Utterly vanquished the foe, and seized eleven of twelve VLs? Hard käse, kamerad - PzC2 doesn't give a Ratte's arse. Fail to take every one of the assigned victory hexes within the turn allowance and, assuming you reject the “replay mission” offer, the metaphorical equivalent of a size 13 jackboot up the jacksy kicks you straight back to the main menu. In the generously proportioned multi-path campaign there's no such thing as a marginal victory or a draw, there are only victories and defeats, and the latter mean instant dismissal. While the amazing regenerative powers of enemies turns you into a merciless, single-minded liquidator, the devs' unnecessarily inflexible approach to turn limits* and victory conditions transforms you into an anxious clock-watcher. If I ignore that Cromwell, that Churchill, and those three infantry units this turn, and throw everything I have at that Achilles tank destroyer, I might just be able to reduce it to the magic zero, and thus dispatch it to a Valhalla from which it can never return. Because damaged enemy units regain men, materiel, and motivation as quickly as flushed toilets regain limpidity, total extermination tends to drive much of your unit choreography. To win a PzC2 scenario you must grab Prestige*-generating hexagons whenever you can, and think like a Dalek not a Patton or Monty. The trouble is, while it's busy saluting history with one hand, it's often flipping it the bird with the other. More often than not Panzer Corps 2's unit relationships and terrain assertions ring true.
Scouting with infantry-packed trucks, the hallmark of a prize idiot. Crossing rivers under fire is a mug's game. Artillery support and air superiority are invaluable everywhere. Infantry thrive in towns and forests while angry houses dominate fields and deserts. If you treat your tanks as battlefield Swiss Army knives they are going to get blunted PDQ. There are tactical truths here, of course. Your £31 buys you an approachable, unit-rich wargame that barely acknowledges morale, command and control, and logistics an approachable, unit-rich wargame that encourages tactics no general of the period would recognise. The publisher can trot out its provocative “king of wargames” claim as often as it likes, but that won't alter the fact that Panzer Corps 2 is essentially 23-year-old Panzer General 2 in new togs. Panzer Corps 2 is as stout as a Sturmtiger and perfectly capable of accelerating clock hands and monopolising cerebra, but loyalty to its predecessors means most of the time it feels more like a tough military puzzle game than an insightful simulation of mid-20th Century warfare. What do Slitherine's latest piece of hexiana and the coronavirus crisis have in common? They both invite comparisons with WW2, but, on close inspection, bear little resemblance to the 1939-45 conflict.
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