Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
Alan R. Arvold
POULTRON PRESS
It seems most appropriate to start at the beginning and this
would be with TACTICAL GAME #3 (hereafter referred to as TAC 3).
TAC 3 was the original playtest game of what would become
PANZERBLITZ. The designer was James F. Dunnigan and it was
originally published in 1969. It contained a six page rule set, a
single mapsheet, an unmounted counter set, six scenarios, several
set up sheets, a combat results table, and some miscellaneous
information pages. There were two print runs of the game. The
first was the actual playtest kit that was sent out to
prospective playtesters of the period. The second, published in
the early Seventies, was merely a reprint of the game to be
available to any gamer would wanted a copy for his collection.
The difference between the two was in the counter sets. In the
first print run the counters were printed on light blue and pink
paper. The artwork was crude and the tanks were hand drawn on the
counters. In the second print run the counters were on a single
sheet. The backround colors were the traditional brown and grey
found in the regular game. The symbols were professionally done
and the vehicle counters had the well known vehicle silhouettes
on them. Note that in some copies of the second print run, there
were some of the old leftover pink and light blue counter sets
inserted into them and thus had both versions of the counters, a
rare find indeed for any collector.
S&T #22 - Game Design: Down Highway 61, Through State Farm 69,
Around Tactical Game 3, and into Panzerblitz (Steve
List and James F. Dunnigan) - Story of the design
history of the game and also the first analysis of the
game as well.
TACTICAL GAME #3 - This was the introductory preview of
PANZERBLITZ using its old title. Was part of the two
games in the issue. Included a small set of counters
and a rules sheet which also had all pertinent tables.
There was no separate mapsheet as this version used the
mapsheet of the other game in the issue. A look at the
rules shows this version to be a transitory phase
between TAC 3 and PANZERBLITZ although it is certainly
closer to the latter in content.
S&T #23 - TACTICAL GAME: T-34 (Arnold Hendricks) - This was
supposed to be a miniatures version of PANZERBLITZ. It
had a set of rules and paper stand up counters for the
miniatures. It was actually based on TACTICAL GAME #3,
not PANZERBLITZ as many people would like to believe.
S&T #24 - Panzerblitz GAGE' (James F. Dunnigan) - This was a
review of the game using SPI's short lived GAGE system.
S&T #27 - Tactical Notes (Robert Champer) - This was a short
lived column that gave strategy tips for scenarios in
various tactical games. In this issue the featured game
was PANZERBLITZ.
GENERAL Magazine
BOARDGAMER Magazine
MOVES Magazine
WARGAMER Magazine
WARGAMER was the house magazine for World Wide Wargames (3W)
which was originally based in England but later moved to
California. Founded in 1977, it lasted until 1990. There were two
volumes, the first lasted 62 issues, then in 1987 switched to the
second volume which lasted 25 more issues. Was originally an S&T
type magazine, in the second volume it switched to a MOVES type
magazine. (It even incorporated MOVES into itself as one of its
sections.)
GRENADIER Magazine
The GRENADIER was the house magazine of Game Designer's
Workshop (GDW). It lasted from 1978 to 1990 and comprised of 35
issues. It started off as a quarterly magazine, but towards the
end was published sporadically. Although it covered games from
all companies, it gave most of the magazine space to GDW games.
PANZERFAUST/CAMPAIGN Magazine
JAGDPANTHER/BATTLEFIELD Magazine
OUTPOSTS Magazine
D-ELIM Newsletter
SPARTAN Magazine
STRATEGIST Newsletter
KRIEGSRAT Newletter
MISCELLANEOUS
CONCLUSION
I am putting out the call to all gamers who may have copies of
these missing articles. If you want to see them included in this
index, or have corrections to entries in this article (including
issue numbers for those entries without them), please contact me
at the following email address:
alanrarvold@hotmail.com
However be warned, I will only post new entries into this
index if I have copies of the articles in question. These can be
hard copies sent to me by mail or scans of them sent via email.
The reason for this is because I have already had too many would
be plagiarists tell me about an article that they have "written"
and was published, not knowing that I already had a copy of the
article in question with the real author's name in my possession.
With that being said, let's make this index complete with the
rest of the missing articles.