Game of the Week, May 20 to 26 (2024)

This week’s Game of the Week is Panzer Battles: Battles of Kursk – Southern Flank.

If one battle ever evoked a visualization of World War Two it would be the Battle of Kursk. The turning point on the Eastern Front, where arguably, the Germans played for all and lost, never to recover the initiative from the Soviets.

Battles of Kursk – Southern Flankis latest 4.02 version and our product description encapsulates this engagement well:

In early July 1943 for the last time as equal combatants; German and Soviet forces fought one of World War 2's most pivotal battles at Kursk in Southern Russia. The battle was to be the zenith for Germany; it was never to drive the initiative in the East again. Kursk was to be the first time that the Russians stopped a German summer offensive before it had achieved its strategic aims and more significantly build their own operation where there was a clear defensive and offensive phase. The German attack was but Act I in the Russian plan. Battles of Kursk – Southern Flank is the first release in the Panzer Battles series. With a focus on the more climactic southern attack, players will understand why both sides viewed the battle as a victory, though many would consider it Pyrrhic. Fought across nine days from July 4th to July 12th the battle was much more than the imagined storming of a fortified line. Meeting engagements, hasty defenses and even the first widespread use of tank busting aircraft were more typical of the day-to-day fighting. Both sides deployed their country's elite forces. The Germans fielded their carefully reconstituted Panzer forces, led by the II SS Panzer Korps. The Soviets deployed the armies that had recently crushed the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, newly replenished and promoted to Guards honorifics.

There are 60 scenarios included, of various sizes. Below is a list of the major engagements included, many with multiple scenarios:

• July 4th; XXXXVIII Panzer Korp's preliminary attacks – 2 scenarios
• July 5th; II SS Panzer Korp's – 4 scenarios
• July 5th; III Panzer Korp – 4 scenarios
• July 5th; XXXXVIII Panzer Korp – 6 scenarios
• July 6th; II SS Panzer Korp – 7 scenarios
• July 7th; III Panzer Korp – 6 scenarios
• July 7th; XXXXVIII Panzer Korp – 1 scenario
• July 8th; Voronezh Front – 9 scenarios
• July 9th; XXXXVIII Panzer Korp – 7 scenarios
• July 10th; II SS Panzer Korp – 6 scenarios
• July 11th; II SS Panzer Korp – 4 scenarios
• July 12th; Voronezh & Steppe Fronts – 4 scenarios

The Master Map covers 102,000 hexes covering the area of the German attacks and the initial Soviet counterattacks. 45 sub maps are included.

Battles of Kursk – Southern Flankincludes the aforementioned playable scenarios, as well as a Getting Started scenario to introduce new players to the game system. The included scenarios are a good mix of small (battalion/regiment), medium (division) and large (corps) engagements.

The Order of Battle includes over 15,800 units from two Soviet Fronts and a German Army Group including units from Wehrmacht, SS, and Luftwaffe formations as well as Guards and regular Russian Army units.

We included a lot of historical documentation and notes with this title, you can review each by clicking on the images below.

Planning Maps (Please note - these maps are nearly 200MB - be aware before downloading.)

There has been a range of books covering the battle of Kursk. Following are some representative books for anyone that would like some more background on the operation. You can click on the book images below to be taken to the Publisher or Amazon, if applicable.

Informational

Valeriy Zamulin is a leading Russian scholar of the Battle of Kursk, whose detailed books on the Kursk Battle are indispensable.

The following title has a huge number of photos from the Soviet perspective.

If you can find this series of 6 books by Remy Spezzano - grab them. The restoration and identification of images is superb. Everything RZM Publishing sells is worth consideration for the serious wargamer.

Now for video content:

If you have never seen it, there is no better film to sense the scale of the battle, than the (sub-titled) Russian movie Liberation, Film 1: The Fire Bulge. This wasthe first of a series of five movies filmed between 1969 - 1971.

The Mack has multiple videos relating to this title. See his dedicated playlist here.

Let's talk about hex!, just recently published this gameplay video:

Following are some in-game screen shots of what to expect. Each image can be clicked for a full-sized view.

As mentioned, the build we are making available today is a new 4.02 version that was released in March. A range of new features are included, and you can read the Changelog here. All new purchases will be this latest version.

If you already own Battles of Kursk – Southern Flank, please note that you will have a new installer available in your store account. There will not be an update available for existing Battles of Kursk – Southern Flank installations.

Beginning with the recentSquad Battles updates, thenPanzer Battlesthen, Civil War Battles and now on to Panzer Campaigns - we have been requiring acomplete clean installof your games to get the new version. There's a variety of reasons for this - core changes to file formats (moving to PNG files in some cases), new infrastructure for future A/I enhancements, Windows 11 compatibility changes and the enormous size many of the updates have grown to be. Regarding that last point, many of the updates were retaining backwards compatibility with ancient installers, in some cases back to the HPS days! This required inclusion of a huge number of files, and in some cases an additional Batch file to reorganize everything into the new file structures. It was getting problematic on several points, not the least of which was some security software packages were blocking the batch files from running.

So, these fresh installs will resolve all of those problems in one fell swoop. You uninstall your existing copy of the game using the built in Windows "App Management" feature in the Control Panel. You then do a clean install of the game, and everything is in its proper place.

We will be doing this for every game series we publish, in time - if all goes well during the course of 2024. Once the new "base line" is established we will begin to offer incremental updates again on the site. These will only include files changed since that new baseline for that series. With that said, you can ALWAYS do a clean install at any time, and the installer linked in yourStore Accountis the most recent version.

So, again, how do you get these new versions?

You must go and login to yourStore Accountto download new full installers.

Notes regarding Store Accounts.

1. If you go to login using one of the above links and it tells you "no account found" -don't worry! - just send us an email at theHelp Deskand we will locate your records. It's just a matter of completing the account setup process.
2. When you login you will see all your orders listed there. Under each order number is the word (Downloads). If you click that it will take you to a page where you can do a new download of the game and it will also display your serial number. Again, each of the installers is fully up-to date with the latest patches already included.

If you don’t already own this title, what are you waiting for? You can buy it directly from the dedicated product page.

We hope you enjoy this week’s, Game of the Week. This is the seminal battle on the Eastern Front and worthy of your time. Like all WDS titles, there is a lot of game play included at a very attractive price.