Slitherine

Most people seem to have one. Mine is clearly in the default campaign, East Coast USA. It's only hard for the first few turns and I am happy and proud to announce that I once more beat the scenario, just today, and will soon move on to Africa Korps and then start the DLCs again.

But those first few turns scare the shit out of me. My units get destroyed at sea, on the beach and well, all those units made it through all of WW2 before and THEN this scenario!
I noticed I find every naval invasion scenario scary, except one, Crete in the DLCs is a bit too easy. Malta in Afrika Korps is difficult, too.


So, what map/scenario is your personal nightmare? And why?

I must confess that I have yet to win even a marginal victory in East Coast USA, playing on Field Marshal. I finally replayed the vanilla campaign and deliberately threw Moscow 41 in order to develop a more experienced core. Even so, I still haven't worked up the nerve to try it again!

Sealion 42 is also pretty brutal from the base game.

As for DLC scenarios, it would definitely be Spoils of War. It got so bad that after my first few playthroughs, I started to voluntarily decline that scenario because of the absolute mauling my forces were taking. Tough scenario is TOUGH.

For me it was the advance through Stalingrad scenario in the DLC. No war of movement or blitzkrieg there, just a long, slow tortured slogging match. I must have rained down every shell that the reich could produce in that one

I will now officially add "Cassino" to the list. What a meatgrinder. I lost FIVE core units, four of them infantry. Kudos to Kerensky. I may have to replay this one before continuing!

In vanilla I hated the weather in Norway, because I had to shuttle short-ranged planes back and forth without even doing one attack over several turns. It was easy to overlook the "lowfuel" warning...

US East coast was quite harsh in the beginning indeed, but doable. Personally I had more probs playing the "Sealions" after all.

Spoils of war.

Mine was Vyazma. Not because I lost some units but because I could not get a DV on 5 or 6 tries. The weather stopped me each time and I had to restart the scenario to get to Moscow. Became very frustrating.

But after finishing the whole DLC and restarting it about 1 year later Ive finished this scenario on the first try w/o a problem.I'm not sure if the weather was better or my core stronger.

PS Ive never had any problems with Spoils of War. I don't think Ive lost any unit there, but I do take some damage.

East-Coast and Sea-Lion for the starting phase, Stalingrad for the middle-game and the frustation of having found no good solution.

Vyazma for the mud, but Stalingrad for the sheer grinding brutality - knowing that you then have the docks and the retreat to come, and that you somehow have to develop and keep units for the difficult 43 scenarios. And pretty much any scenario where you don't read the briefing properly ....

I haven't played the 45 East or 44 West yet, and have only played 44 East once so I might find some more horrors in these.

I see DLC Stalingrad being mentioned a few times. I hope no one takes this the wrong way, but if it was any other way, I don't think it would have done the 'feel' of Stalingrad proper justice.
Personally I didn't find Stalingrad to be too painful, but it was certainly arduous and extremely memorable to play.

I see DLC Stalingrad being mentioned a few times. I hope no one takes this the wrong way, but if it was any other way, I don't think it would have done the 'feel' of Stalingrad proper justice.

Very true. I'm glad it was tough and there are quite a few others that may cause some shell shock disorders, many mentioned in this thread. I have found DLC east to be suitably challenging even for a PG vet and 45 is still to come

Hi Kerensky,

You're absolutely right - the two scenarios I mentioned were hard because they are supposed to be hard, so you're doing a great job.

One of the best features of Panzer Corps is the different range of challenges available. I love the hard challenges (especially when I win), but it sure helps to know that if the Vyazma and Stalingrad blues get to me I can play a few games at Colonel with the weather switched off for some light relief.

Playing the Afrika Korps Campaign last night the 'Dash to the Wire' map (level 5) was absolutely horrific. The previous 4 maps had been relatively plain sailing and I'd DV'd them all but after about 4 hours of play finishing at 3 a.m. last night I finally scraped a marginal win on 'Dash to the Wire'. The lack of cities / objectives to take and thus prestige available combined with the relentless onslaught of British reinforcements while having to simultaneously defend the 3 core objectives around Torbruk and send a force to try and knock out the supply dumps was a nightmare!

It took me 4 or 5 go's to get anything like a good result with acceptible losses.

All hail the mighty 8.8 cm flak gun, as it saved my bacon in this scenario..... My Panzer IV's just seemed ineffective against the British Matilda II's, only the 88 did any meaningful damage to them!

"Return to Kishinev" in DLC 44 where you are steamrolled by the red army and the romanians fall in your back from behind the frontline, cutting off reinforcement routes. Trying this for the 30tiest time, because now that I know where the enemy is coming from in every detail I can´t accept winning on marginal any more. Losing about 8k in prestige and about 40 core units there in an average attempt.