The section below is one part of the designer notes for Sicily '43 that some people have asked that I make available.

I. Design Notes

• A) Why Sicily?
• B) The Order of Battle
• C) Mines And Forts
• D) Command
• E) Airborne
• F) Air Aspects
• G) Naval Aspects
• H) The Map
• I) Making the Scenarios

..there are a few other sections on the Designers NOTES with the game that are not available online. Be sure to check your copy of the game for these section.

II. The Scenarios

• A) Scenario List
• B) Scenario Overviews

III. The War Diary: 1 PPCLI (Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry)

IV. Reference List

I have long looked on Sicily as a particularly fascinating battle and one that is ideal for a Panzer Campaign game because it has a good unit density unit, neither too many nor too few units, an interesting map where a fair bit of ground changes hands during the course of the battle and a time period that is manageable within the scale of the Series. Furthermore, there are a lot of variable strategies and extremely interesting historically based 'what if' situations such as the invasion of the western part of the island by the US Army to add variation to the game.

I am an old board wargame player from way back, but somehow, I missed out and never played any of the boardgames covering Sicily when I was growing up. I only really began studying this campaign later in life perhaps because being Canadian it was the first place our troops fought for any period beyond an ill-fated day in August of 1942, that day being the Dieppe Raid. A few years ago, when I was testing another operational computer wargame that had a Sicily scenario, I became quite captivated by Sicily and remarked to a few of my colleagues that this scenario alone was worth the topic of its very own game. Little did I know that I would have the opportunity to customize a Panzer Campaign title to the extent I have in this Sicily '43 game, to achieve that very dream.

The Panzer Campaign Series is a very flexible system that provides designers with control over many parameters and I believe you will be happy with our results here. Sicily '43 I think perhaps has more parameter differences and interesting design twists than any previous title in the Series. And with that, I will present below some of the reasoning that went into the making of Panzer Campaign #8: Sicily '43.

The OOB began with the framework provided by the Order-of-Battle from the Appendix of Carlo D'Este's book "Bitter Victory". This had to be supplemented with details from other sources, such as Mitcham and von Stauffenberg where the make up of the Italian Mobile and Tactical Groups was given in greater detail other than formation name. From the start, building the OOB looked like quite a cut and dried affair, but as I dug deeper, conflicting information and omissions began to appear.

For example, I noticed, in their order of Battles, that D'Este and Mitcham both repeat a couple errors that I believe have been carried forward from other games. For example, the British 15th Brigade is missing a battalion, the "1st Yorks and Lancasters". As it happens, this was one of the first units to hit the beach in the 5th British Division sector on D-Day. I discovered this whilst cross-referencing these two books which were initially my primary data source, with information in the British Official history by C.J.C. Molony.

Molony also provides other unknowns such as the make up of the 1st Special Raiding Squadron. It turns out this formation was actually part of the 2nd SAS Regiment, and lists its strength as 16 Officers and 238 men commanded by Maj. R.B. Mayne. D'Este lists this as an independent unit. In any case, players looking over our OOB and finding things that don't match perfectly with their own sources will know why. For example, our game has the "Yorks and Lancasters", even though the unit isn't in the D'Este OOB.

The Axis OOB was a little foggier right off the mark, and got less clearer the deeper I looked. Sometimes, in some references, I saw things like the composition of Group Koerner as "Largely Unknown". There were also differing opinions as to the amount of transport that some units had. There were also issues surrounding the breakdown of the Axis Forces that fought the campaign in flexible KG organizations. So I created the German units first, using the Divisional information as listed in George Nafziger's Order of Battle volumes. People have told me that Nafziger isn't perfect, but it isn't bad either. From this beginning, I was able to use these 'perfect division formations' as defined in Nafziger, as the building blocks on which I was able to assemble the "At Start" KGs called for by the German OOB. For this game, Axis units will remain in these KG during the entire battle, and that seemed to work out relatively well in the tests of the Campaign Game.

Troop quality is one of those subjective decisions facing any game designer and I thought it would be worth sharing my rationale. First of all, understand that Troop Quality and Morale have two main game impacts; 1) Fire Modification and 2) Command; where die rolls check for things such as disruption recovery. In this respect understand that C Quality is average quality - neither positive or negative modifiers apply.

Therefore, I started by setting the default Allied Quality at C and looked for clear examples where Allied troops were better than the average. In this respect, I set the US 1st Division, (The Big Red One) at "B" Quality. This unit was generally accepted as the best division in the US Army and had combat experience from the invasion of North Africa. Similarly, the 82nd Airborne units are also set at B Quality. I was less kind to the Commonwealth side of the OOB, here I set only some Battalions of the 1st Canadian Division and the Parachute elements of the 1st British Airborne as "B" Quality. There were a few exceptional Allied units that I felt, qualified for an "A" rating, and these included "Darby's" US Rangers, and the various British Commando units, such as the SAS, Royal Marine Commandos, and the Special Raiding Squadron.

On the Axis side of the OOB, despite evidence that all the German units were not made up of 10-foot giants, I set them all at "A" Quality. While grognards may quote references of lesser quality German troops in Sicily, and specifically, of bungling by the Herman Goering Division in the early days at Gela, the fact remains that the Germans did not 'under perform' in the primary task. That is, they held up a vastly superior sized Allied Army for much longer than anyone thought possible, and then, in the end, still escaped with many of their units intact to fight another day. One need only look at the titles of the books which chronicle the fighting, titles such as "Bitter Victory", and "Sicily: Whose Victory?" to prove the Germans performed well beyond the showing of the Herman Goering Division in its worst days of the battle.

This overall performance is the reason I set all German forces at Quality "A". Those that dispute this assumption, or that wish to try other settings, are of course free to experiment with the game editors to see if altered values yield better results over the length of the campaign.

The Italian troop quality was something altogether different. There were some troops who performed adequately, such as the 1st Livorno Division, so I set it at "C" Quality. The other regular divisions, 28th Aosta Division, the 26th Assietta Division, and the 54th (Napoli) Infantry Division, I set with a mixture of "C" and "D" Quality units. The artillery on the other hand was somewhat better than average. At first, I set them with C Quality but as the campaign tests proceeded, I went out on a limb and gave the artillery units of the main Italian infantry formations a slight Quality bonus, and thus a lesser chance of disruption under fire. Artillery of the more numerous Coastal Divisions is unaffected and, in fact, these formations were often a non-factor in combat and surrendered en masse. So I set their Quality at "F" and have set them to be withdrawn randomly to simulate the way they generally "melted away". This withdrawal was a feature introduced in Normandy ''44 to facilitate the historical withdrawal of the Airborne Division at the correct time in the campaign. But, in Sicily '43, I have set this withdrawal with a low percentage, so that the effect will be spread out over time. This also creates an effect where the Axis player is unable to trust these units to any extent, because they could simply disappear at any time. The withdrawal is set at the battalion level so the "melting away" effect is completely random and non-selective. An Axis player may be alarmed when they see the size of the list of units involved, but players must keep in mind it only affects battalions of the Coastal Division, so the net result is that a player can't trust Coastal Divisions for mission critical situations. However line Italian divisions, and the Mobile and Tactical Groups are reliable, and can be trusted as much as other combat units of that Quality level.

Most of the Italian units in the Coastal Division are company sized. This was necessary to stretch them the length of the various beaches they were covering. Using larger, battalion sized units for them would not have depicted combat properly in my opinion. An added side effect of Low Quality troops in Coy sized formation is that as they get extra Battle Fatigue when engaged in combat, the result will be that many of these units will simply cease to exist as an effective combat formation after one good shot. Here again, this seemed to work and be representative of the situation we were trying to portray.

For the strength of the Allied infantry, I employed two different approaches. The US Army Handbook lists the strength of an infantry company as three platoons, with any additional Heavy Weapons, MGs, and Mortars at the battalion level. In fact, these weapons were parceled throughout the battalion, so I broke these support weapons out, and added some additional value in numbers of men and combat value to account for them.

For the British, the OOB provides a slightly different approach that perhaps offers some advantages, and some disadvantages, between the two Allied sides involved. British, and in fact, Canadian divisions too, had an MG Battalion with four company's at the division level. One company was generally assigned to each of the three brigades in the division, and the fourth company in divisional reserve. So I left those independent heavy companies in the OOB.

Explicit Supply has been implemented in the main Campaign Games for players who have enjoyed this optional rule. In this title we have done it with a slight twist. The island of Sicily in 1943 apparently had the world's highest population density of mules, and it was these beasts, which were commandeered to carry much of the supplies. So players wanting to explore this option will now find it less than speedy to move the bulk of their supplies to the front line. Also, given that all mules are not equal, I've varied the unit Quality, which will in effect give three classes of mules all with different speeds just to keep things interesting. As with our other games, scenarios that have Explicit Supply, as a possible rule, are denoted with a lowercase "s" at the end of the scenario number (Example: #0709_01s_SicilyCG.scn).

There were many other design choices, too numerous to mention, even if we had kept a comprehensive list. Things like removing the Allied AA units from the OOB, even though they were present. These units would be pointing skyward in their traditional role, but if left in, these motorized units could, I feel, lead to "gamey" tactics that I wished to avoid. I also cut the speed for Anti-tank gun units, so people can't use them as roving, fast, motorized recon units as we have seen in other games. Doing this we still encourage gamers to use these weapons in the manner they were historically employed. We can't completely anticipate and remove every gamey tactic, but with this Order-of-Battle, we have tried.

The Allied advance in Sicily was held up, in the later stages of the campaign, by defensive lines that the Axis created during the battle for control of the Island. Furthermore, mines were used extensively by the Germans as D'Este (Pg 478) remarked:

"The use of Mines continued to be the most devilishly effective German tactic in Sicily. Seemingly possessed of an inexhaustible supply, the Germans planted mines in defense of their positions and along the Allied route of march as they retreated across Sicily."

This provided another first in a Panzer Campaign title. In previous games of the series, defense lines were generally prepared ahead of time and while you could have your engineers lay a mine, the chances of success were not really that high. In Sicily we needed to increase this chance of mine placement and this was accomplished through the use of the Parameter table. We have given the Axis 3 times the chance of success in placing mines from other games in the series, whilst also increasing its ease in constructing lines of Trenches and Improved Positions. These should be keys to any victory, or should, at least seriously delay the inevitable Allied conquest of the island.

The Corps Attachments rules that have been part the Series since the beginning, will take on new importance in Sicily '43, even with the relatively few number of units and higher-level formations in the game. When the US Provisional Corps HQ arrives, US divisions can be assigned to it on the first turn of the16th. July. This makes it much easier to move American units towards western Sicily without becoming "Out of Command".

Also, Allied HQs at the brigade level have a slightly shorter command range, when compared with similar HQs in others games at a later time in Europe. The US divisional HQs have a higher command range than British divisions. This is attributable to the historical speed and ability shown by the US forces when spreading out west and capturing Palermo.

On the Axis side, you will find no German Corps HQ available until the arrival of General Hube and XIV Panzer Corps HQ. At this point the Axis Player should assign all German or even all Axis units to the command of this senior HQ, which has a very high Command Range. It is the design intent that, with the arrival of this HQ, Axis units will see much less "Out of Command" messages as General Hube enters, and, hopefully this will help to stem the Allied advance.

Modeling the Airborne aspects of the battle was a challenge that, in the end, was overcome with typical John Tiller style: "Simple Elegance". We have had the airborne arrival of troops in Panzer Campaigns since the beginning, and major airborne operations in the Normandy '44 title. But with the notable exception of some small scale drops in North Africa, this was the first real large scale, Allied airborne operation of the war. The lessons learned here would save many lives later in Normandy, but they were lessons with a terrible cost of lives lost.

But back to the game - here we have an operational situation where the troops are scattered 'hither-and-yon'. So on one hand I needed the game's units to be squad level, or less, but that wouldn't work in a game based on battalions and companies. In fact, even with platoon sized units, there would simply be too many game counters cluttering the map. But the traditional OOB company sized units wouldn't work either.

The best solution I found was to make the paratrooper units basically double platoon sized or roughly 60 men. Then I organized them in the OOB in such a way that units of different "companies" could combine together, as long as they were part of the same battalion.

The Tiller "Simple Elegance" came in the form of a Parameter change, so that we could control the rate of AB losses, actually making them here a lot higher than in Normandy. Who knows? Perhaps the same parameter might also be useful, in making airborne losses lesser than Normandy for another title later? Furthermore, we have in the airborne parameter a setting for each side, so that it is actually only the Allied AB Operations that face the historically correct higher losses. The Axis FJs who dropped in virtually at the front line will not be affected.

Finally, to get the best correct scatter for the Allied drops, we spread out the entry hexes for the Allied paratroopers, before applying scatter. Then, we used very high scatter values associated with each small unit, which gave the chance of many units dropping at sea and being lost. Certainly the Axis player will not know where to find those pesky airborne raiders in this game. They will be found all over the place, and an Allied player will struggle to regroup them, perhaps with more of a birds-eye point-of-view than the original commanders did, but overall, we are pleased with the effect we were able to achieve.

There is good historical information on the Allied Air Force in Malta and North Africa including unit ID's, aircraft numbers, and types, available to fly missions in Sicily. But for game purposes, we have used less total aircraft and kept air units more or less generic. The justification for this approach is due to the poor Air Support Control ground commanders actually had according to Bradley and as noted on the bottom of page 465 in D'Este.

"Close air support of ground operations was rare during the Sicily campaign and of the estimated 1000 direct-support fighter-bomber sorties recorded, most were against towns and enemy convoys with the object of isolating the battlefield. Provisions for timely response to the requirements of the ground forces were clumsy and inefficient, with the result that response time was far too long."

Therefore, most Air effects in this game are Interdiction. Bradley went on to say:

"In Sicily, poor maps, inexperienced pilots, and the similarity of terrain, all combined to produce numerous unfortunate incidences. During the battle of Troina, Canadian troops in Regalbuto were bombed several times by US fighter-bombers. Finally, after one particularly close call, Oliver Leese was obliged to ring Bradley to enquire, 'What have we done that your chaps would want to bomb us?' Asked where the bombs had landed, Leese replied 'Squarely on my Headquarters; they've really plastered the town."

But it wasn't always the British and Canadians on the receiving end. Bradley and Allen were nearly killed when an A-26 had strafed the 1st Division CP for the third time in a single day.

A check of the game parameter data will reveal a fairly high value for the Luftwaffe, which may raise questions as to why? The answer is not due to the Luftwaffe, but the Allied Air Force and friendly fire! Justification for using Allied Air strength and interdiction on themselves is found in Bradley's own book, "A Soldier's Story" (pg 150-151) where he says:

"Later, when the Statistics were compiled, it was found that the 2nd Armored lost more men and equipment to 'friendly' air attacks than to the Luftwaffe"

Panzer Campaigns is a wargame where the focus in on ground combat. In the case of the Navy, it played a vital role in getting the troops to the island, supplying them, and even coming to the aid of ground forces at a few, but critical, moments in time. The challenge with modeling the naval aspects of the battle was to provide them and remove them at the appropriate times, so that the game didn't go off on a tangent with Allied ships facing Italian Coastal batteries.

The Allied Naval Group commanders were very concerned about shore based guns, more so than can be easily depicted in this game. To this end, the game does not include the Coastal Batteries, unless such positions were the objectives of specific missions for units, such as commandos. Then, Naval Assets are also withdrawn from the control of the ground commander - ie: they are withdrawn from the player, as these powerful assets had other missions to fulfill.

However, there is no denying the US Navy saved the day at Gela with timely, accurate, and devastating fire. So the ships, or at least some of the ships, had to be present and represented in the game, but not dominate it every turn as the entire Western Task Force was never able to fire 'en masse', with accurate, ground directed fire. Furthermore, the more I read, the more I found that controlling naval gunfire was different between the US and British fleets.

SWC Pack said of US Ship to Shore communications for Naval Gunfire (Pg 77) in his book:

"…the Americans were on a whole prepared to use naval gunfire in support more freely than the British, and in view of the greater opposition they met on this first day, perhaps it was as well."

There is another reference to the US having more Naval FOOs available from its ships with all major HQs ashore. This contrast with procedures in the Eastern Task Force is best illustrated by this example at the Primosole Bridge taken from D'Este (pg 368).

"Accompanying the battalion [2nd Btln - 1st Para] was a Royal Artillery gunnery officer, Captain Vere Hodge, who was acting as the Naval Forward Observation officer for the six-inch guns of the cruiser HMS Newfoundland which was lying off shore. For some time Hodge's attempts to gain wireless contact proved fruitless. Finally at about 0900, he succeeded, and 'almost immediately the high velocity medicine began to arrive with a suddenness and efficiency that completely turned the scales … What seemed like imminent defeat was staved off and from then on the danger receded'"

Therefore, in the British OOB you will find a number of small, HQ type units with a small number of men who are the FOO, or Forward Observer teams from the British Navy.

Under the 2nd Parachute Btln OOB, in the Primosole Bridge scenario, you will find an FOO and the HMS Newfoundland. This will make things more realistic for Naval Gunnery in the game. In the Campaign we have the ships at sea on the map, and the FOO's on land arriving with variable entry, with variable exit of the ships. The effect is one of unreliability. You may at any time have a target not visible by an FOO to call the shot, leaving you on the beach cursing the Navy, seeing the ships, but having no means to contact them to put their guns to good effect.

The FOOs (Forward Observing Officer counters) are used only for the ships of the Eastern Task Force while their US counterparts can fire at will, as long as they have a ground unit spotting the target.

As the campaign progressed there was little by way of co-ordination between the Army and Navy, the exception being the limited support afforded the "End-round-run". So little was the coordination between forces that Martin Blumenson in his book, "Sicily: Whose Victory?" recounts a very interesting story that happened along the north coastal road. Apparently 14 unidentified ships appeared and the 45th Division's excellent advance came to a halt as they prepared to repel a suspected German invasion force. It turned out the ships were actually Allied destroyers on a routine mine clearing mission. So you see, for the bulk of the period of the campaign, the Navy was concerned with itself and its own missions, therefore they have been withdrawn from play to be out of the control of ground commanders.

The Sicily map in this game was created by Dave "Blackie" Blackburn, and it reflects some of the most rugged terrain that we have ever depicted in a Panzer Campaign game. You just can't run motorized units over open terrain like you can in the open country of France, or the Steppes of Russia. Even tanks in Sicily had difficulty in the towns and villages on account of the narrow roadways. While the tanks may not become stuck in these tight streets, a tank commander might take more time in route selection, and then exercise a bit more restraint, lest they throw a track.

Mitcham and Stauffenberg (Pg 92) states:

"The roads are rarely straight or level and are often tortuous. Travel off the road is often impossible except for anything except mules and infantry men."

Players may notice to that much of the Allied Infantry is on foot. What happened to the Motorized transport some people may ask? D'Este (Pg 281) says:

"In the first three days of the of the Campaign the men of the 17th Brigade of the (British) 5th Division marched nearly 100 miles in salt-water laden boots, and in the next thirty-five days would march a great deal further".

And for the US Infantry as they raced about the island, D'Este points out:

"The 3rd Division marched the length and breadth of the island, from Licata to Agrigento, to Palermo and eventually to Messina, under the most grueling conditions."

In fact, while training in North Africa, the 3rd US Division learned to do what weary GI's called "The Truscott Trot", which was a 30 mile hike, the first five of which was run at a trot.

Most Panzer Campaign maps have contour levels at around 20 meters; Sicily uses 100m contours near the coast, and even higher values around Mount Etna. Coincident with the higher contour interval, this game has better defense for higher elevation positions, and higher movement costs associated with moving uphill. Also, we have marked the higher regions of Mount Etna as unplayable terrain, that is, too rough to be considered crossing by a modern army.

The interior has many hexes that are "Rough" terrain and only foot units, or motorized units "On Foot", can move into such hexes. These "Rough" hexes along the roadside often make excellent defense positions. We are also using more "Broken" terrain than on previous maps, these also offer good defense, but not as good as some others. Villages, for example, were also particularly tough to take in this battle, so players will notice them as stronger defensive positions, especially when combined with IP's, or Trenches.

The fields have a terrain height of 0 meters, so they don't affect LOS. This isn't tilled ground that we are depicting and causing movement to be slower. Most fields in Sicily were not tilled in 1943. Rather it is the sheds, houses, barns, small vineyards, etc., - causing the Allies to be more cautious as they advance across this more open lower elevation countryside - this is why the movement cost is slightly higher for this terrain.

Also, you can see from the War Diary in a later section that the average daily temperature was uncomfortably hot. This, the height of the ground, and in general the difficulty of the terrain combine in a much altered Parameter table with respect to movement, which players should notice fairly quickly once they begin playing the game.

This game is built on the Sicily Campaign, or Campaigns, which owing to the Fast-AI and On-Map Combat results released with Kursk '43 combined with the lower unit density in this game, should increase the tempo of play over previous game titles of the Series.

The Scenarios are numbered so as to follow a chronological order when sorted by date, with the "Started", or introductory, scenario at the top of the list. The first main game scenario is the historical full campaign, which in game terms begins at 2200,July 9th 1943, this allows for a single turn at night with only airborne forces in play, and most Axis units "Fixed", to reflect the confusion at the start of the battle.

While testing Sicily '43, players often raised the dilemma of how to handle the Herman Goering Division, in terms of the AI, and the aggressiveness of the AI. Gamers familiar with the details of the battle will know this division was positioned close to the American beachhead, which it attacked - and caused great concern for the Allied commanders. The AI could be instructed to attack with the same vigor, but it then has difficulty knowing when "enough is enough", and it is time to break off and "live to fight another day". On the surface there was no choice. The HG Division actually did take an aggressive approach to the invasion, so this was what we wanted the AI to do. However, some of the playtesters encouraged us to consider a passive HG Division, to see if better play would result from the Axis AI trying to hold, and contain, the US beachhead. In the end, we elected to provide a "second" Campaign with this minor variation, so that the player could decide between the two options. As this really isn't a true "second" Campaign, we kept the scenario number the same and added an "_alt" at the end of the filename. The variant is explained in the Scenario Overview.

The Main Second Campaign is an alternative history play and something often speculated upon. That is "What If Patton's US 7th Army had have invaded Western Sicily instead of on Montgomery's flank"? This Campaign explores this option using an actual battle plan the Allies were discussing in March and April 1943. There were many such plans, but this one had the US landings later than the British, on D+2 and D+5. In the early plans too, the US was not intending to use the 1st (Big Red One) Infantry Division, nor was the Canadian 1st Division called for. While other units take their place, neither of these have as good a troop Quality. The Plan depicted by the game is one that was published in the book by Swift and Sharpe entitled "Historical Maps of World War II: Europe", and this provided most of the Divisions involved and the timings of the follow up invasions. Actual beach arrivals were then based on the US Beach experience at JOSS and DIME.

To understand the Third Campaign, you first have to hear about the newest rule added to the series with this title called "Strategy | Operations". And as people usually ask I should say YES, this rule will be back-dated to previous games of the series too for designers who want to experiment with their own ideas. This Strategy | Operations rule concerns reinforcements and the concept is that a player will be provided with a decision point for a "strategy", and then will be able to select one of the possible "Operations" within that strategy. Strategy | Operations, or S|O's for short, are illustrated in the Started Scenario with the strategy called "End-round-run" and three operations: a) Go Deep, b) Right in the Middle, and c) Exercise Caution. S|O's are also used in the main campaign to provide the Allies options, so that the Axis cannot by knowing history, be waiting for the British Paratroopers at Primosole Bridge on 13 July for example. Nor will the Axis player know exactly where Task Force Bernard may strike along the north coast.

The Allied player on the other hand does not exercise complete control over these reinforcements, but can select from the list of choices provided to them in the Scenario design itself. With that in mind, the Third Campaign gives the Allied player the choice of opting for either the actual invasion plan from the first campaign, or the historical alternative used in the second campaign.

At this point, players may be thinking - what can the S|Os do to give the German player a little fun?

Well, we called this Third Campaign "Rock, Paper, Panzer" after the kid's hand game "Rock, Paper, Scissors" where two parties exercise their options without the other person knowing to see who wins. So in this 3rd Campaign scenario, there is an extra turn at the beginning where the Allied Player secretly selects invasion plan a) or b) and then nothing happens for the remainder of his turn. Next, the Axis player selects from three choices where he wants to deploy the 15th Panzer Grenadiers; a) historical - which has some troops in the west, b) centrally located - so that they can move to either hot spot, or c) near Gela - where it could strike early at either of the historical beaches.

Pick correctly and you could see a situation where a single British Infantry division comes ashore to face two German divisions. Can the Germans finish it off and turn to take on either the Americans or the British Army, one at a time? There are a number of interesting possibilities that this sort of situation can set up.

The other campaigns, 4, 5, and 6 are further variations of history, with added Allied Forces for a more challenging play against an Allied AI opponent. More Axis troops for a bigger challenge for the Allied Human vs. the AI, and finally both sides reinforced for just a larger battle. However, more troops does not mean more Supplies if you are using the Explicit Supply rules, and players will have to keep this in mind, or add their own additional supplies using the editor. With some of these additional invasion Campaigns, S|Os are used to provide more variation.

For me personally to be interested in these sorts of "What If" situations, they have to be plausible within the historical context. It was easy to find additional Allied units by looking at forces in the reserves that were not used, or forces in the Mediterranean Theater. Such units are listed in the Allied Order of Battle for Sicily, even though they saw no action.

However, additional forces for the Germans proved to be a little more challenging. First, we added two additional Panzer Grenadier Regts to the Herman Goering Division, based on a reference in D'Este (Pg 207), where he refers to these formations as being left in France on Goering's personal orders. As the HG Division is organized in KG, or Battle Groups, we called this formation KG France. Next, we created an Ad Hoc Corps group made up of the 10th Panzer Division, the 334th Infantry Division, and the Italian 1st Superga Division. These forces are mentioned in Mitcham's book (Pg 7) as reinforcements sent to North Africa, but it isn't unreasonable to think they may have been held in Sicily had the Germans abandoned Tunisia or at least decided to not throw these forces into action there.

If six invasion Campaigns are not enough, there is more still campaigning. We wanted to provide a "Dry Feet" Campaign where the Allies are already established on land and have to sweep the island. Robert Mayer, whose name many people will know from his days as Editor of Computer Games Online, created this campaign. I first got to know Bob when he was the Forum Moderator of Computer Games Online, and he always seemed to speculate on Sicily as a Panzer Campaign, so we were happy to have him assist with additional research details and by providing this campaign which begins on 18 July. As well, Bob created another scenario covering US action at Troina.

There are other Scenarios in the game too, one covering the later action along the Etna Line, and a number of smaller and mid sized Scenarios. One set of scenarios worth a special mention is Messina at the end of the Campaign. By this late period of the battle, the Germans had decided to withdraw, and it was a forgone conclusion that the Allies would conquer Sicily. What was yet to be determined was who would get to Messina first - Montgomery or Patton? Therefore a scenario was created so a player could simulate this race. The scenario can be played normally of course with one player taking on the AI. Alternatively, two Allied Players could PBEM with a third, German opponent, for the honor of being the first into Messina. Players embarking on this venture may wish to agree to keep the British 78th Division south of and off, the main highway Route 120, on the northern fringe of Mount Etna as a 'House Rule' perhaps, keeping that road as the dividing line between the two Allied Armies.

However, if finding a third player to "beat upon" is too much of a challenge, this scenario is cut into two pieces, so two players could play them both simultaneously, with an Axis Player vs an Allied Player swapping sides in each of #0812_02_Messina_North.scn and #0812_03_Messina_South.scn. Both scenarios would progress at the same rate, turn for turn to see who could get to Messina fastest. Or, if they both get there on the same turn, who had a unit closer or faster to beat the other to the prize? Yet another way to approach this would be for two Humans to take on the AI via PBEM or hotseat, where players each assume the role of one of the Allied Armies, determining which of them goes first each turn. In this method of playing Messina, players could opt for either the 0812_01 scenario or the more challenging 0812_04 scenario. In this combined two player vs. the AI style, one player might "accidentally" block a road or borrow the other guy's Air Strike - "so sorry about that old chap - won't happen again - an honest mistake" and this could in itself lead to a new dimension in play.

Whichever way you approach Messina, I think we are presenting a novel approach to the situation and something which we haven't tried before in previous titles. Of course, players can still opt to play these scenarios against the AI too, as either the larger scenario(s), or each part separately. We did find that with the Axis on a 'hold at all cost' defense, it might take players longer than normal to capture Messina, so in the Fourth Messina Scenario, we added more turns to the game and relied heavily on fixed units. Of course there is the usual collection of small and medium sized scenarios like Primosole Bridge for example, which capture the action at particular times in the full campaign.

We trust that anyone who plays Panzer Campaigns Sicily '43, gets as much enjoyment out of playing it as we did in helping to create it for you.

Glenn Saunders

for the entire team of designers and testers.