Comparison with Steel Panthers

[Flibby]

I relatively recently (re) discovered the Shrapnel Games Steel Panthers games WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT.

I have found them to be incredibly interesting and they 'fix' a lot of the frustrations that I have with the lower level JT/WDS games such as Squad Battles. The WinSP games model Suppression much more realistically in my view. In Squad Battles you can fire at a unit and keep getting bad rolls which prevents it from disrupting.

WinSP has suppression being added from each hit, to varying degrees. If you think about suppression in practice, even untrained troops firing at you from a fair distance away will always add some element of suppression...it is fairly binary in that sense.

I have tried the 'Panzer Battles' to scratch the itch I have for a slightly higher scale game. I enjoy it but there are very limited theatres and I have more of an interest in the early-war. I also miss the dynamic campaigns from SP.

Do you recommend the Campaign Series games in 2025, and is it more similar to SP than some of the other games I mention?

Cheers
Nick

[Dion]

I noticed suppression is more realistic in Steel Panthers too. There's a lot of things I like about Steel Panthers over Squad Battles, but there's a lot of things I like about Squad Battles over Steel Panthers.

The Steel Panthers battlefield experience is the best in the industry in my opinion, though the WDS graphics have greatly improved over the years, really good for operational level wargames and not bad at the tactical scale either. Nothing beats Steel Panthers at the tactical scale though, as every soldier is represented on the battlefield. From what I understand, The Campaign Series is all about operations. They use just a few men to represent each infantry unit, no matter the size, that looks really unrealistic in my opinion, but there's a lot gameplay details that are innovative in The Campaign Series.

[Scud]

A good way to get a feel for JTCS is to watch one of Jason Petho's videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV1Bt_Ax...5-&index=2

I only play JTCS and always against human opponents. The AI is worthless, though that will change sometime in the future and take on the improvements added to the Campaign Series -  Vietnam game.

So my opinion is biased. Nonetheless, I love the game and recommend you give it a shot.

Hope that helps,
Dave