Game of the Week, August 3-9

From August 3 through August 9, this week’s Game of the Week is Panzer Campaigns: Tunisia ’43, available at 25% off. It completes Wargame Design Studio’s North African trilogy, following Tobruk ’41 and El Alamein ’42. The game covers the last Axis campaign in Africa, from the hurried German occupation of Tunisia after Operation Torch to the final collapse around Tunis and Bizerte in May 1943.

Tunisia ’43 presents a markedly different kind of desert campaign. The broad spaces of Libya give way to difficult mountain passes, narrow roads, winter mud, and a crowded multinational battlefield. In the Panzer Campaigns series’ familiar operational scale—normally battalion and company units, 1 km hexes, and two-hour turns—players command the German and Italian defenders or the British, American, and French forces trying to close the trap before the Axis can escape across the Mediterranean.

The Last Campaign in Africa

The Allied landings in French Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942 changed the strategic position in North Africa. Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army was pursuing the defeated Axis army west from El Alamein across Libya. If the Allies could seize Tunisia quickly, the retreating forces and the Germans sent from Europe might be caught between two advancing fronts. Tunisia’s ports, airfields, and proximity to Sicily, however, also made it the one place where the Axis could reinforce Africa rapidly. German aircraft and shipping began bringing troops and supplies into Tunis and Bizerte.

The first contest was a race for Tunis. Allied forces advanced east from Algeria under Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson’s British First Army, with American and French formations joining a coalition still forming command and supply systems. The advance covered long distances from newly secured ports, over inadequate roads, and through less open terrain than the desert image suggests. By late November, leading columns threatened Tunis, but the German bridgehead hardened. Rain turned tracks to mud, air support was limited, and attacks toward Tebourba and Longstop Hill failed. By Christmas, the chance to take Tunis was lost.

That delay gave the Axis time to build two armies in Tunisia. In the north, General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army defended the Tunis–Bizerte bridgehead. To the south, Rommel’s Panzer Army Africa approached the Mareth Line. The Axis depended on the sea route from Sicily and was threatened from east and west, but it had experienced formations and terrain that channeled movement through the Eastern Dorsal passes. The Allies had to coordinate British, American, and French forces while learning the ground and the enemy.

In January and February 1943, the Axis used that advantage to strike first. Attacks around Faïd Pass exposed gaps between Allied sectors, and on 14 February German armor attacked toward Sidi Bou Zid. Major General Lloyd Fredendall’s U.S. II Corps had placed many units on separated hill positions, unable to support one another. The 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions broke through, defeated counterattacks, and took Sbeïtla. Rommel then sought a wider offensive through Kasserine Pass toward the Allied rear areas around Tébessa.

Kasserine became the best-known American setback of the campaign, but it was not a simple one-sided rout. German and Italian forces forced the pass and pushed beyond it, while Allied troops improvised defensive positions on the approaches to Thala and Tébessa. Narrow ground, mines, antitank guns, and increasingly effective artillery made a deeper advance costly. The Axis attack also suffered from divided command, limited supplies, and the growing threat of the Eighth Army in the south. By 22 February Rommel had called it off and turned east. The losses were severe and the lessons unmistakable: arms and services had to be employed as a coordinated team, not dispersed into isolated detachments.

The Allied response was organizational as well as tactical. Eisenhower created the 18th Army Group under General Harold Alexander to bring the multinational front under closer direction. Fredendall was replaced by George S. Patton at II Corps, while American units received reinforcements, better antitank weapons, and experienced liaison officers. Weather, roads, and supply still constrained every plan, but the Allies were becoming stronger. Their air and naval forces also made the Sicilian lifeline increasingly hazardous.

The campaign’s next phase began in March. Montgomery’s Eighth Army attacked the Mareth Line from Libya, then maneuvered around its southern flank, forcing the Axis north toward Gabès and Enfidaville. Patton’s II Corps advanced through Gafsa, El Guettar, and Maknassy to protect the Eighth Army’s flank and draw German reserves. At El Guettar, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division repulsed an armored counterattack through a more coherent defense of mines, antitank guns, tanks, and massed artillery. Rain could halt an armored column and rocky ridges favored the defender, but the initiative had passed to the Allies.

By early April, pressure from west and south compelled the Axis to withdraw into a shrinking perimeter in northeastern Tunisia. The Allies did not cut off every retreating formation, but the Axis could no longer maintain a mobile defense. Supplies reaching the bridgehead had fallen below the level required for sustained operations, while the Allied concentration of men, guns, tanks, and aircraft grew. In the final offensive, Americans fought through the hills toward Mateur and Bizerte, while British forces pressed on Tunis. Both cities fell on 7 May. The remaining Axis forces, compressed onto Cap Bon and without an escape route, surrendered over the following days.

“Der Krieg in Afrika ist vorbei."

“The war in Africa is over.”

— General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim,
upon surrendering Army Group Africa, 12 May 1943 (allegedly).

The victory removed the Axis from Africa and yielded more than a quarter of a million prisoners. Tunisia was the first sustained test of Anglo-American field operations against experienced German forces, exposing weaknesses that would have been more dangerous in later campaigns. It also created the force that would invade Sicily two months later. For players, Tunisia ’43 is shaped by timing and coordination: the Axis commander must use temporary local superiority, terrain, and mobility to delay the encirclement; the Allied commander must synchronize national forces, preserve momentum through the passes, and close the perimeter.

What’s in the Game

• Tunisia '43 includes 34 Scenarios – covering all sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario plus specialized versions for both head-to-head play and vs. the computer AI.
• The master map (154,548 hexes) stretches from Tebessa on the western side of the West Dorsal Mountains to the Mareth Line in the south-east.
• The order of battle file covers the Axis and Allied forces that participated in the campaign, with other formations added in for hypothetical situations.
• Order-of-Battle, Parameter Data and Scenario Editors which allow players to customize the game.
• Sub-map feature allows the main map to be subdivided into smaller segments for custom scenario creation.
• Design notes which cover the production of the game, campaign notes and a bibliography that includes the sources used by the design team to produce this simulation game.
• Tunisia '43 provides multiple play options including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play as well as two-player hot seat.

Book and Video recommendations

Atkinson, Rick. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002.

Howe, George F. Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West. United States Army in World War II: Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1957.

Holland, James. Together We Stand: North Africa 1942–1943: Turning the Tide in the West. London: HarperCollins, 2005.

Playfair, I. S. O., C. J. C. Molony, F. C. Flynn, and T. P. Gleave. The Mediterranean and Middle East. Vol. 4, The Destruction of the Axis Forces in Africa. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966.

Rolf, David. The Bloody Road to Tunis: Destruction of the Axis Forces in North Africa, November 1942–May 1943. London: Greenhill Books, 2001.

Screenshots

Below are screenshots from Tunisia ’43 to give you a feel for the 2D and 3D views and the scale of the engagements. Clicking a screenshot opens it in full resolution.

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Panzer Campaigns: Tunisia ’43. Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich historical gameplay at a very attractive price.