny Granillo from Hoplite-Research (HR-Games) contacted us about his divisional level World War two miniatures game called . It is a game that none of us here at NDNG ever played and we were excited when Manny sent us a copy of his rule set that just celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Besides the basic rules, HR-Games has a plethora of campaign, scenario and nation specific books that not only cover every combatant of WW2, but also other conflicts such as the Great War and contemporary battles.
“Panzer Korps” is a rule set designed to simulate division and higher level combat in WWII. There are also supplements which enable you to extend the time period to modern forces or back to WWI. It can be played at 6mm, 10 mm, and 15 mm easily on a 4′ x 6′ table. Each tank, artillery piece, infantry, or aircraft counter is scaled to represent a company, battery, squadron or troop sized unit. The game incorporates logistics and many other real world distractors into the fight. Game mechanics include resupply actions and logistics troops are incorporated into the design of your forces, or at least they had better be.
A successful attack can easily result in a loss of momentum and the removal of your best troops from the fight if you don’t keep your combat multipliers in the fight and near to the action. If you aren’t careful, your victorious unit will be combat ineffective while they escort their prisoners to the POW pen. You had best keep some military police nearby and ready to assume responsibility for those prisoners. Killing them is an option, as long as you don’t mind stiffening the resolve of your opponent. In short, you have to think at the operational level, not just tactically. It looks to be quite the challenge.
Your troops are “purchased” using a points scale where better quality, well equipped troops come at a premium, while conscript, poorly equipped troops can flood the battlefield with their numbers. You can purchase your own design or build historically accurate MTOE units. As part of your unit build process you can purchase and assign decorated unit leaders to your force. They can either mitigate the performance of poor quality troops or turn an elite force into an unstoppable juggernaut.
Command and Control is achieved using “Decision Dice” A color coded D6 is rolled at the start of each turn and modified based on weather and battlefield effects to determine how willing your force is to act this turn. It also determines how well they recover from the effects of the previous turn. As your forces are depleted, so too is your ability to motivate your troops, conversely, they receive a bolstered morale when the battle is going in their favor.
Artillery is well designed and takes into account such factors as the possible inaccuracy of indirect fire, Forward Observers, and ammunition supply. There are even rules for railway guns and siege guns. The artillery rules allow for larger caliber guns to use their standoff capability and has proportionate effects as the caliber of the rounds increases. Also incorporated into the ruleset is air operations. 
You purchase air support as part of your force or if doing something historical, receive the historical equivalent to what was there. You can purchase fighters for ground attack or to provide protection against enemy air. Light bombers, medium, heavy and even super heavy bombers like B-29s can be incorporated into your battle plan. You can also purchase AA to help your fighters thwart enemy air attacks.
Combat, regardless of whether it is ground, air, or indirect, results in disorder markers. A unit moves from being formed, to being suppressed, to being fragmented with decreasing combat effectiveness as more damage is absorbed. At the start of each turn you will have the ability to remove some of the damage done using your decision dice. It strikes me as a very workable system for this level of command.
Shooting is conducted with each type of formation having its own type of “fire die” which varies in size as the size of its weapons increase. A Soviet Tank Company with T34/85s will use a D10, while a German Armored Car company with 222 Armored Cars would use a D4. The target gets to throw a “Cover Die” to represent the defensive nature of the terrain and reduce the effectiveness of the incoming fire. 
One interesting feature of the shooting mechanism is it becomes possible to lose control of your infantry in a firefight. If you take a “disorder marker” from small arms fire the unit hit must pass a check or become embroiled in a firefight. They are unable to disengage without specific orders from their commander which may or may not work. They have to stay in the firefight until the successfully disengage, win, or are panicked into fleeing.Close assault rules exist only for cavalry and infantry. They are quite easy to understand and can be quite devastating, especially if there is a significant quality difference between the two units involved. or if one force has already been depleted by combat effects.
Panzer Korps is the perfect game for the grogs who want to play in a narrative setting where they can recreate specific battles with specific forces as opposed to a game that is focused on tournament play. A lot of WW2 grogs love the historically detailed fights so they can really answer any “what-if” questions they may have about a particular battle.
It is quite an interesting and intuitive ruleset. I am particularly enamored of it as it allows me to repurpose a lot of my old Battlefront vehicles that do not see much if any use in the current version, especially transports. I am truly looking forward to getting back out and gaming with this ruleset once the restrictions on our movement have been lifted.Stay tuned for reviews for the Panzer Korps supplements and other games from Hoplite Research.