CROSS
OF IRON SCENARIOS
Cross of Iron was Avalon Hill's first add on for their
Squadleader boardgame. It's presumably named after the novel by Willi Heinrich
and/or the Sam Peckinpah film adaptation. Like its literary/cinematic namesake
the game takes the Eastern Front as its theme, and introduces new troops (SS,
partisans, cavalry etc) plus a vast array of vehicles and ordnance. It also
features eight scenarios which are reproduced below (with one variant). These
scenarios take up slots SCEN042 to SCEN050 in the scenario directory.
|
TITLE |
BATTLE
TYPE |
COMMENTS |
|
3rd August 1941 |
Germany/Romania v USSR Axis Assault |
Best played against a human opponent
or Soviet AI. The Germans need to make sure their Stg III isn't knocked out
at the opening of the assault. They’ll have an uphill task repelling the
Soviet counterattack without it. |
|
3rd August 1941 |
Germany/Romania v USSR Axis Assault |
This variant uses the same forces as
v1 above with the Balta map from Steel Panthers. |
|
12th January 1943 |
USSR v Germany Soviet Assault |
Best played against a human opponent
whichever side you pick. Playing against the AI isn't very satisfactory. If you're
the Germans it's a turkey shoot as you blast the enemy tanks at long range.
If you're the Soviets it's easy to outflank the thinly spread Germans and
take the victory objectives. |
|
6th April 1944 |
Germany (SS) v USSR Meeting Engagement |
Best played against human opponent or
German AI. This scenario is also a turkey shoot for the German player if played
against Soviet AI. The map in this scenario comes from Marsh and Ritter's
adaptation of "Hube's Pocket" which can be obtained from the SSI Scenario Depot. |
|
Sowchos 79
8th December 1942 |
Germany v USSR German Assault |
Best played against Soviet AI. If
played any other way the Soviets will probably gain an unfair advantage by
bringing up their tank reinforcements early. |
|
30th August 1941 |
USSR v Germany Soviet Advance |
Best played against German AI to avoid
the kind of early reinforcement arrival mentioned in Sowchos 79 above. The
Soviets' primary goal should be elimination of the German garrison units
(which have increased point values) rather than taking the victory hexes. |
|
19th July 1941 |
USSR v Germany Soviet Assault |
Mass Soviet
infantry and armoured assault against German infantry and AT units. Best
played against human opponent. Playing against the AI tends to lead to the
same sort of games discussed in The Paw of the Tiger above. |
|
17th February 1942 |
USSR v Germany Soviet Advance |
A Soviet mixed force
(paratroops, cavalry and partisans) attacks a German held town. Best
played against German AI. Soviet partisan squads have reduced personnel and
SMGs as support weapons to reflect their poor firepower and range. There's no
satisfactory way of simulating air drops in Steel Panthers so the paratroops
begin the game in a location where it’ll take them a few turns to get into
the thick of things. |
|
2nd July
1941 |
Germany v USSR Meeting Engagement |
This is a massive scenario: Infantry,
cavalry, tanks, planes, the works. Best played against Soviet AI as it gets a
bit tedious moving all those large Russian infantry formations. |
Afterword:
In
retrospect there’s a number of things I wish I’d done differently in these
scenarios, not least making more of an effort to accurately reproduce the
original game maps. I might re-do
these scenarios some time in the future for Steel Panthers: World War II and
will pay more attention to the mapping side of things. SP:WW2 also has the
advantage of being able to reproduce more features from the Squadleader system
than SP1 such as large amounts of
units (i.e. more than 48), allied troops, reinforcements, airborne drops and a
wider variety of squad types.