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[Peter M. Skaar]

I attended Sand Wars 2026 on Saturday, May 2nd and hosted a Mein Panzer game.  This was another go at my Stemming the Tide scenario which I ran at Sand Wars 2025 and a few other times as well.

The scenario takes place in August 1943 on the Russian Front after Kursk.  The Germans are trying to plug a Russian breakthrough in their line and the Russians are trying to exploit the gap to further their offensive.

I arrived at American Legion Post 35 in Chandler, AZ, around 9:30 in the morning and started setting up the game.  My game was scheduled for a 2:00 start time but I wanted to make sure I had everything ready by then.  I had 2 players signed up to play so I had no great expectations other than to make the game as interesting and fun for both players as possible.

At 2:00 I had 5 people that wanted to play which was great.  Of the 5 players, I had 1 player, Rick, that is a veteran of Mein Panzer and has played this scenario several times including last year at Sand Wars.  I had 2 more with limited experience with the game, Tom and Rob.  Rob has played once in my game last year and Tom has played before but not for several years.  We had 2 completely new players, Bill and Mark.

I spent about 15-20 minutes getting the players briefed on bascis of the Mein Panzer rules and the scenario.  Rick and Mark commanded the 2 German reduced tank Companies of Panzer III's and IV's while Tom, Rob, and Bill each commanded a Company of T-34s.

The scenario gives points for knocking out or brewing up enemy tanks as well as big points for geographic objectives which were the village in the north, the hilltop in the center, and the 2 bridges in the south part of the map.

The game started with a pre-game German move to arrive at the battle zone but not really able to set up a solid defense.  

On turn 1 the Russians got the initiative and arrived from the East part of the board.  They brought their forces on and due to the T-34's great speed were able to cover a lot of ground early on.  The Germans moved their forces into better positions around the village, on the hilltop, and a platoon to defend the most exposed of the 2 bridges.

The Russians got the initiative again on turn 2 and managed to knock out 1 of the German defenders.  This was the point where I started to wonder if this game was going to be a blowout for the Russians.

Turns 3-6 were much more even with the Germans being able to turn things around somewhat by holding the village, hanging on in the center where the majority of the action took place and they even held the bridges.  

In the end, this game turned out to be a bloody knife fight, often at very close ranges, with the Russians losing 20 of 30 tanks while the Germans had 15 tanks remaining including 3 immobilized.

The Germans had prevailed on maintaining the geographic objectives but the cost was extremely high.  The Russians still had a T-70 battalion somewhere off map and maybe a couple more full tank brigades as well.  The was definitely a Pyrrhic Victory for the Germans.

This game turned out really well despite the shaky start for the Germans.  I would say that this was the best game of this scenario that I have run several times.

Thanks to all the players for keeping the game moving along and I think everyone had a great time.

Here are a few pictures.


The layout before the game.


Another view of the layout.


Germans moving to secure the forward bridge.


The battle begins.


A close range tank battle near the village.


The big fight for the center.  This is where most of the losses occurred.