Legend of the Iron Wolf:
Publisher’s Preview
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
May 2022

I’ve never been to Lithuania. I don’t think that I know any Lithuanians. But I have now written two Panzer Grenadier scenario books about the Lithuanian Army (which really existed) and its battles in World War II (which never happened).

Lithuania is a small country, with a small army. In the years just before World War II, she faced three predatory neighbors (Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union), and had defense plans in case of war against each of them. None of those plans came into force; when confronted by potential enemies, Lithuania backed down each time until the Soviets absorbed the republic in June 1940.

I found the situation appealing from a game design standpoint, and from one of historical storytelling. A small country like Lithuania is going to have a very difficult time defending itself from a far more powerful invader, but that doesn’t mean that the defenders can’t win battles. The problem lies in the surety that they can’t win all of the battles, and that the more powerful invader can afford to lose many battles, maybe even most of them. The political calculation is whether the defenders can win enough battles to prolong the war and bring meaningful foreign assistance.

That was the question facing Lithuania’s leadership between 1938 and 1940, and each time they chose not to fight. Lithuania’s geographic position – surrounded by hostile neighbors, and having lost her only port to the Germans in March 1939 – meant that foreign aid would be nearly impossible to deliver, even given another nation willing to provide it. Declining to resist did little to spare Lithuania from the horrors of enemy occupation: the massacre of her sizeable Jewish population, the slaughter of her intelligentsia by both the Germans and the Soviets, the mass deportations to Siberia, widespread destruction and economic misery. Even the infinitesimal chance to avoid all of that offered by armed resistance might have been preferable.

Lithuania’s Iron Wolves looked at Lithuanian resistance to the Poles in 1938, the Germans in 1939 and the Soviets in 1940, plus Lithuanian participation in the 1939 German invasion of Poland (as the Germans pressed the Lithuanians to do). It has seventeen scenarios, organized into those four campaigns. And each campaign has a “battle game” that ties the scenarios together.

Legend of the Iron Wolf picks up that story with ten more scenarios. Campaign Five sends the Lithuanians into battle against the Soviets in Operation Barbarossa. Campaign Six has them fighting the Germans in June 1941. In both cases, you get to use all of those tanks on the Lithuania’s Iron Wolves sheet. Each campaign of course wraps up with a battle game.

The pieces from Lithuania’s Iron Wolves are the ones we printed in 2008 for a thin scenario set called just Iron Wolves. That originated as a download-only set, and it probably should have stayed there. But they were in the warehouse, and in excellent condition, so faced with the choice of throwing them out or using them in a new book, I used them.

The sheet includes the actual tanks of Lithuania’s army (ancient French FT17 light tanks, and some more modern but not very formidable Vickers Four Ton light tanks), but it also has the tanks the Lithuanians hoped to add. The Czech-made LTL light tank was actually purchased but hadn’t been delivered when the Soviet took over (they ended up in Slovak hands); the Lithuanians would have fitted theirs with a 20mm automatic cannon rather than the standard 37mm anti-tank gun. The Lithuanians also expressed interest in the new LT38 light tank, also produced by CKD which built the LTL, and in the proposed T22 medium tank designed by the Skoda Works.

The cool part about alternative-history game design is that you get to warp the history to suit the kind of game you want. And I wanted to use all of those Lithuanian tanks (22 of them, counting the crapulent old stuff). So we get tank battles – plenty of tank battles. The T22 is no match for the T34, but nothing else is, either. The other Lithuanian tanks match up pretty well with what the Germans have – for some of the panzer divisions that invaded Lithuania, it’s the exact same tank model.

In our complete games, we always want to include a wide variety of scenario types, from small battles featuring just one map board and a handful of units (preferably, only infantry and weapons units) up to big ones with lots of tanks. That’s not always possible depending on the historical situation, but the introductory scenarios should always be present.

Legend of the Iron Wolf, even more so than Lithuania’s Iron Wolves, is for the hard-core Panzer Grenadier player – that’s who’s most likely to buy this booklet. I wrote it for them, so Legend doesn’t have any small introductory scenarios. It does have some infantry fights, but they’re usually fairly large-scale. And we have cavalry in action, both against infantry and against other cavalry, because I really like cavalry scenarios.

But the heart of the scenario set is its collection of tank battles. The Lithuanians are good tankers – they get “efficiency” (an important game concept, that lets certain units do more things) and have inherent tank leaders (German tanks also have these; Soviet tanks in 1941 do not). We wrap the set with a very large scenario featuring a pair of German divisions on the attack against a layered Lithuanian defense of infantry, militia and cavalry, with a strong armored force ready to counter-attack any German breakthroughs (this scenario uses almost every piece in the Iron Wolves set). It’s intended to be suitable for team play, and the forces are divided to make that easy.

At this point, I think I’ve wrung all the story I’m going to out of the Lithuania’s Iron Wolves pieces, so Legend of the Iron Wolf will close out our Lithuanian odyssey. It was a fun pair of little books to write, and it’s the sort of thing I like to do with Panzer Grenadier – tell a complete story by way of the scenarios, highlight some history, and provide a deep and fun game experience. We debuted Legend of the Iron Wolf without an Early Order period – it’s ready right now – and that’s something I want to make our standard approach for new product in the future.

You can order Legend of the Iron Wolf right here.

You can order Lithuania's Iron Wolves right 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; Leopold believed himself an iron wolf.

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