Wargame Design Studio is making steady progress on their North African Campaign for JTS Panzer Battles By Ian Boudreau

It’s been six months of steady work for the folks at Wargame Design Studio, who have been creating updates for several John Tiller Software game systems. They’ve just published a new blog post that details the work they’ve done – and have yet to do – on their massive North African campaign overhaul project for JTS' Panzer Battles.

The team has expanded the scenario list to 76, up from the 45 they had playable in March this year. Operation Crusader has five new scenarios for a total of 18, and Tobruk is up to eight complete scenarios after the addition of two new ones. They’ve added 16 new scenarios to the theatre-wide Operation Compass operation, which covers four separate battles, each with its own special rules.

Wargame Design Studio has done some interesting things with the sieges of Bardia and Tobruk, by giving the Italian player 70 defensive positions in Bardia and one victory point for each one they hold per turn. The attacking Australians must move quickly to sweep these fortifications up after their initial breach of the defensive perimeter or quickly lose the game. This should in theory push the Allied side into behaving quite the way it did in the historical battles, and it’ll make for two tense, high-pressure sieges.

You can check out the full post on the official blog, which has quite a few more in-game screens that show off the scenarios’ impressive scale (just look at the jump map, above, for a taste). There’s no official date set for release, but the team is hoping to have it ready to launch by the end of the year. They're also working on a major update for JTS' Civil War Battles series.