Roy K. Bartoo - 06:22pm Oct 28, 2001 PST (#8534 of 8544)

Some months ago I'd solo'ed Panzer Grenadier using the first edition
rules, and was somewhat underwhelmed. Then a couple weeks ago two of us
began playing it face-to-face, and it was a lot better two-player than
solo (although I still think that one-map scenarios where one side has
to grind the other out of city or forest are pretty dull). Sufficiently
so that when PzG: Airborne showed up at the hobby store this weekend, I
bought a copy.

Thin box, one mounted map (lucky #13), one sheet of combined units and
info markers. Twenty scenarios, 15 of which are played only on board 13.
Moved/Fired markers have mutated, becoming Moved-Fired/Op Fire markers.
German infantry is now Grenadiers, 6-3/2-3. Curiously, the US paras are
only 5-3/2-3, and their HMG units are no better than the Soviets. What
really raised my eyebrows, though, was a comparison of the Sherman
(9-5/5-6/3 Armor) to the Pz IVF2 (11-6/5-8/4 Armor). Within 6 hexes
range, the Sherman shoots at the Pz IVF2 at +1, thus needing 9-11 to
knock a step off, and 12 to kill. The PzIVF2 shoots at the Sherman at
+2, needing 8-10 for a step loss and 11-12 to kill. 11 expected losses
when the Sherman fires, versus 18 for the PzIVF2, it doesn't seem quite
right to me that the IVF2 is 50 better than the Sherman, but I'm not an
expert on these matters. Also, Sherman vs. Tiger is, it seems to me,
even more desperate than in real life: Sherman needs a 12 to hurt the
Tiger, which needs a 5 to hurt the Sherman.

Other novelties on the countersheet, the Germans get one lousy Somua
S-35 counter (well, the vehicle isn't that bad, but one single
counter?), a single motorcycle counter, and six bunkers of varying (and
initially unknown) strength, ranging from unoccupied to fairly nasty. US
also gets a pair of M5 Stuarts, who are badly outclassed even by the
Somua (though they are fairly fast).

Map is interesting, much more 'cluttered' terrain than the previous
boards, the towns are much nicer than on the original PzG and Heroes
maps, and the woods look like woods rather than green blobs and ink
squiggles. There is NO question about what terrain is in each hex. The
road and railroad each even have a nice looking bridge in 3/4 view.
Hopefully this will be the map style for the rest of the series, and
maybe Avalanche will even consider remaking the original boards in this
style - I'd buy replacements. Unfortunately, there is a rather large fly
in the ointment - board 13 doesn't mate with the six prior boards in the
series. Roads run off different hexes, so you can't even match them
along the short sides (bd. 13 has a river in the middle of the long
side). Worse than the road mismatch (which can be ignored), the old six
boards all had the board edge running through the middle of the hex:
board 13 has it running through the points (so matching along the long
side means the hexes common to both boards are only half-hexes, and
matching along the short side requires offsetting one board by half a
hex). Board 13 would not even match properly with another board using
the same hex layout, so I'm wondering if it is going to be an 'orphan'
board, destined to be used only in the existing 15 scenarios of
Airborne?

The only new rule of note (other than scenario special rules) concerns
the German strongpoints, which are selected randomly in much the same
way as leaders.

Overall, I like the new map art, wish that Avalanche would quit using
mounted maps so the game would be cheaper for the same play value, and
am puzzled by the change in hex patterns.

Roy