Panzer Campaigns - Western Front Updates

Greetings all!

As we move through our Winter Sale we also continue to bring you more updates, as promised.

If you want to buy a present for that special someone (including yourself!), now is the time to pick-up a title or three. We also sell Gift cards, so that is an option if you want to allow the receiver to choose what they want and have it tied to their own Store account.

To see a complete listing of all the games we offer visit the page linked below. 105 titles and counting!

 All WDS Titles

Today we roll out another batch of 4.01 Updates for the Panzer Campaigns series with the eagerly awaited five Western Front titles:

• France '40
• Sealion '40
• Normandy '44
• Market-Garden '44
• Bulge '44

Scheldt '44 will also be receiving it’s update soon, but the scenario designer is doing some last-minute polishing… we expect to have that on the site prior to Christmas Day.

As before, this continues both the UI enhancements, but also game play adjustments that make playing the games much more manageable - with variable speed settings for both A/I activity and watching replays. If you haven't already, be sure to check out the blog post which highlighted lots of these changes.

Importantly, France ’40 is being released in this round. As discussed in this preview blog, there has been a complete refresh of the ‘Prucha’ scenarios that were released four years ago in Dec 2018. These scenarios are now called WDS scenarios and the prior forty-seven Prucha scenarios are now sixty-five WDS scenarios. There is obviously a lot of new scenarios and content. 

Every aspect of the game has been reviewed and adjusted and this is possibly the definitive Fall Gelb operational computer game released to date.

Here is a sample of the features mentioned in the Changelog:

• Official release of the WDS enhanced scenarios for France ’40. These scenarios replace the previous ‘Prucha’ scenarios that are now removed.
• All sixty-five WDS scenarios are either replacements for the prior forty-seven Prucha scenarios or brand-new engagements. There is little similarity to the prior Prucha release, as all scenarios have been recreated based upon additional research.
  • New scenarios include: 0512_04 Grebbe Line, 0512_05 Wons, 0512_06 Sarre, 0512_07 Lummen, 0517_02 Sambre, 0519_02 Rethel, 0520_01 Amiens, 0523_02 Stonne, 0529_02 Yser
  • New wired bridge & manual bridge destruction is included for the larger campaigns and scenarios.
• The campaign scenarios include additional Strategy options to allow a range of different player choices. The main campaigns have forty-five individual operations with choices for both the Axis and Allied sides.
• The game map has been expanded and enhanced. It now extends north to cover the northern provinces of the Netherlands and eastwards to the Rhine, including much of Alsace. Many more terrain features and locations have been included with inundations represented as was the case in Panzer Campaigns Scheldt ’44. Elevations have all been reviewed and adjusted.
• Order of Battle changes:
  • Regimental and brigade HQs are now included
  • New unit component naming conventions have been adopted for clarity and consistency
  • Unit strengths have been revised to ensure consistency from nation to nation and unit to unit (battalion & company HQs are omitted, weapons company personnel are accounted for)
  • Fort garrison strengths only account for the manning requirements of the close defenses (so cooks and electricians, etc., no longer contribute to fire resolution)
  • Allied one time use bridge demolition units added for non-wired bridge, large scenarios.
  • Brandenburger operations
  • Revisions to morale
  • All duplicated units have been removed aside from a few air & naval units that cannot otherwise use attachments
  • Air units are now attached to specific Army Groups to limit the geographic regions that can be used
  • Various errors corrected; some overlooked units added.
• New and revised Unit Art

With all of these changes we do suggest that you complete any on-going games prior to applying this update. You may even wish to do a totally “clean” install by removing your existing copy and downloading a new fresh, fully patched installer from your Store Account.

One important mention for those looking to try the campaign games: the France ’40 WDS campaigns are some of the largest ever published for Panzer Campaigns to date, and initial load times are long, dependent on hardware. Only initial load times are impacted, in-game play is not. In our testing we have found it takes 1.5 – 4 minutes for the initial scenario start for the largest campaigns. Please be patient, your PC hasn’t hung!

And a further note – sharp eyed grognards will see that France ’40 is being released as 4.02. This is because a few oddities with 4.01 have been discovered since the original roll out began. We have fixed all of these items and wanted to get them into wider circulation – and France ’40 seemed the ideal platform for that. None of these items are show stoppers however, so we have continued getting the rest of the games up to the 4.01 level. When the dust settles from all of this we will go back and do a 4.02 round of updates for everything – once we are absolutely certain there’s no other lingering gremlins in the works. We would expect that to happen some weeks down the line though.

We have asked Mike Prucha to do a ‘designer’ blog post for y’all covering some of the finer points of what has been included in this definitive France ’40 upgrade. Look for that some time in the New Year.

Here's some screen shots from this round of updates. All can be clicked for full screen if desired.

France '40

Sealion '40

Normandy '44

Market-Garden '44 

Bulge '44 

All of these updates plus the previous rounds can be grabbed from the series update page found here.

Enjoy!