Panzerschreck 2021 Tournament Report

By Richard Steer

Panzerschreck is an annual Flames of War tournament in New Zealand, hosted by the Manawatu Duellists club in the city of Palmerston North. It has the honor of being the longest-running FOW event on the NZ wargaming calendar, having first been held in 2001 when the game was still in open beta.

The format of the 2021 tournament was 160pt Late War doubles, with 2.5 hour rounds played on 8’x4′ tables. Teams were required to field a valid force with a minimum of one formation per player, with the points able to be split between players however they wanted.

Preparation

I teamed up with my old friend and neighbor, Bede Bailey. As we talked through our options, it became clear that the size of the games was going to be a concern. 160pts is a large amount of stuff, while 2.5 hours is not a lot of time, so we needed to play for quick wins. In V4 this means always attacking, to try and get missions where the defender has Reserves and the objectives are immediately live, rather than having to wait for a turn six that may not come.

Reviewing our collections, we decided the best combination we could field was British and Americans, allying Bede’s Armored Rifles with the support units available to my British Rifles. The basic plan was that we would choose to attack, and shoot the Armored Rifles onto the objective under the cover of multiple smoke bombardments.

After running through a couple of practice games, we settled on this list:

With the list set, plans in place, and final units painted, we were off to Palmy to join 17 other teams for a weekend of Late War mayhem.

Round 1 – Daryl and Greg

Our “Always Attack” plan was immediately shown to be unrealistic. While we hadn’t overlooked how tank-heavy the other lists would be, and were packing some serious anti-tank assets to help counter this, choosing to attack with infantry in that environment would have resulted in being gunned down by massed mobile machine-guns, or at best playing the Meeting Engagement missions that we were certain would time out without a result. As a result we chose to defend in four out of our five games.

Our first game was defending in No Retreat against Daryl and Greg. They were running three Formations: a M4 Sherman Company, an Armored Rifle Company, and an M10 Company. The table size proved to be a significant issue with this mission, with the minefields covering two thirds of the width, and the rear objective being too far away for the attacker to make a serious play for it. This allowed us to pack the front objective with infantry and anti-tank guns.

The Typhoons quickly killed off Daryl and Greg’s Priests, ending their best chance of whittling down our infantry on the objective, while any tanks that crossed the minefields were dispatched by our anti-tank units. Bede and I raced through our first few turns, pretty much only rolling for Reserves and aircraft, and the game finished at the end of our Turn 6 as an 8-1 win with about 20 minutes to spare.

Round 2 – Lance and Sofia

In Game 2 we were attacked in Killing Ground by Lance and Sofia, running Hero Motor Rifles and T-34/85s, backed up by IS-2s, Decoy Panthers, and three mortar platoons. They threw everything except the Panthers at our left side objective, which was held by Armored Rifles, 57mm guns, and all our minefields.

Some fortunate Scattered Reserves arrival locations and a couple of rounds of good shooting gutted the Soviet tank units, and by the time the infantry had lifted the minefields they had been whittled down to an ineffective size. This had all taken too long, however, and the game timed out in Turn 5 with the score at 3-3.

Round 3 – Chris and Simon

Game 3 saw us facing off with our clubmates Chris and Simon, with Engineer Sappers and Hero T-34/85s, supported by four IS-2s, four ISU-122s, Hero T-70s and BA-64s. They predicted our defensive stance and chose the same, forcing an Encounter. They pushed against our right side objective with IS-2s, which we only barely held out with a Rifle Platoon and the 6pdrs. Their T-34s drove against the left side objective as they came on from reserve, being fended off by the Armored Rifle Platoon and 57mm guns on that side without too much difficulty.

The game timed out in Turn 10. The tide had turned with the loss of the IS-2s and most of the T-34s, and we were pushing a unit of Armored Rifles and Wasps towards the objective on our right, but there was insufficient time for that to be resolved, leaving the final score at 3-2.

Round 4 – Our One Attack

Game 4, on Sunday morning was against Jonathon and Julian, was the one game all weekend where we felt able to attack. They were running Panzergrenadier and Reconnaissance Companies, supported by Tigers, an Elefant, Wespes, Nebelwerfers, and four Pakfront 88s. They chose to defend, and we rolled up Encirclement. Our plan of attack was to push hard at the front objective, while demonstrating against the back objective, located on our left.

We threw both Armored Rifle Platoons and one British Rifle Platoon at the objective, supported by the Crocodiles and under the watchful eye of the eight M10s and the 57mm guns. We used two rounds of smoke to cover our move into position, and with no Reserves having yet arrived, at the end of Turn 2 it looks like everything was going according to plan.

The German defense was solid, and we weren’t on top of our game enough to adjust our plan once it became clear how they were playing it. The keystone of their defense was two platoons each of six SdKfz 251 (7.5cm) half-tracks. These remained Gone to Ground in the center of the table behind the infantry defending the objective, denying us a viable infantry assault. We couldn’t kill the halftracks fast enough with our anti-tank units (needing 7s to hit), and we couldn’t bring our mobile AT into short range due to the number of 88s on the table.

The penalty that Jonathan and Julian paid for this approach was that by keeping all of their machine-guns Gone to Ground, we weren’t suffering many casualties: we had two big platoons of infantry parked close to the objective waiting for an opportunity to assault, and their defense wasn’t active enough to drive us outside of the 8″ that they needed for the win.

Where we failed to adapt was that we didn’t push hard enough on the other objective to draw away the defenders. And having not done that, we should have swung our attack onto that objective as soon as the reserves and ambush were committed to the center. We eventually did, but by that point it was too late to get a result. With the loss of only one platoon each side, the final score was 1-1 after six turns.

Round 5 – Casey and Chris

Our final game was against Casey and Chris from Battlefront. Their list will be familiar to people who watched the Battlefront Twitch stream from before the event: an IS-2 regiment of ten tanks, a Hero T-34/85 battalion of 13 tanks, an SMG Company, an Armoured Reconnaissance Platoon in SdKfz 251s, a Decoy Tiger, and three M17 Quad .50cals. In expectation of our defensive stance, Chris and Casey chose Manouevre, resulting in the mission being Counterattack.

We deployed a unit each of Rifles and Armored Rifles, all the anti-tank guns, and the mortars on the objective. The Carriers Spearheaded towards the clear objective, creating a bubble for the other Armored Rifle Platoon and the Scotts to be placed just outside of 16″ from the objective. One unit of M10s was held in Ambush. For their deployment, Casey and Chris Spearheaded their entire force towards the far objective, taking our right flank out of the game.

Their Turn One saw the Reconnaissance Platoon move to about 6″ from the objective, with all the T-34/85s and seven IS2s lined up covering the path we had to take to contest, while the other IS2s, the Decoy Tiger, and SMGs set up covering our reserve entry point. It was looking grim as we started our first turn.

Suddenly our dice ran hot. After five turns the Soviet force had been reduced to just the IS-2s, for the loss of the Crocodiles, one platoon of Wasps, and a platoon of M10s. We were holding the objective and in a good position to keep the Soviets outside of 8″, but once again we weren’t fast enough, and time expired at the end of Turn 5 without the objective going live, for a result of 3-3.

Reflections

We finished with 18 points tied for 7th, in a group of players placed from 3rd to 10th that were separated by four just points. The field was compressed by the large number of time-outs that occurred, but 1st and 2nd were well clear of the pack with 29pts and 28pts respectively, from three wins each.

There were no surprises with the names at the top of the leaderboard, all experienced players with long track records of winning tournaments. It’s probably also no coincidence that the top lists all contained tank companies with large quantities of AT12. These lists were able to attack and overwhelm the defender for a quick win – exactly what we had hoped to do but were unable to pull off. I still think we were running a great list, but it wasn’t a good fit for the context of the tournament, and one of the infantry formations should have been tanks instead. And the irony is that our version of an “always attack” list, when played defensively, posed problems for exactly that type of quick-win medium tank force, as evidenced by us holding out the 2nd and 3rd placed teams in rounds two and three.

The 2.5 hour rounds were definitely a challenge. In a few games we even considered forfeiting turns in order to get us closer to Turn 6. An extra 30 minutes would have significantly increased the number of games that finished, but probably at the expense of the third round on Day 1, which would have left too few rounds to determine a clear winner. Thinking it through after the event, I wholeheartedly support the organizers’ choice to run five 2.5 hour rounds: the onus has to be on the players to be mindful of the time limits, be quick with their deployment, and not waste time with things like all the little low-probability shots that they could take that don’t actually have any bearing on the outcome of the game.

It was an excellent weekend away, playing five great games against an excellent set of opponents, and catching up with a number of people that I haven’t seen for many years. It is that social aspect that makes Panzerschreck such a great event, due to both the doubles format, and the relationships that have developed over the last 20 years.

Many thanks to the Manawatu Duellists for running the event, and to the event sponsors Battlefront and Titan Terrain.