Punched

This is an unofficial glossary for the Armored Knights Case Blue game by Grognard Simulations. Last updated 8/18/25. This is a work in progress.  Feel free to point out where I missed a term. (ADM)                       Air Drop Mission.  Denotes what an aircraft can do.  See the Air Unit Characteristics Charts (ATM)                        Air Transport Mission.  Denotes what an aircraft can do.  See the Air Unit Characteristics Charts (B)                             Bomber. Denotes what an aircraft unit can do.  See the Air Unit Characteristics Charts.  Only usable for Close Air Support and Gr...

This is an example of a Deliberate Attack in the game Armored Knights - Guderian Crosses the Meuse. Main campaign, Turn 13, German Deliberate Attack Phase. The Germans are attacking with a battalion of infantry supported by a company each of assault guns and 88's.  The 88's were a last second add to get the proper unit density to bring in artillery - I needed 6 stacking points.  There is also a heavy weapons company in support on hex south.  I saw mention of this capability in the Armored Knights Case Blue - Don Bend examples of play booklet. three units of Stukas a heavy artillery unit from XIX Corps both MI points from XIX Corp and a leader point from Guderian The French are defending with  a battalion of infantry supported by a company each of light AA and engineers heavy artillery from 71st Division The Germans are attacking across a bridge, so the units doing so are reduced to x0.25. Stukas are attacking a Hedgehog, so their multiplier is x1. Artillery is attack...

 Armored Knights Case Blue uses a coordinate system to minimize clutter on the maps.  Don Bend, the first game in the series, has beautiful maps that are made better through reducing this clutter.  The coordinate system allows for precise location of reinforcements and supply trace, or identification of any individual hex as needed. There is an explainer video on YouTube . In this example, we see two towns on the E8 map.  Marinovka is the starting location for the 1st Tank Army, and Sineokovski is an entry point for the 118th Fortified Region formation.   Let's describe how to find Marinovka from the coordinate L122. find the hex on the map with the specified letter L starting from due north, count 1 hex clockwise to find the direction count 2 hexes in that direction turn one hex clockwise and count 2 hexes to find Marinovka Sineokovski at R350 follows the same pattern: R hex, 3 hexes clockwise, 5 hexes in that direction, 0 hexes means stay put.

I have been posting Armored Knights videos on YouTube the last few weeks. I decided I would try to make a video that lasts a minute.   Mad Minute - AKCB Combat Results Table Example

Over the weekend I received my commitment copy of  Armored Knights Case Blue (AKCB) - Don Bend. First look: "Tell 'em what they won, Don Pardo!" Dice and tokens 6 full size maps AKCB rule book Visual Aids and Examples of Play [saves me some blog entries, let me tell ya] Charts and Tables Counters - 5 with Units and 2 with Informational counters [what Neo said: counters, lots of counters] Supply Tracking charts Casualty Trackers and Loss Boxes Air Unit Availability Trackers Orders of Battle Calendar and Turn Tracker Scenario Cards [5 of them, from an intro scenario to ALL SWIM]

Questions List  Where can I buy the game? Are there other games in the series? Who makes the game? If there are multiple engineer units near a bridge, does each unit get a chance to blow up the bridge each turn? Where can the hedgehog and fortified hedgehogs listed near the setup areas for French Second Army and X Corps be located? There are no bridge symbols on the maps, so where are the bridges? How much should I respect the boundary lines drawn on the scenario maps?  Questions and Answers Where can I buy the game? You can order direct via e-mail from Grognard Simulations; see their order information page . These games are also available from Noble Knight Games and can be found on eBay or in private collections. Are there other games in the series? Yes.  Other games include AK: Operation Gazelle (first game in the series, Arab-Israeli wars) AK: Guderian Crosses the Desna (eastern front) AK: Operation Crusader (North Africa) AK: Operation Venezia (North Af...

[Update: the files in the links here and on BoardGameGeek are not working, as they depend on a dice rolling macro that is part of another spreadsheet.  I will get these updated presently.] The Armored Knights rules have been updated in Guderian Crosses the Meuse (GCtM) and the upcoming Case Blue - Don Bend (AKCB) to have additional charts and complexity compared to the earlier versions such as Operation Gazelle. I have been working on some play aids for these new rules to make the game run a little quicker. This post demonstrates the play aids for the Combat Proficiency Table and for the Air Mission Success Table. I create macro-enabled Excel worksheets to run these rules. The idea is that you can set a few parameters and then rapidly run the rule across multiple combats. Consider the Air Mission Success Table. See the picture. All you need to do is select the Air Superiority Status and the Side at the beginning of the Ops phase, and then click the Roll Dice button for each a...

I purchased a copy of Grognard Simulations ' Armored Knights: Guderian Crosses the Meuse (GCtM) from the Mark Ruggiero estate recently. I have my commitment in on the upcoming Armored Knights Case Blue - Don Bend and will be helping playtest AKCB Stalingrad at ConsimWorld this summer. I figured I needed some practice ahead of time, and GCtM has a compatible game system in a single map game. I have the map under plexiglass at the office. I marked it up with the setup formation boundary lines and German limit of advance line. I tried a single turn exercise between a Panzer division and the French 5 DLC. The German setup is about right, though with the wrong division, and the French are setup OK-ish. This second picture shows the end of the German Ops phase in the first turn. 5 hasty attacks were delivered by various stacks of Germans, pretty much blowing through the French. The French lasted about as long as I expected but they did prevent the Germans from rushing...

I like clipped counters but I rarely do so. I tend to clip the corners unevenly or take off too much material. I got my kids a 3D printer for Christmas. I found a counter template model on thingiverse and it works well. Just slot a counter into the template and clip the corners. These are 1/2 inch counters with a 2mm corner.

Howdy, First up is Grognard Simulations' Pacific Island Campaign - Guam . This was GSI's first title. After I played a scenario from PIC - Saipan/Tinian recently I wanted to go back for another look. This post will mix some observations about Saipan/Tinian with some resources for Guam. Kent and I played the Death Valley scenario using an unpunched copy of Saipan/Tinian. What I observed was that a relatively small scenario took a long time to setup. It occurred to me that I wanted to get going fast with a new game. Perhaps others would want to as well. How to make this happen? Add some cheat sheets to cut down on the complexity in the Order of Battle and the counter mix. Here are the relevant cheat sheets for the Orote scenario in PIC - Guam. These are the counters and locations needed to play the game. Note that there are some extra counters, allowing for starting Battalions and Companies to break down if needed, and for the artillery Batteries to build up to Batt...

Howdy All! This is the first post of my new blog, Punched. This blog is about wargaming, particularly map-and-counter wargaming. I'm getting back in to this hobby after a long hiatus and I hope to share some useful observations and resources.