Avalanche Press interrupted my focus of late on re-basing my French and Indian War models by releasing the long-awaited (at least by yours truly) third game in their Panzer Grenadier series trilogy of the North African Campaign of World War 2. An Army at Dawn - obviously a nod to the book of the same name by Rick Atkinson - lets you play out the end game in Tunisia in 40 different scenarios. If you own two earlier games in the Panzer Grenadier series, Desert Rats and Afrika Korps, you can play nearly 150 scenarios covering the whole campaign with all of the relevant forces.
If you hadn't guessed, my interest in these boardgames is related to my collection of MicroArmor. Like ArkieGamer, I was considering Spearhead by Arty Conliffe (along with the Blaze Across the Sands scenario book) for my WW2 gaming, but when I found the Panzer Grenadier games, with single stands representing platoons (like Spearhead) I found a fun boardgame system that would convert easily to MicroArmor and 4" hexes. All but the largest scenarios will fit on a 5' x 9' table or smaller. I like hexes for this operational scale, as they provide an easy way to represent direct fire on individual units in a hex as well as "area bombardment" that effects an entire hex.
One big advantage of these games for me is the focus on scenarios - some are as small as a dozen units per side, permitting the game to be learned with small fast games, and permitting armies to start small and be built up over time.
You can download the Fourth Edition Panzer Grenadier series rules here if interested.
See ya!
