River Battleships:
Scenario Preview, Part One
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
September 2021

Panzer Grenadier: River Battleships brings together two fun things into one: it’s a Panzer Grenadier game, and it’s a naval game. Except it takes place on rivers, not the ocean (or even a big lake). As far as we know, this is the only game ever made that’s all about river monitors. So you know you have to have it. How have you gotten by this long without a river monitor game?

The river monitors and gunboats (all of which are “boats” on a river, whatever their size) fight it out on a pair of river map boards. They’re standard Panzer Grenadier map boards, except for the giant blue river taking up most of their surface. The game uses the standard Panzer Grenadier 4th Edition rules (a full set is included) plus a fairly extensive set of special rules all about moving and fighting on the river.

They’re based on the rules that Matt Ward and Daniel Rouleau did for the old River Fleets book, which was an alternative-history story from our Second Great War setting. That told a well-fleshed-out story of a riverine war on the Danube between Austria-Hungary and a coalition of Serbia and Romania, complete with battle game victory conditions and a great deal of background.

I made some major modifications to the rules from the old River Fleets, shrinking the size of the monitors to the inch-long pieces we use in our naval games, which let them fit into just one Panzer Grenadier hex (it’s tight, but they fit). That makes the rules much easier to handle and play with, since you no longer have to account for units that take up more than one hex.

River Battleships presents the actual riverine war vessels fielded by Eastern European states during World War II. That didn’t suit itself to the story-arc format, so while the scenarios are grouped into chapters by theme, they don’t follow a linking story and don’t have battle games to tie them together. These are the real vessels that prowled the Danube, Dnestr and Pinsk – and now they can fight each other. Let’s have a look at the first chapter’s scenarios.

Scenario One
Admiral Horthy’s Navy
April 1941
Hungary did not take a leading role in the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, allowing the Germans to do the heavy lifting. But the Germans wanted to see at least some activity from their ally, and the one capability they lacked was a Danube flotilla of their own. And that forced the Royal Hungarian Danube Flotilla reluctantly into action, covering the laying of minefields across the big river while hoping the Yugoslavs would not object.

Conclusion
The Hungarian armored patrol boats were greatly outclassed by the Yugoslav monitors, which had much greater firepower, were protected by actual armor, and offered much more staying power. The Hungarians had been wise to stay away from the Yugoslav river fleet, and wait for the Germans to finishing defeating their enemies before walking in to claim their desired territories.

Notes
This is a very small, straight-up naval battle, with the tiny fleet of Hungarian armored gunboats taking on a couple of Yugoslav monitors. The Yugoslavs look tougher on paper, but their crews are poorly trained (the Yugoslav flotilla could not afford to buy live rounds for exercises).

Scenario Two
A Hungarian River Fleet
April 1941
Hungary did have a river monitor of her own, but did not have the cash to repair and overhaul her, and Szamos was sold into commercial service, converted into a dredge. Hungary couldn’t even maintain all of her armored gunboats. With a modernized monitor and her full flotilla of gunboats, and some German aid, the Hungarians might have been more willing to try conclusions with the Yugoslavs.

Conclusion
Even with an almost-50-year-old monitor headlining their fleet, the Hungarians would have been hard-pressed to overcome the Yugoslavs. Poor Yugoslav shooting would help their cause somewhat, and the bigger monitors could still be holed by the 80mm guns wielded by the Hungarian armored gunboats. But it’s usually best to bet on the side with more firepower and armor.

Notes
The Hungarians come back to the fray with all of their boats, including the ones they could never hope to repair and some German help, while the Yugoslavs bring all of theirs, too. They haven’t learned how to shoot any better, but they do out-gun the only fleet poor Admiral Horthy has.

Scenario Three
Iron Gates
April 1941
Romania maintained a far more powerful river fleet than either Hungary or Yugoslavia, but did not participate in the April 1941 Axis assault on Yugoslavia. Had they done so, the Romanian Danube Flotilla would have to secure the Iron Gates narrows, by driving the Yugoslav flotilla away from the more open water on their side of the border. The Yugoslavs would resist the incursion as best they could.

Conclusion
The Romanian river fleet held a significant edge in numbers and capability over the Yugoslavs, and did not suffer the same budgetary limits that left Yugoslav crews poorly trained. Securing the approaches to the Iron Gates would have been an early move for the Romanians, who in the actual events sat out the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia despite German offers of territorial gain.

Notes
Now the Romanians show up to smack the Yugoslavs around some. They have the bigger boats with the bigger guns, but they’re also expected to meet bigger objectives. The Romanians will have to fight their way past the Yugoslavs and land some troops on the riverbank, which means neutralizing the enemy flotilla.

Scenario Four
The Eternal Enemy
May 1941
Romania declined to participate in the plundering of Yugoslavia, but the Germans held onto a narrow strip of territory along the Romanian border. This served as an inducement to draw the Romanians to take on some of the burden of occupation, and also inserted a buffer between Romanian and Hungarian lands. Had the Romanians taken the offer, conflict with the hated Hungarians could likely have followed, and that would include the Danube waterway.

Conclusion
Despite the age of the Romanian monitors, they still out-classed anything else on the Danube and the Hungarians would have been hard-pressed to oppose even a few of them. Despite the age of the Romanian fleet – all of its monitors had been laid down before or during the Great War, though they had been reconstructed since – they represented a unique capability. As long as the enemy didn’t have airplanes.

Notes
The Romanian flotilla steams upriver to beat up the Hungarians, who mostly just have to survive to win this one. That’s going to be tough, as the Romanians are once again the bullies of the Danube. But the next chapter brings on the Soviets, and suddenly it’s the Romanians getting wedgied.

And those are the scenarios from Chapter One. Next time, it’s Chapter Two.

You can order River Battleships 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, three children and his dog, Leopold. Leopold knows the number.