Fire & Sword:
A Photo Essay
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2024

I’ve written a whole lot about Panzer Grenadier: Fire & Sword, but I was taught early on to “show, don’t tell.” So let’s have a look - an actual look - at what’s inside the game.

What we have here are photos that I took myself, of the first production copy of Fire & Sword. These are the components that came up randomly as the top of the stack; they’ve not been hand-selected to present unusually good ones. This is what your game looks like.

I am not a professional product photographer. I’m not a particularly good amateur one, either. So there are some issues with light and shadow.

You can embiggen all of these photos, by opening them in a new tab.

Here’s what the whole game looks like, spread out:

Assembly starts with the back plate. Fire & Sword doesn’t come in a box; it’s in Playbook format. The back plate is really there for what limited shelf sales we still get; it has a bar code and the basic sales info for anyone who picks it up.

Next comes the Panzer Grenadier Fourth Edition series rules packet. I didn’t take a picture of those. They’re the same rules that come with every Panzer Grenadier game.

And then we have the pieces. Here’s the full set of them; they come to the 748 leaders and combat units (and a handful of markers) you see here, plus 165 markers in with the series rules packet, for 913 total. Why the color of Red Army pieces on one sheet looks different than those on the others, I have no idea. They look the same in person:

Four sheets of them, 660 total, were originally printed for the old Road to Berlin game and have found new life here.

The photos make the colors look a little uneven in the photos because of the lighting. They are quite nice in person.

The Road to Berlin pieces have a glossy finish.

They were packed in sets of 50 sheets and sealed, and come out of their cartons feeling fresh and new.

Plus there’s a brand-new sheet of 88 pieces, die-cut and silky-smooth, with the weird new units the designer wanted in the game. This is where you’ll find Hungarian paratroopers, Italian-made SS police tanks, and Soviet political prisoners.

Next, the game gets a set of five maps. Here’s the full set, fanned out:



These have never appeared in a game before, so they’re completely new.



We get an extra-wide river, that usually stands in for the Danube.



A new feature is a huge and nasty gully. It spreads over two boards.



Guy Riessen did the art. They are not this shiny in person.



Like all of the others, they can be mixed and matched with other Panzer Grenadier maps, which don’t always have the same seasonal flavor.



And then we come to the core of the game: the scenario book. It’s a fat one, with 39 scenarios and lots of context. It goes right on top:

And that’s what goes into Fire & Sword.

You can order Fire and Sword right here.

Sword of Fire
            Fire & Sword
            Stalin’s Tanks
            Eastern Front Artillery
Retail Price: $209.97
Package Price: $150.00
Gold Club Price: $120.00

Take up the Sword of Fire Here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children; he misses his dog, Leopold.

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