Take a journey with us back to January 1976, when a small wargame club in Amarillo Texas (led by Steve Cole) produced an award-winning magazine filled with articles, variants, and reviews. The "Iron Age" of JagdPanther continued with color cardstock covers, one-piece multi-color maps, and die-cut counters.
The editorial noted that the company had sold 4,200 copies of its various games during 1975, which for an amateur publisher, was outstanding. This placed JagdPanther in a middle ground: far above all of the other fanzines but nowhere close to the only real magazines (S&T and General).
The big game in this issue was Anvil-Dragoon, which was the allied invasion of southern France two months after Overlord. (Steve Cole's father was in that invasion and had actually suggested the idea.) The one-page history article included some pretty hard-hitting points about the British not wanting to see the operation done at all.
Variant articles in the issue included: a point system to balance the optional rules in Anzio, American units for the World War One tactical game Soldiers, airborne and tactical air operations in War in the East, corrections to the orders of battle in Schutztruppe, merchant raiders and a campaign system for Dreadnought, supply units for the horse cavalry in March on India, tactics for Stellar Conquest, leader counters for Von Manstein, rules for Sicily and Malta in World war II, updates for World War 3, improved rules and orders of battle for Fall of Rome, the French Foreign Legion in Rifle and Saber, improved historical rules for 1776, Soviet troops in Korea, German options for Luftwaffe, new units for MECH WAR, simulating starship mobile infantry in Sniper, Americans in Vietnam rules for Guerrilla, rules for escaped Nazis helping the Arabs in Sinai, combined arms battalions (for Tank, Mech War 77, and Wurzburg), moving German fighters to Norway to stop the Baltic options in Luftwaffe, missing units in Fredricksburg, morale in Soldiers, German ships and carriers for Fast Carriers, rebels in Sorcerer, Robert E. Lee as a Yankee in American Civil War, carriers in Third Reich, and brigade breakdown units in Civil War games (Gettysburg, Lee Vs Meade, Cemetery Hill).
New scenarios were presented for Fast Carriers (mini-scenarios), Kursk (adding the Sixth Army assuming it escaped Stalingrad), Marine (solitaire), and the flight of the German battlecruiser Goeben in Dreadnought.
Articles included a discussion of where to put factors on a die-cut counter (and how many to include), how postal Diplomacy works, errata for March on India, rules for various games to determine how good a new weapon system really is (e.g., tanks in 1939–1940), and an analysis of Panzer Leader.
Written by Stephen Cole
