The Guards Belong
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2016

Long ago, we published a Panzer Grenadier game called Heroes of the Soviet Union. It went out of print, but many pieces were left behind. So we published Panzer Grenadier: Red Warriors, a supplement for our Eastern Front game using those pieces.

With Eastern Front now out of print, Red Warriors is left obsolete both in terms of its scenarios (since they require the old game for map boards and often for playing pieces) and presentation (the comb-bound booklet, a style that we’ve since abandoned). We’re giving players one last chance to pick up this supplement, then we’ll discard the pieces for good.

Anyway, here's a last look at the toys of Red Warriors.

Front Line

The Guards rifle platoons are better than the regular line infantry of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants, with greater direct firepower and usually higher morale. We changed the design slightly for later games, for better visibility and to give the Guards a different insignia than the RKKA.

Along with the higher-firepower infantry, the Guards cavalry and machine gun platoons are also slightly stronger than the equivalent regular army units. They usually have the same weapons as the RKKA,but are better supplied with them and their rosters are more likely to approach full strength than the regular units. "Guards" reflected more than an honorific; soldiers in Guards units received better pay and burial benefits (not a minor consideration in a primarily agricultural society, where a family could be devastated if charged for a soldier's funeral) and were more likely to be literate.

Leadership

The leaders in Heroes of the Soviet Union are actually very different than the original game designer intended: the morale and firepower modifiers were to have been reversed. But Brian turned in the counter manifest with the firepower modifier in the right column (it's on the left side of the counter) and the morale modifier in the left column (it's on the right side of the counter). Peggy Gordon laid them out the way they were on the sheet: left number on the left, right on the right. Brian signed off on the proof. Their resulting disagreement over who was at fault was an ode-worthy epic.

I didn't have much of an opinion, then or now. None of them have a modifier greater than 1, and the grand total is 11 left-side modifiers and 9 right-side modifiers — did it really matter? I did find the whole thing pretty amusing; I don't think Brian knew that Southern women would use words like that.

Heavy Weapons

We've changed our outlook on these since the publication of Heroes. Or more accurately, I've reached an opinion (I didn't have one at the time). Brian gave Guards 76.2mm artillery slightly better anti-tank capability than their RKKA counterparts; I tend to think the weapons ought to remain the same and we should show the difference in better morale and leadership (soft rather than hard factors).

With some exceptions, Panzer Grenadier shows "hard" factors (firepower, speed, armor) on the counters and "soft" factors (morale, initiative, leadership) in other ways. That's an intentional split; a few units get better firepower because their guys are just that much better (or inversely, lower ratings because they really suck). But mostly, counter ratings are an exercise in cannon-counting.

Tanks have all the same factors as their RKKA counterparts except for direct fire, which is usually one higher than the RKKA. I kept that in Road to Berlin, rationalizing that Guards units had better ammunition supply and were more likely to have anti-aircraft machine guns mounted, but I'm less sure of this now and if I had it to do over again would probably keep the tank ratings the same for both Guards and RKKA. But you can make a case for the better Guards numbers, and that's how Brian chose to rate them.

Secret Weapons

There are a handful of RKKA units in the mix: penal troops and Katyusha rocket launchers. The prisoners have special abilities, and are assigned almost exclusively to suicide missions of some sort. The rockets are powerful weapons and the Germans usually have no answer for them.

The Germans

There are 52 German Army pieces in the set, and they were included to support those dozen scenarios in the original Heroes mix that did not draw on parts from the first game in the series. In hindsight this was a mistake: I should have let Brian use the full 165 pieces for new units and draw on the original Eastern Front for German tanks, infantry and leaders. All of the Germans reproduce units found in Eastern Front.

The Air Force's Army

The German Air Force fielded its own ground forces during the Second World War, and they make their first appearance in the Panzer Grenadier series here. There's just one battalion's worth, and they are truly bad troops with terrible leadership. They do have an 88mm anti-aircraft unit that helps a lot. But mostly they're in the set to give the Soviets someone to stomp all over.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and award-winning journalist, he has published over 100 books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold. Leopold is not obsolete.