Rebuilding counters

There are several aftermarket sources for Panzerblitz counters, but there doesn't seem to be a collaborative effort leveraging open source licensing.

Hence, there is an opportunity to rebuild the counter set using standard open source formats such as SVG.

There are several challenges:

  • Font matching: is the lettering and number font the same, and either way, what is the font or fonts used for lettering and numbering on the counters?

  • Will all the silhouettes need to be traced out manually for each type of counter? This is (relatively) trivial except for armor units. The armor unit counters will be much more demanding.

  • Counter templates used for situation cards will need to have borders, while counters intending on being printed for use as game pieces need only very light and thin borders.

Example Russian 82 mm mortar counter

Here's a scale example of R084, a Russian 82 mm mortar counter:

Russian 82 mm mortar

It may appear small in the browser, but the image is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open format with freely available tools for creating and editing vector images.

Because SVG is a text format, it's easy to examine the source code for the 82 mm mortar counter image.

Because all the material created for this site is licensed under Creative Commons, you are free and encouraged to download this image (and all the other images) for your own use, improvement or whatever.

A brief history of PanzerBlitz

Avalon Hill's PanzerBlitz was a successor to a game called "Tactical Game 3," which was never developed for market. The story can be found on related web sites. What's important here is that the game does have a long and successful history, ultimately selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Here are a few of the best links about PanzerBlitz available on the web.

  • Imaginative Strategist, often referred to as "ImStrat" has an incredible collection of articles, counters, maps and other material related to PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader and the Arab Israeli games. Seriously, ImStrat is worth hours of time.

  • Greg's PanzerBlitz Site is another outstanding resource, also worth hours of reading.

  • ConSim World Forum appears to be where a number of current PanzerBlitz players can be found. The forum is relatively relaxed and low traffic, but there is a lot of information available.

There are several more outstanding links which will be added in the future, and if you, the reader, find one of your favorite sites missing, please issue a pull request with the relevant addition.