Hi Panzer Generals,

We are delighted to announce that Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations 1945 is out now.

Players will take part in these critical battles, confronting the harrowing realities and decisions faced by the Wehrmacht.



The historical campaign of 1945 East serves as the centerpiece of this expansion, shedding light on the final battles on the Eastern Front and the surrounding context. Operation Bodenplatte and Spring Awakening, among others, are explored, highlighting the desperate measures taken by the Axis powers and the tremendous costs incurred.



Axis Operations 1945 includes an alternate campaign, building upon the victory at the Battle of Ploesti, players find themselves in a Germany at an impasse. The Western Allied landings at Normandy have been repelled, and the Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe halted, but total victory remains elusive. Another major offensive looms on the horizon, raising questions about its potential outcome and the toll it will exact on all involved nations.

Tune in today to our Slitherine Twitch Channel at 17:30 - 19:30 GMT+2, where we will showcase the new DLC.

Don't miss out on the special sales for the Panzer Corps 2 saga, with discounts of up to 50%!

Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations 1945 is now available here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393020/Panzer_Corps_2_Axis_Operations__1945/

PANZER CORPS 2 - AXIS OPERATIONS BUNDLE

Play the entirety of World War II from the German perspective in a huge linked campaign, carrying your army over from one DLC to the next:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/18273/Panzer_Corps_2__Axis_Operations_Bundle/

With the upcoming release of AO 1945 East, the total scenario count for the Axis Operations Campaign will stands at an incredible 142 scenarios. As I look back on that number and reflect on all the time spent over the years, I just want to thank all of our players for making this possible through to your continued support for the Panzer Corps series. Like Panzer Corps before, Panzer Corps 2 truly has a Grand Campaign worthy of such a name!

Back when we first starting discussing the plan for the Axis Operations, there were two tenants we swore to adhere to.

1. Panzer Corps 2’s Grand Campaign could not just be a copy or remake of the original Panzer Corps Grand Campaign. So while it was still a priority to not omit key battles of the Eastern Front such as Kursk, Axis Operations had to forge its own path; not just be a retread.
2. Panzer Corps 2’s Grand Campaign had to be even bigger and more advanced.



Even discussing the name of the series was put to debate. We couldn’t just call it ‘Grand Campaign’, the name needed to invoke a sense of being new and different, despite being a German orientated World War II campaign. We almost called it ‘European Operations’ a homage to one of the strategy games I played in my youth: Operation Europe on the Super Nintendo.



Those tenants influenced many decisions throughout the Axis Operations... It’s why we started in 1936 Spain, despite the many challenges the Spanish Civil War presented. Needing so many new units right after release was a big deal, setting the first DLC in a relatively unknown and less popular era instead of the usual WWII game cliché of going straight to Normandy or Stalingrad, the controversial decision to have only limited control of your Spanish allies through giving orders to an AI partner to represent the cooperation, not total authority, Germans had with the Spanish Nationalists...

The choice to begin 1939 not in Poland, but with that special Czechoslovakia and French Saar Offensive... the decision to have a series of Sea Lion scenarios, only to have them end in a German withdrawal.

As we near the end of that journey, I hope we have fulfilled these key promises for our players, and ourselves. But as a great villain once said: “The hardest choices require the strongest wills” and all of these difficult decisions and non-standard content has finally led us to this ongoing Alternate History path, as it was always planned to:




Now we not only have a campaign that stands on its own apart from the original Panzer Corps Grand Campaign, which funnily enough exists as a popular Workshop item thanks to the hard effort of players who have ported that campaign into Panzer Corps 2, but we have the largest and most comprehensive Alternate History Campaign of its kind in any Panzer General type game!

Having to write an alternate history that extended beyond a simple hop from one Allied capital to another, or existed as just some bonus scenarios, has been immensely challenging, but has absolutely been worth it.

A ton of consideration and research was poured into not just might be the immediate result of victory, but also the long term rippling effects. Additionally, we had to map out what the Allied response to these Germans victories would be, thus creating not just new German offensives, but new Allied ones as well!

Ultimately, it’s allowed the Axis Operations to have something really unique to offer compared to the bountiful sea of other WW II games out there. And for 1945, there is certainly no shortage of surprises awaiting our players.

There’s going to be some enormous battles:



More Elite Objectives for deeply imported COREs to challenge themselves against:



Some very special appearances from multiple characters of the Axis Operations all interacting together:



We’ve even got a small appearance from the last warships of the Kriegsmarine:



We really can’t wait to share this latest Panzer Corps 2 Axis Operation campaign with you! But before we wrap up this Dev Diary, we have just a couple more items to go over...


As has been tradition with the new Axis Operations DLC series, we once again have a few new units to showcase. This time around, the focus has absolutely been on some heavy duty panzers!



Panzer VII Lowe, Heavy Tank

Intended as a direct upgrade over the Panzer VI King Tiger, the Lion promised equivalent armor, a larger high velocity 10.5cm main gun, and most importantly, much improved reliability. Though the King Tiger and Lion would have had similar movement speeds, the in game stats for the Lion give it a 5 movement speed over the King Tiger’s 4 movement to represent this better vehicle reliability.

Unfortunately for the Lion, it would never enter production as heavy tank planning was dominated by the massive Panzer VIII Maus and more streamlined, general tank production was taking shape in the E Series. Therefore, the only way to access this new tank is as a limited availability Prototype or as a reward for completing various bonus objectives in the Axis Operation 1944 and 1945 campaigns.



Panther II, Medium Tank

Fake tank design or not, who could resist up gunning the legendary Panther Chassis with an 8.8cm main cannon? The Jagdpanther certainly turned out amazing!

Where the Panther G gives an excellent performance against any Allied medium tank such as the T-34-85, the Panther II has enough upgrades to continue to carry the tradition of Panther tank speed while being able to take on very late war Soviet tanks, such as the IS-2 or T-44.



Grille 17, Self Propelled Artillery

What happens when you mount a 17cm artillery gun on a Tiger chassis? You get a Grille 17!

Characterized by high defense values and its 4 range artillery gun, the Grille 17 is the ultimate heavy self propelled artillery weapon. Just watch out for that logistical footprint, the Grille 17 weighs in at a whopping 7 slots to field, the highest slot cost of any artillery unit!



Heuschrecke, Artillery Tank

Designed to replace a whole slew of German Assault Guns with a single design, the Heuschrecke featured a low velocity 10.5cm main gun mounted on a Panzer VI chassis. This vehicle would have also replaced vehicles such as the Wespe and Hummel as a self propelled artillery piece.

To represent the versatility of this design in Panzer Corps 2, the Heuschrecke is purchasable as an artillery unit, but it has the ability to switch into a tank class!



Black Prince, Heavy Tank

With the alternate history campaign extending beyond May of 1945, more Allied tank designs were needed to continue to challenge some of the fantastical German panzers available in Panzer Corps 2.

Coupling the thick armor protection of the infamous Churchill tank with the power of a long barrel 17 pounder main cannon just might give pause to even the latest German panzers.





Centurion I and II, Main Battle Tank

A post war design, the British Centurion Tank ended up proving itself to be a very effective design serving for decades, but we won’t seen the full production line of the 10 iterations of this tank so close to World War II. The Centurion I and Centurion II will make their appearances late in the alternate history path of Axis Operations 1945 campaign, rushed into service to defend the Crown Jewel of the British Empire from German and Japanese depredations!


As always, we are reading and listening to your feedback. Many thousands of posts and messages have greatly improved Panzer Corps 2 for its entire playerbase, and we encourage you to continue to share your thoughts and wants for the game into the future!

One rather large change we had to make was a scenario renaming. It was reported that one of the chosen names for the Alternate History Campaign didn’t invoke the right meaning. The old name was supposed invoke reference to the WW I German victory on the Eastern Front, but focused on that, we missed the other, more obscure and not military related WW II era Operation Tannenburg.

As a result, the old Operation Tannenburg has been replaced with a new Operation Barca. I noticed there was precedent for German operation names to invoke the Punic War, so this seemed like an acceptable compromise.


We hope you enjoyed this advance look into some of the content that the alternate history 1945 campaign has on offer. The dual campaigns of Axis Operations 1945 will be releasing together on June 22nd, so mark your calendars!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393020/Panzer_Corps_2_Axis_Operations__1945/

After several years and many campaign installments, Panzer Corps 2’s Axis Operations Grand Campaign has finally arrived at 1945 and the end of the Second World War. Thank you to all our community members and players who have been with us on this epic journey, especially those who have been with us since the very beginnings in the Spanish Civil War!

As with 1944 before it, Axis Operations 1945 will have dual campaigns on offer: one path continuing with the historical conclusion of WWII, and another path to continue down an alternate history pathway.

In this first Dev Diary, we’ll be previewing and talking about the Historical Campaign Axis Operations 1945 will include.




For a campaign that is doing as much as possible to stay true to historical outcomes, there is a lot to say about Historical 1945. We originally thought it would be a pretty obvious course to chart, just pick real battles from history and recreate them in Panzer Corps 2.

But as we researched the final months of the War in Europe, we found the situations and history to be extremely complicated. How could the German Wehrmacht, famous for such incredible victories across Western and Eastern Europe, seem to disintegrate so quickly in a matter of months?

To properly tell this story, Axis Operations 1945 has some very unusual scenario designs behind it. Prestige awards have been practically eliminated, to try and show how crippling German’s supply situation had become by this stage in the war.

Instead of prestige allotments, the player will be expected to begin to salvage and disband their reserve units in an attempt to keep their main fighting force fit enough to continue the struggle.

Other reward systems have also been reworked to directly deposit captured enemy vehicles straight to the player reserve. These units can then be pressed into service to try and plug gaps in your lines, or they too can be disbanded for prestige to keep your main Panzer force operational.



On top of this, the days of conquering all victory hexes and sweeping all enemy units from the entire map are long past. This was an especially delicate balance to strike, because we needed scenarios designed in such a way that they would be possible for players to succeed in some way to continue their overall campaign, but also designed that if players tried to push further than their basic objectives, overwhelming Allied forces are ready to grind your now prestige starved force into dust.



This kind of scenario design has had a lot of unusual side effects and really opened up Axis Operations 1945 to have a lot more storytelling of the situation Germany and its Wehrmacht found itself in the final months of the war. There are some pretty large maps with hundreds of individually configured and scripted units spread across them, but don’t forget that fancy new fast AI turn if you don’t want to watch all of these units take their actions individually!


As any good story needs an ending, Axis Operations 1945 has done its best to conclude its own story. Over the years, both of the war and in real time, we’ve come to meet many characters in the Axis Operations series



Axis Operations 1945 will not only offer a glimpse into the historical fates of famous Germans such as Adolf Galland, but a look into the fate of the special briefing characters. Their paths have been woven into the true historical narrative... for better or for worse!





So get ready to prepare your Panzers for their final campaign. Gone are the days of German conquests of Europe, now is the time to fight for survival!

But of course, that is not the only ending Axis Operations 1945 will have on offer. There is the entire Ahistorical Campaign path to explore. Whether or not that trail will continue past 1945 remains to be seen...


As always, we are reading and listening to your feedback. Many thousands of posts and messages have greatly improved Panzer Corps 2 for its entire playerbase, and we encourage you to continue to share your thoughts and wants for the game into the future!

Axis Operations 1945 is currently in its BETA testing phase, and we again want to give a special thank you to all of our BETA testers for their hard effort to help us make each installment of Panzer Corps 2 content the best it can be!


We hope you enjoyed this advance look into some of the content that the historical 1945 campaign has on offer. Be on the lookout for our next Dev Diary, where we take a look at some of the new units being added to the game and explore a preview of Axis Operations 1945 alternate history campaign.

Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations - 1945 is coming on June 22nd wishlist now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393020/Panzer_Corps_2_Axis_Operations__1945/

Dear Panzer Corps 2 Community,

Please see below the release of the latest patch for Panzer Corps 2:

- Added three Panzer Chess maps to Multiplayer menu
- Added 12 historical competitive maps to Multiplayer menu
- FW 189 recon plane no longer gives recon bonus to itself, and has "Low Altitude Attack" trait
- Panzer VII Lowe tank now has "No Purchase" trait
- SU-152 slot cost has been increased to 6 and ammo reduced to 3
- ISU-152 slot cost has been increased to 7

Thank you to our dedicated community for your continued support and feedback and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield

Attention, Panzer Generals,

The Multiplayer Update for Panzer Corps 2 is now live and ready for action on Steam, GoG, Epic, and Slitherine website (this update will be coming soon on Windows Store)

With this update, players can now enjoy an enhanced multiplayer experience with exciting new maps. This is also the debut for free Multiplayer “Chess Maps” that offer a fresh and strategic gameplay experience.



In addition to the new chess maps, players will also have access to 12 classic multiplayer maps:

• Poland North
  
• El Alamein
  
• Moscow
  
• Ardennes
  
• Leningrad
  
• Kasserine Pass
  
• Balaton
  
• Rhine
  
• Berlin
  
• Gazala
  
• Barbarossa
  
• Cobra

These maps have been adapted from the 2021 World Championship tournament and are designed to offer challenging and competitive battles for players of all skill levels.

To celebrate the release of the new Multiplayer Chess Maps, we are really excited to announce the first Panzer Corps 2 Chess Maps Tournament.



Do not miss the chance to sign-up for the tournament. You can sign-up here.

The first round will commence on Monday, 8 May 2023. No further entries can be accepted after the tournament has begun.

Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072040/Panzer_Corps_2/

Germany lies in ruins. Relentlessly assaulted on all sides and pounded mercilessly by Allied Strategic Bombing, the German Reich still refuses to admit defeat. Last ditch counteroffensives are put into action in a desperate attempt to turn the tide of the Second World War. Will these desperate gambles pay off, or will they continue to heap misery and death upon the German Wehrmacht?


In the Historical Campaign of 1945 East, you will experience the final months of the Second World War from a perspective so rarely covered in other games of the genre as you prepare your Wehrmacht forces for their final, desperate offensives.



To properly tell this story, the historical campaign focuses extensively on not just the final battles on the Eastern Front, but also the surrounding context. What did last ditch attacks such as Operation Bodenplatte or Spring Awakening really accomplish, but also at what terrible costs did they come with?

As you fight to the bitter end, learn the real fates of both true Historical German figures and also uncover the fates of the Axis Operation’s unique cast of characters. In doing so, find out for yourself some of the truths of why so many rank and file Wehrmacht soldiers continued the fighting well past any hope of achieving victory in the Second World War.


But once again, the latest Panzer Corps 2 Axis Operations content pack contains yet another campaign! Be ready to continue the story of Ahistorical 1944 right where it left off after victory at the Battle of Ploesti. Despite repelling the Western Allied landings at Normandy and halting the Soviet invasion of Easter Europe, Germany still stands at an impasse. Total victory seems further than ever, as Allied resolve is merely shaken and apparently nowhere near broken. And now another major offensive is prepared in the East, but to what ultimate end? Can it actually bring total victory, or will it just continue to bleed all nations involved?



Discovered the uncharted history of the Axis Operations 1945 Alternate campaign, and see where it ends... or where it will merely end up next!

To give players the most freedom of choice, both campaigns are immediately available for all players to begin. There are no prerequisites or barriers to launching either campaign. Newly formed Panzer Corps or deeply imported forces have equal choice in which campaign path to pursue and explore.


Players can import their core forces that completed the previous Axis Operations 1944 East campaign or use a preset core force to directly launch into the Axis Operations 1945 East campaign.

While imported forces can seek additional growth and challenges through increased difficulty settings, advanced game modes, and new elite objectives, the preset force contains a moderate amount of experienced units and an assortment of heroes enough to allow any player to succeed in this new campaign.

Total freedom of choice is on offer in Axis Operations 1945: There are no prerequisites or barriers to launching either campaign. Newly formed Panzer Corps or deeply imported forces have equal choice in which campaign path to pursue and explore.

For veteran campaigners with a force ready to import into this latest DLC, it is recommended to continue with your Historical or Ahistorical campaign paths to fully experience the content’s extensive narratives.




The end of 1945 East is (potentially) not the end of your campaign though, it is merely the latest step. At the conclusion of Axis Operations 1945 East, players will again be presented with the option to save their core force for use in the next installment of the Axis Operations Campaign, should there be one!
Any campaign of the Axis Operations can be played individually as a standalone campaign.


• Operation Puma
• Operation Wagtail
• Operation Tannenberg
• Munich
• Operation Feuerkartoffel
• Reichstag
• Zahidan
• Operation Hydra
• Case Bruno
• Tata
• Operation Bodenplatte
• Operation Konrad III
• Operation Southwind
• Operation Spring Awakening
• Vienna Offensive
• Battle of Seelow Heights
• End in Berlin
• End in Salzburg

Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations - 1945 is coming soon, wishlist now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393020/Panzer_Corps_2_Axis_Operations__1945/

We are thrilled to announce our latest addition to Panzer Corps 2 - Multiplayer Chess Maps and new multiplayer maps will be available on April 27th!

These maps have been directly inspired by classic Chess, offering a unique gameplay experience unlike any other.



The main features of these maps are their small size and symmetrical force organization, allowing for fast-paced gameplay and excellent balance between both sides.

With just 9x9 playable hexes, players can finish a game in one sitting, making it perfect for online Multiplayer mode.



All three maps are designed to be played in multiplayer mode, offering an exciting and competitive experience for players.

Furthermore, we have converted a total of 12 historical battle maps:

• Poland North
  
• El Alamein
  
• Moscow
  
• Ardennes
  
• Leningrad
  
• Kasserine Pass
  
• Balaton
  
• Rhine
  
• Berlin
  
• Gazala
  
• Barbarossa
  
• Cobra

These maps were originally designed for the 2021 World Championship tournament, but have been modified and adapted to normal Multiplayer.

We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield on April 27th!

From March 30th till April 1st we will be showcasing some of our most popular titles at WASD exhibition in London. Attendees will have the chance to play some of our greatest games, including Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector, ICBM, Starship Troopers: Terran Command, and Panzer Corps 2.

If you don't own these games yet, they will be joining WASD Sale on Steam.

Whether you're a fan of turn-based strategy, sci-fi warfare, or historical battles, our lineup has something for you. We're excited to give gamers a chance to experience our games and get a taste of what makes Slitherine titles so unique and engaging.

Our colleagues Giulia, Sara, Paolo and Edmond, will be there in person to provide guidance and answer any questions you may have. So don't miss this opportunity to join us at WASD: We can't wait to see you there!

You can access the exhibition from 10 am until 6 pm: buy tickets here.

What's Your MOD? Is a new series from Slitherine, where we highlight the greatest mods from our best titles.

In this episode, we'll be looking at Storm Over Europe, a mod for Panzer Corps 2. The developers of the mod will also be in the show, answering your questions and talking about their mods. Watch it on our Youtube channel.

This show also includes installation instructions for the mod being looked at. So if you've never modded before, don't worry. We'll show you how with easy to follow, step by step instructions.

Don't miss the next episode live on Twitch SlitherineTV on the 8th of February.

In an alternate chain of historical events, it is the 18th of January, 1944. Case Orange calls for a robust defense and your deployment will be critical.




Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations - 1944 is out now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2130950/Panzer_Corps_2_Axis_Operations__1944/